A November to remember: Strong November home sales in the eight-parish region tracked by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors have already placed year-to-date 2012 home sales ahead of total sales in 2011, with another month of sales still to report this year. GBRAR reports 566 homes were sold in November in East Baton Rouge, Ascension, Livingston, West Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, West Feliciana, Iberville and Point Coupee parishes. That's 80 more home sales than were tallied in the region in November 2011, or an increase of about 16%. Daily Report has the full story here.
Planning ahead: Costco Wholesale Corp. has filed a concept plan with the East Baton Rouge Parish Planning Commission to build a 149,000-square-foot warehouse store at the site of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant on Airline Highway. The national warehouse club signed a purchase agreement in April for an undisclosed price to acquire the 28-acre site from Coca-Cola Bottling Company United Gulf Coast. Though the sale has not been finalized, the company is apparently moving forward with plans for its first location in the Baton Rouge market. Read the full story from Daily Report and see renderings of the new store here.
Take out: BD Kitchen Co., one of the city's few locally owned kitchen stores, is closing its Towne Center location at the end of the month, less than two years after opening. Owners Bill Bethea and Ronnie Daley attribute their decision to permanently shutter the store to a lack of marketing support from shopping center management and a lack of foot traffic, the latter being a common complaint of retailers located on the "back," or Jefferson Highway side, of the development. Click here to read the full story from Daily Report.
Read more from Business Report here: http://www.businessreport.com/real-estate-weekly/12182012/recap#ixzz2FhQ023EG