Realtor Brown buys office

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Oct 31, 2009 - Page: 6B

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C.J. Brown Realtors will move more than 100 agents, mortgage and finance personnel to a three-story building on Sherwood Forest Boulevard the company bought this week for $2.5 million. The company will move from a leased site at 4314 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd., where it has operated for more than two decades, to the 3029 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd. building CJB Investors LLC bought from a Denham Springs investor.

Sandy Daly, managing broker of C.J. Brown’s Sherwood office, said the move likely will take place in February after renovations. The company also operates Baton Rouge-area offices on Perkins Road and in Ascension Parish and Denham Springs.

C.J. Brown’s Sherwood staff will occupy the second floor and part of the third floor of its new 36,000-square-foot home.

“We saw it as just a wonderful opportunity to start being a landowner ourselves,” Daly said. “It was a great opportunity, a beautiful building, a great location, and the space really worked well for us.”

The Denham Springs investment company, South Sherwood Holdings LLC, sold the building and three lots totaling 1.5 acres to New Orleans-based CJB Investors LLC, an affiliate of Latter & Blum Inc. and C.J. Brown Realtors.

CJB is led by Latter & Blum Chairman Robert Merrick.

The seller, South Sherwood Holdings, is based in Denham Springs and is led by Robert Waters of Watco Construction Inc.

Among the building’s tenants are a Regions Bank mortgage office, the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, 1st Pinnacle Financial Group and an Environmental Resources Management office.

Daly said C.J. Brown will move into space being vacated by the LHSAA in December.

LHSAA, once based on Jefferson Highway, is moving to new permanent space in a 17,200-square-foot building that was part of the former Fairwood Country Club on Old Hammond Highway near Interstate 12.

Among the former occupants of the new C.J. Brown building on Sherwood Forest are the Jay Crow & Associates real estate firm and Amedisys Inc., before it consolidated multiple offices to its current headquarters near Airline Highway.

C.J. Brown Realtors bought Jay Crow in 1990, and Latter & Blum bought C.J. Brown in 1995.

In 2007, Louisiana Investment Corp. sold the same site to South Sherwood Holdings for $3 million, though the contract included a disclaimer that the sales price didn’t necessarily reflect discounts and concessions made to the purchaser.