English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in Baton Rouge, LA

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Louisiana first responders, including the Baton Rouge Fire Department, are still stationed in the southeast part of the country to help the areas hit by Hurricane Helene.

“We’re going road by road, looking at every structure, opening up a lot of roads, there’s still a lot of roads that are closed by downed power lines, trees blocking roads,” said Baton Rouge Fire Chief, Michael Kimble.

Chief Kimble has been in South Carolina since Saturday, along with other members from Baton Rouge, East Side, and Zachary fire departments. They are part of an urban search and rescue team with the Louisiana Fire Marshal and East Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Services.

“We’ve assisted a lot of folks to get out of their homes by opening the roads. They weren’t trapped in their homes by a tree falling and pinning them down, they were trapped in their homes because they couldn’t leave due to power lines down and trees down,” added Kimble, “it’s like any storm we’ve seen back in Louisiana, there are certain areas that have destruction, and there are certain areas that have very little damage.”

That’s not the case for other areas, according to Marc Creswell with Acadian Ambulance.

“In this case, there’s a lot of homes that are just wiped completely off the face of the earth,” said Creswell, “it just came in and just plowed through like a giant bulldozer.”

Creswell is the Director of Acadian Ambulance Air Med Division, he is stationed in North Carolina. Creswell says the level of destruction he is seeing is surreal.

“The town of Chimney Rock is completely wiped off the face of the earth and dumped into Lake Lure, and there’s numerous other cities that the majority of the buildings are wiped out or severely compromised,” explained Creswell.

The Acadian Ambulance crews are there to run 9-1-1 calls alongside the local first responders.

“When a hurricane strikes an area, it also strikes the first responders, not only their homes but their jobs, these guys have been running nonstop for four or five days, so we provide relief for them,” added Creswell.

Creswell says they don’t know how long they’ll be there, but based on what he has seen, he thinks their help will be needed for a while longer.

WAFB’s parent company Gray Media is partnering with the Salvation Army for Hurricane Helene relief. You can find out how to help those affected by the storm on the Salvation Army website.

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A Louisiana official is under investigation for allegedly getting $780,000 to buy a house and jobs for his children from an organization to which he helped award a contract from the state, documents show.

Johnny Adams, an assistant commissioner in the Office of Conservation in the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, is named in a search warrant accusing him of malfeasance in office that says he "used his position to influence" an agreement with the Louisiana Oilfield Restoration Association and later benefited financially.

Adams is the husband of East Baton Rouge Metro Council member for District 11, Laurie Adams, who was elected to office in 2020. Neither Laurie nor Johnny Adams responded to requests for comment.

DENR spokesperson Patrick Courreges said Johnny Adams was placed on administrative leave with pay after agency leaders learned of the allegations through media reports.

In 2019, while Johnny Adams was an attorney supervisor for the office, it entered a cooperative endeavor agreement with the Louisiana Oilfield Restoration Association to provide financial security to oil well operators, the warrant says. The contract was part of the state's effort to address "orphan wells," which are abandoned wells that are potentially dangerous without costly procedures to cap them.

The agreement put LORA in charge of collecting fees from the operators. In turn, it was responsible for paying to cap wells if a company went bankrupt or was otherwise unable to finish the job.

Johnny Adams notarized the agreement, and Laurie Adams signed it as a witness, the warrant says.

LORA was registered with the Secretary of State's office in September 2019, two months before the agreement was signed, the warrant says. And it notes that the organization is "neither a state nor a federally regulated financial institution and does not qualify as a financial institution under state or federal law."

The agreement allowed LORA to spend 20% of the fees it collected from companies on administrative expenses. But in 2022, that amount increased to 36% — without written consent from the state, the warrant says.

After that happened, LORA's owners received pay increases ranging from 32% to 369%, investigators said. And the Adams' two adult children, William Adams and Laura Beth Adams, began employment at two companies under the same ownership as LORA.

In April 2023, LORA officials withdrew $780,000 from its bank account. That same month, Johnny and Laurie Adams bought a house on Oakbrook Drive in Baton Rouge for $780,000, with no mortgage, the document says.

They later took out a $624,000 mortgage on the property, five months after closing, investigators said.

"The evidence suggests Mr. Adams used his position to influence the OC's selection of LORA, which financially benefitted LORA's owners," the warrant says. "In return, it appears LORA's owners hired his children as employees and, later, as contractors through two companies sharing ownership with LORA; and provided funds to Mr. Adams to purchase his personal residence."

The warrant says that, as of April 2024, LORA had more than $160 million in liabilities and about $5 million in reserves.

Courreges noted the allegations involve actions under a previous administration. He said Johnny Adams will remain on leave while the department waits for more information from the investigation.

"To date, there's been no formal communication with the DENR or Office of Conservation about that warrant, the exact nature of the investigation, the type, number or severity of any charges that may or may not be filed in the future," Courreges said.

