Ask a real estate agent to describe the Oaks on the Bluff subdivision near Prairieville and you’ll probably hear about features like 12-foot ceilings, brick fireplaces and heart-of-pine floors. But if you ask the subdivision’s developer to name its biggest asset, he’ll likely mention trees.
“It has a gorgeous entry with these giant old oak trees,” Richard Carmouche says.
The Ascension Parish subdivision reflects its developer’s philosophy that good living demands not only quality housing but also a sense of place and attention to ambience that goes beyond walls and roofs.
Real estate development is a creative pursuit, Carmouche says. “You take a raw piece of ground, and you can make it anything you want.”
Before starting work at Oaks on the Bluff, he hired an expert to examine the site’s sprawling oaks. When the arborist pegged the age of some of the trees at more than 300 years, Carmouche made them a key feature of the project. “We didn’t have to take any of them down,” he says.
A love of natural elements and a respect for the past are defining characteristics in many Carmouche projects, from the homes he built during the 1970s and ’80s to the complex mixed-use developments he’s known for today.
Carmouche is behind one of Baton Rouge’s most high-profile and unusual projects: Willow Grove is the city’s first traditional neighborhood development, and despite a bumpy real estate market, lots are selling quickly.
Carmouche, 58, has come a long way since stepping into the real estate business more than 30 years ago. But in a sense he has not gone far at all.
The youngest of six siblings, he grew up in a home on Glasgow Avenue, rode his bike to St. Aloysius Catholic School and played baseball with kids in the Southdowns neighborhood. Through the various stages of his real estate career, his work has remained focused largely on his old south Baton Rouge stomping grounds.
Carmouche says that while he was drawn toward business at an early age, it took him a while to warm up to real estate. He got his first taste as he was wrapping up his business degree at LSU and found a part-time job selling Mississippi vacation property. “It was cold calling,” he remembers with a shudder. “People got a hibachi if they’d let me come and talk to them.”
Still, the experience intrigued him. After graduating in 1975, he searched for a place to learn real estate skills and found it with builder-developer Walter Bankston.
Under Bankston’s tutelage, Carmouche spent many hours doing what all residential agents do—driving people around and sitting at open houses hoping prospective buyers would show up. It was routine stuff, but he says Bankston’s influence left an imprint.
Carmouche built “a pretty successful sales business” while working with Bankston, but he had begun to realize that he really wanted to become a developer. In search of avenues that would get him out of sales, he tried property management, and then veered into renovations.
He enjoyed browsing older homes and envisioning how he could make them more interesting. He spotted a two-bedroom raised cottage in Southdowns and bought it for $22,000. After doing some upgrades, he sold it a few years later for $60,000.
Impressed with the income potential, Carmouche kept at the renovation business while continuing to sell houses. He bought several more fixer-uppers in Southdowns and Old Goodwood. He established relationships with subcontractors who could do quality improvements, then he flipped the houses for nice profits.
Occasionally Carmouche would come across a home on an extra-large lot. It occurred to him that he could buy the house, move it a short distance and make room for a second home on the same site. He bought several such properties, laid new foundations and shifted the existing houses slightly, leaving him with space for new houses.
He had found a low-cost way to create building opportunities, and Carmouche seized the moment to launch his construction career. The first home he built was important in more ways than one.
While working for Bankston, Carmouche had met—and fallen for—real estate agent Cathy Selleck. In 1981, knowing his interest in construction, Selleck asked him to build a house for her. She became Carmouche’s first construction client, and a few years later she became his wife.
During the next decade Carmouche gained a reputation as a quality builder not only among home buyers but also within the ranks of designers. Architect Tommie Cockfield worked regularly with Carmouche and hired him to build his own home.
“He has a very good eye for how things look and how they work,” Cockfield says. “He always had an innate ability to understand and envision what it took to create a nice ambience.”
That knack contributed to Carmouche’s financial success, Cockfield says. “His houses had a lot of curb appeal, and they sold well.”
Talent aside, Carmouche felt he needed to sharpen some of his skills. He headed back to LSU for some night classes in order to master the art of estimating.
While some builders like to quote a per-square-foot price for a home and then figure out how to package in a buyer’s special requests, Carmouche says he aimed to be a custom builder. To him that meant tailoring every aspect of a project for the client.
“With all the projects I do, I go into a lot of detail about cost before I start them,” he says. He makes detailed calculations of everything from the number of yards of concrete he’ll need to specifics on lumber, roofing and windows.
“I always had a pretty sharp pencil,” he says.
As Carmouche gained a reputation in construction, he also learned to leverage relationships with Realtors and bankers. In the 1980s, with interest rates running as high as 18%, potential home buyers were desperate for a borrowing break. “I knew people who would sleep on the sidewalk in front of a bank to be there in time to get a lower-cost loan,” he says.
He used his sales experience to help qualify borrowers, and he worked with lenders to lock in lower rates for his clients. The strategy kept his business ticking along even through the oil bust that devastated Louisiana.
“I hadn’t been in business that long, and I didn’t know how bad it was,” he says. “A lot of young people now don’t understand that the opportunity for a mortgage at 4.5% is just incredible.”
Many of the people who became Carmouche’s clients were folks his age or younger who wanted to get into a nice home and were looking for a builder they could trust.
Michael McDuff was one such buyer. Now the director of the Louisiana State Contractor Licensing Board, McDuff had just gotten married and was house shopping when he met Carmouche in the late 1980s. “Once I saw the work he did, his craftsmanship, and the way he dealt with his workers and clients, I was sold,” McDuff says.
