Four years after completing a high-rise apartment complex in downtown New Orleans, developer Mike Wampold has sold the 17-story property at the corner of Elk Place and Rampart Street for nearly $27.6 million to Bluegreen Corporation, a Florida company that owns and operates vacation timeshare properties.
Wampold declines to say how much he made on the deal. He acquired the 1970s-era office building, formerly known as Elk Place, in 2011 for an undisclosed price and spent slightly more than $20 million renovating it into a 96-unit complex with one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and a rooftop pool. Rents averaged around $2 per square foot.
Wampold says the complex did well, but competition was stiff and demand fell off when the state changed the rules in 2015 on its movie tax credit incentive program.
“The rental market had so many conversions and there was just an abundance of product there that was all put on the market at one time,” he says. “When we could sell it for $300,000 per unit we thought that was a pretty good deal so we took it.”
Given the strength of the the Crescent City’s hospitality market, Wampold believes the hotel and timeshare markets will continue to strengthen. Bluegreen Corporation is the largest operator of timeshare properties in the world.
Closer to home, another Wampold multifamily project, Bayonne at Southshore, is finally complete on Stanford Avenue. The 240-unit complex facing the LSU lakes, has been more than five years in the works. Currently, it is about 40% leased, a figure Wampold expects to more than double in the months ahead.