Karen Rowley, spokesperson for Legislative Auditor's office said "No report has been released yet. The audit work is ongoing."

This is a developing story.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Baton Rouge-based LA-Crave-A-Ball is known for its unique variety of boudin balls and has recently started marketing to customers outside the state.

Members of the Pizzolato family, the founders of Tony’s Seafood, and chef and ball flavor creator Yvette Bonanno run the company.

The manufacturing facility in which the business operates out of on Florida Boulevard near South Donmoor Avenue was purchased in 2015 with original plans for a bakery. The building was converted into a manufacturing facility in 2020. LA-Crave-A-Ball began producing boudin balls under the inspection of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture in 2022.

“Half of the building is inspected under the Department of Health and Hospitals, which is where we do all of the blending, and that’s everything from fish fry, chicken fry, boudin spice barbecue rubs for Tony’s Seafood and our products in-house,” Bonanno says.

In the past year, the company became USDA-certified to distribute its foods outside Louisiana. It now ships to Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Atlanta.

The consumer base includes convenience stores, restaurants, caterers, hotels and country clubs.

“Tad Pizzolato said to me from the beginning that when you put Louisiana on a product like Louisiana Fish Fry, it is much more well received and sold better outside Louisiana,” Bonanno says. “We’ve only been selling to some of these customers for less than a year, so it’s been a huge growth for us.”

Reaching a more extensive audience resulted in adding new menu items like spinach and artichoke balls; red beans, pork, and sausage balls; crawfish etouffee balls; pimento cheese and grits balls; and kibbe and mini–kibbe balls. The staff is also working on new flavors.

The flavor combos result from a machine Bonanno and the staff use that injects one product into another and produces 90 boudin balls per minute.

The company aims to continue surprising customers with new products and flavors.

“We’re fortunate that our partners are buying, tremendous lots and bulk of our product, putting it out there, and helping with the distribution,” Bonanno says. “We’re generating jobs here, and we’re hopefully going to impact Louisiana’s economic footprint the way Louisiana Fish Fry did. We knew that we had that knowledge in our arsenal, that it was going to sell better outside the state of Louisiana, so we’re very excited about that.”

Customers can purchase the boudin balls from the freezer section at Tony’s Seafood on Plank Road.

In a cultural landscape desperate for authenticity, Baton Rouge's vintage signs, though few and far between, add depth to the region's sense of place.

Like the iconic signs along Route 66, the local signs recall the heyday of highways and strip development — a part of Americana.

"These freestanding street signs that have a sculptural quality have basically disappeared because of zoning laws," said Darius Spieth, an LSU professor with a doctorate in art history. "Many of the manufacturers who made these things went out of business about that time, so the knowing how to do these things disappeared a little bit, which is why we look at these things from a nostalgic perspective."

Though the original signage may not last, a trend in current sign design works to emulate the retro style with neon-like elements that are "more maintenance friendly, less expensive, much more durable and are still beautiful in their own right," said Gene Bagot, owner of Thunderbolt Signs in Baton Rouge.

Spieth says the signs from the second half of the 20th century represent the golden age of street signs.

As automobiles became widely available after the Second World War, strip development featured large signs "because this is all stuff that needs to be seen at a split second when people drive by," said Spieth.

America's ubiquitous strip development was a response to the post-World War II consumer society which demanded a new infrastructure built around the automobile.

Baton Rouge signs have drawn attention from people like Debra Jane Seltzer, photographer and founder of roadsidearchitecture.com. She has been cultivating her digital collection of road signs, unique buildings and their history for 20 years.

Seltzer has traveled to Baton Rouge to document and research the Florida Boulevard Washateria Wash & Dry sign and other capital city vintage signs, that she found "graphically nice" and "historic." She also updates the status of signs all over the country.

Each sign has its own story to tell.

The Hotel Lincoln, a civil rights historical site, boasts a bright red sign that protrudes out over the building to catch the eye of potential travelers almost 70 years ago.

Spieth agrees that the Hotel Lincoln sign is in a category of its own because of its historical significance as a Black-owned hotel for Black travelers during segregation. The hotel was found in The Green Book, a motorist guide for places safe for Black Americans. The hotel opened in 1955, which helps place the time of the sign.

Spieth said that the "roundness of the sign is typical in many ways of certain modern biomorphic designs from that period. The font itself and the color sends out a signal of the period — and the way the sign juts out at a kind of acute angle makes it quite dynamic."

The Donut Shop and Sno Cone sign predates the businesses around it. The size, use of neon on top of the sno cone and bright colors make the sign pop. Spieth noted that the sign has a Las Vegas flair.

"The Donut Shop sign probably dates from the late '60s or, more likely, the early '70s. It has a pop art touch with the colors," he said.