Having known many builders and developers over the years, McDuff says Carmouche’s calm demeanor and even-handedness serve him well. “Richard has always had excellent relationships with his clients,” he says.
Relationships are important in construction, but access to financing is crucial. By the time interest rates began to decline from their 1980s highs, Carmouche had moved beyond building basic three-bedroom, two-bath houses and was tackling custom homes of 4,000 square feet or more. When rates on conventional loans dropped below 10% in 1992, the floodgates opened.
“We had so much business in my office that I had to schedule people so they wouldn’t bump into each other,” he says.
Carmouche tried to give all his houses distinctive features. He used beams and salvage materials to add a bit of age. He’d put a brick wall here or there inside a house, and maybe use old bricks on the outside.
“I knew the architects who were good at that sort of thing, so I used them to design projects for me and got on their bid list as a result,” he said.
His company became a fixture of construction sites in areas such as Country Club of Louisiana, University Club Plantation, Manchac Plantation and Highland Road.
It was during the 1990s that Carmouche tackled his first development. He had earlier bought 85 acres along Highland Road, adjacent to Bankston’s Woodgate development, and now he saw the low-lying, wooded property as a chance to unleash his creativity.
He mapped out a new road into the site and planned how to move dirt to create eight large lots amid ponds and cypress trees. “I got out there and kind of scratched it out with the ‘dozer guy,” he recalls.
Buyers quickly snapped up the spacious houses at Woodgate Crossing. With prices starting around $425,000, the homes had the features Carmouche loved: beamed ceilings and porches, interior brick work and lots of interior brick arches. The cost to build was around $80 a square foot, he says.
Carmouche Construction Co. built the houses, including the one where Richard and Cathy Carmouche lived for 18 years and raised their two children.
“Still today, they are really nice homes, and the setting is something that you can’t find anywhere else,” he says.
Carmouche went on to develop a string of well-received projects, beginning with gated community LaSalle Parc, then moving on to Jefferson Place. He partnered with the Metrailler family to develop Jefferson Highlands and Lakeshore Gardens off Jefferson Highway. He even dipped into commercial development with a couple of office parks along the way.
Several years ago Carmouche got a hankering for something different. He’d noticed trade magazines had been touting small-town style, mixed-use developments that incorporated a variety of residences with retail and recreational options. He was a fan of one of the earliest examples of the concept, in Seaside, Fla.
At the time, Carmouche and other developers were eyeing an expanse of land owned by the Kleinpeter family between Perkins Road and Interstate 10. “It was the perfect spot for a traditional neighborhood development,” he says.
The Kleinpeters liked the idea, and soon Carmouche was preparing plans for Willow Grove. But no one could have foreseen all the hurdles that would arise.
Zoning issues alone might have prompted a lesser developer to throw in the towel. A traditional neighborhood development, or TND, did not fit into the Baton Rouge zoning code, and planners had to be coaxed into reviewing it as a planned unit development.
Then there was neighborhood resistance. Locals were largely unfamiliar with the TND concept, and some objected bitterly. Carmouche spent more than two years negotiating with city planners and meeting with area residents and business owners to soften the opposition.
In the midst of these efforts, the nation’s financial markets went into a near collapse, paralyzing consumers and striking fear in the hearts of lenders.
A seeming nail in the coffin of Willow Grove was Perkins Road. Improvements to the busy, high-demand stretch of it between Bluebonnet Boulevard and Siegen Lane met one delay after another, hampering access to Carmouche’s development and effectively bringing its village center to a halt.
Cockfield says Willow Grove is a testament to Carmouche’s persistence and staying power. “In better economic times it probably would have been built out by now. He’s done well with it, considering everything he was up against,” Cockfield says.
Because he had started the projects before banks stopped lending, Carmouche was able to forge ahead with the development of lots for single-family houses, townhomes and “garden” homes. About 40 houses went up in 2007, but the number declined to zero by 2009.
Slowly, local real estate activity has picked up, and Carmouche says home starts in Willow Grove will total about 30 this year. Of the 184 lots he has put on the market, 90% have sold.
“Right now, Willow Grove is probably outperforming everything else in Baton Rouge in the $200 per-square-foot range,” he says.
Residential developer Hardy Swyers says consumers are starting to show more confidence, and that’s benefitting Willow Grove and projects such as Swyers’ Woodridge development, between I-10 and Airline Highway. The 384-lot project is nearly sold out, and he says as inventory in the region gets absorbed, subdivisions with available lots will do well.
“Richard is fortunate that he has lots on the market right now because I think it’s going to be a very good year for people that do have lots,” Swyers says.
That may also bode well for another project on Carmouche’s agenda.
During recent years he has laid the groundwork for The Grove, a TND that will take shape just across the railroad tracks from Willow Grove, immediately south of I-10. Engineering is complete for the 118-acre mixed-use development, which will contain a blend of residential options, a town center, parks and creek-side walkways.
The Grove will feature apartments and condominiums on upper floors of buildings that will also house small offices, retail and parking. Carmouche has partnered with the Domain Companies of New Orleans to develop the first stage of the urban-style project, which could begin to take shape early next year.
Although the project has been launched amid ongoing economic uncertainty, the developer’s former mentor is one person who won’t bet against it.
The now-retired Bankston says Carmouche has shown that he can make smart decisions no matter what the market conditions. But he says experience and business savvy are helping Carmouche withstand a record-setting slump in real estate.
“Its a cyclical business, and I’ve seen some very bad markets, but I think this is definitely the worst,” he says. “The project you pick, the location and the way you plan and develop it has a lot to do with how well it’s going to sell.”
