An office building near the intersection of Interstate 10 and Bluebonnet Boulevard has been sold for $2.5 million and will serve as the operations center for a chain of local plastic surgery clinics.
B&E Interstate bought the building at 9107 Bluebonnet Centre in a deal that was filed Thursday with the East Baton Rouge Clerk of Court. The seller was Nedelco Inc., a Nebraska company.
B&E is headed up by Dr. Jonathan Weiler, who heads up the Weiler Plastic Surgery Group. Weiler has eight offices between Lafayette and Slidell.
The plan is for Weiler to turn the nearly 17,500-square-foot building into an operations center for his clinics, said David Vercher of KW Commercial-BR, who represented the buyer. “He’ll have back office stuff in there,” Vercher said.
Weiler was interested in the building because of its interstate access and proximity to his clinics, including the main operation on Bluebonnet, Vercher said.
The building had been home for a call center operated by Hamilton Telecommunications, a Nebraska-based company, said Fabian Edwards of Elifin Realty, who represented the seller. The center provided a free service that allowed deaf and blind people to communicate with friends, family and businesses by phone. Operators would read text from the deaf person’s text-telephone and type back a response.
Hamilton had more than 250 people working in the center before the COVID-19 pandemic, Edwards said. The company switched to remote operations during the pandemic and found that it was a workable solution.
After a few years of having a reduced number of employees in the Baton Rouge office, Hamilton “ripped the Band-Aid off” and decided to make its entire Louisiana workforce remote workers, Edward said.
This is the most recent in a string of office building sales. Last month, a 30,078-square-foot building at 5420 Corporate Blvd. sold for $2.15 million, and a 22,000-square-foot building at 10985 N. Harrells Ferry changed hands for $1.25 million. Also on Thursday, The Pelican Financial Plaza building at 4750 Sherwood Commons was purchased for $3.35 million.
Companies are going ahead with expansion plans after a few years of hybrid work-from-home operations, bolstered by a drop in interest rates, Edwards said.
“It’s really good to see these larger office assets trading,” he said. “I’m optimistic about the next year or two in the office world.”
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