Though the sign is deteriorating and in need of repair, its size and font represent a style that included neon and bright colors, which was designed to get driver's attention from far away and typical for strip development, Spieth said.

This weather-beaten sign stands atop an unrelated wholesale business on N. Foster in north Baton Rouge. Unless drivers look up in the right instant, they will probably miss it.

Spieth said the Paramount sign is probably from the mid 1940s to early 1950s.

Spieth connected the sign's design to the 1937 Cord automobile with its art deco curves and lines, reflecting the movement's influence on automobile shapes.

"It's very, very interesting from a design perspective," Spieth said. "I would guess it's probably from the early 1950s because it retains certain art deco elements. These round ends off of the circle looks like luxury car."

This bold blue and yellow sign is hard to miss for those driving down Florida Boulevard. Vestiges of neon tubing remain, even though the sign no longer glows.

"This is also a typical road sign of the late 1950s or 1960s. The irregular shapes with acute angles, suggesting a dynamic optimism, and round edges reference modern and abstract art from this time period," Spieth said. "The monumental size, neon-tubing elements, color scheme and font type would also be consistent with this 'golden age' of American road signs."

Is preservation possible?

For vintage signage, preservation comes at a cost.

"Creating historical awareness with the owners may not be a bad thing, but it's really up to them. These signs are just a few survivors. Maybe this is less than 10% of what was originally around," Spieth said. "So, they're becoming increasingly rare, and they are interesting as design monuments, as aspects of the 20th century."

Bagot knows the challenging effort it takes to repair older signage. He has owned a sign business for six years and works with clients to design, install and service heavy industrial and commercial signs.

"Nine times out of ten, when we're contacted about an older sign, we can repair them, but to restore them to their original glory is monumentally expensive," Bagot said. "Almost every owner can't afford it, so they'll remove it and scrap it."

The Neon Museum in Las Vegas takes old signs, refurbishes and displays them to preserve history. Usually, shipping the sign is also "cost-prohibitive" according to Bagot.

Bagot is proud of one particular preservation and reinstall — The Martin Wine Cellar sign on Lobdell, which was originally in New Orleans in the 1960s until Katrina, when the building was destroyed.

The Martin family saved the sign and contacted Bagot about installing it at their Baton Rouge location.

"I go and I see the sign, and I said, 'My God, this is the sign from Carondelet Street!' I told them I grew up four blocks from there," he said. "So I got a chance to clean it up and then rehang it in Baton Rouge. And that was really, really cool."

Updated: Nov. 6, 2024 at 4:46 PM PST

ST. GEORGE, La. (WAFB) - St. George is getting a shopping center in the next few years that will be almost twice the size of the Mall of Louisiana.

It’s spearheaded by Joshua Davis, the owner of Louisiana Firearms, and his business partner. Around five years ago, conversations with customers sparked an idea.

“A lot of St. George residents are customers of mine currently, and they would always say, ‘Hey, you know, we need a shopping center, a big shopping center down in St. George. We hate going through all the traffic to get to Baton Rouge to have nice restaurants and have nice shopping. We would love to have, you know, that in our own city,’” Davis said.

That idea turned into a plan for a 33-acre development in St. George at the corner of Highland and Airline called “The Highline.” It’ll combine with another development next-door already in the beginning phases and one across the street, making it around 160 total acres. Davis calls it a Perkins Rowe 2.0.

“We have a restaurant district, we have a shopping district, and we have a government and an office district in the development. We’re currently trying to get different local government agencies to move in, to rent, to build, whatever we could do to help them really get the city up and running,” Davis said.

Once completed, Davis says The Highline will be the biggest development in East Baton Rouge Parish. So far, he says the St. George community likes the idea.

“Everyone wants a development in St. George so they don’t have to drive to Baton Rouge, more restaurants near where they live. One of the biggest advantages we have, we are not a development that borders or is really close to any residential developments. A lot of these big developments that come in, they get a lot of pushback from because they’re right next to a neighborhood. We’re very fortunate. We’re lucky we don’t have that issue, so really that hasn’t been a factor. We haven’t seen any pushback from that aspect, so I would say that was my biggest concern going into it, but we really haven’t had anyone complain about it just because it’s not close to any neighborhoods,” Davis said.

Davis says the concerns he has heard are all related to the potential traffic increase in the area, but he says his team designed the development with that in mind.

“It should actually enhance the traffic in the area because of the Antioch extension that will be going through the development, so really, it should help with congestion rather than hurt it,” Davis said.

The development is broken down into phases. Davis says phase one is about to start within the next few months and will be complete by Summer 2026. It’ll include a two-acre town square, the Louisiana Firearms complex as the anchor business, and a connection to Airline Highway.

Developers have spaces for lease in the center. If you are interested or want to learn more, click here: https://www.experiencethehighline.com/

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