Please be advised of an upcoming announcement from Van Eaton & Romero at a press conference on Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 10:30AM at City Club at River Ranch, Lafayette, LA.
Special guests will be available for interviews and video/photography.
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| Though he acknowledges that "there is something going on" and details will be announced Wednesday morning, Van Eaton & Romero CEO Bill Bacqué says he and fellow firm principals Nancy Van Eaton-Broussard, seated, and Gail Romero "on Thursday and the days beyond that, every day, we are going to be here." |
“There is something going on,” Bacqué acknowledges, though declining to identify the name of the company that will also take part in the announcement. He did, however, confirm that New Orleans-based Latter & Blum is the entity most speculation has been centered upon. That may in part be related to a January 2011 transaction in which Van Eaton & Romero bought the residential division of ERA Stirling Properties’ Lafayette office from Latter & Blum. That agreement occurred simultaneously with Latter & Blum’s purchase of Stirling’s entire residential division, which included operations in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
Latter & Blum, which currently has only a commercial property management office in Lafayette, operates in Louisiana and Mississippi and includes residential, relocation and commercial divisions and a property management division; it offers insurance and financing services as well, according to its website. The company also owns CJ Brown Realtors in Baton Rouge and Noles-Frye in Alexandria.
Calls placed to the Lafayette Latter & Blum office and the company's marketing department in New Orleans were not immediately returned.
Latter & Blum and VER's dealings with each other actually date back almost a decade, according to Bacqué. “[In] 2003 or 2004, we exchanged our residential property management division for a Latter & Blum Lafayette residential sales office. At that time they actually had a small presence in the Lafayette housing market. We wanted to get out of the property management business, and they were not satisfied with the performance of their residential sales operation. It was a good trade for all parties,” he says.
Bacqué couched the Wednesday press conference as more of an announcement about the company’s strategy for 2013 and beyond, saying it will unveil “significant technological changes, relocation enhancements and other strategic announcements to help us define and maintain our dominance as a real estate company going into the future.”
“I can tell you, Nancy [Van Eaton-Broussard], Gail [Romero] and I on Thursday and the days beyond that, every day, we are going to be here,” Bacqué continues.
Van Eaton-Broussard and Romero founded the firm in 1977; Bacqué, now 61, joined them in 1990.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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