Greater Baton Rouge Business Report: A bit of everything: Donnie Jarreau's holdings range from offic

Donnie Jarreau says he has no ambition to rule the area's real estate, construction and development markets.

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Even if his nickname is King.

Instead, the 43-year-old Baton Rouge native has carved out a niche in each of those areas, either through geography or market segment.

Take the booming condo market. While some developers are building high-rise condo towers from scratch, Jarreau is aiming a little lower.

Six weeks ago, he plunked down $1.9 million for an old 140-room hotel, the AllRound Suites, on River Road near Casino Rouge. He plans to spend $4.5 million on renovations to turn it into a 98-unit gated condo complex called Riverview. Units will sell for $79,000 to $149,000. Riverview already has deposits for 30 units, Jarreau says, despite zero marketing.

"We feel like we're reaching out to the downtown state worker and LSU students. It's hard to find anything for that price range."

When it comes to office and retail space, Jarreau has mixed new construction with buying existing buildings.

One project, a 30,000-square-foot office building off Highland Road, should be finished by summer with Superior Office Products as the first tenant. Jarreau says he bought enough land next door to build another 30,000-square-foot building. And just up the road from Jarreau's own headquarters on Plaza American Drive, he built a 10,000-square-foot building for Arcadis, Geraghty & Miller engineering firm. On Coursey Boulevard, he's acquiring two floors of the three-story Court Plaza, home to a branch of the Clerk of Court's Office.

Jarreau also likes to look outside East Baton Rouge Parish. He just built a 250-unit, $15 million HUD apartment complex in Denham Springs, finished 12,000 square feet of a 40,000-square-foot shopping center in Brusly and is gearing up for a small development in Dutchtown.

"We've kind of stayed diverse. Most everything we do I have partners in. We're not restricted to just concentrating on multi-family or retail."

Mike Schoen, owner of Southeast Flooring, which does about $200,000 worth of business with Donnie Jarreau Construction Co. each year, says he's known Jarreau several years.

"I think it's pretty amazing, what he started with and what he has now," Shoen says. "I would probably attribute most of that--he's a very smart businessman for one thing--but the way he treats people is one of his biggest attributes."

Jarreau started out in the health club business, founding Spectrum Fitness Centers in the early '80s before going to work for Latter & Blum. In 1992, he left the company to become an in-house real estate broker for developer-investors Paul Voorhies and Jeff Tanner.

Jarreau struck out on his own in 1998, founding Donnie Jarreau Real Estate. He started doing development, putting up small shopping centers and build-to-suit office buildings while maintaining a full-service commercial real estate and brokerage operation.

He launched his own construction company in 2001 by forming a partnership with Ralph Dyer, the building contractor he'd been using on his many commercial retail projects. At first Donnie Jarreau Construction Co. mostly worked on Donnie Jarreau developments; today those developments account for about 50% of his construction business.

Jarreau is still in the health club business. He's got six Spectrum Fitness Clubs in Baton Rouge and--in a partnership with Foxy's Mike Barnett--is buying an old building to renovate in Prairieville for the seventh Spectrum. Jarreau says he's had his eye on the Prairieville market for some time and that the market for health clubs in Baton Rouge has gotten very competitive.

Not everything he touches turns to gold. Jarreau's venture into the restaurant business with a Dreamland Bar-B-Que franchise didn't work out as planned. Though a revered institution in Alabama, Dreamland's days in Baton Rouge are numbered.

"The barbecue was not what we thought it would be in Baton Rouge," Jarreau says. "We're limited on a menu of three meats and four side orders. That's their concept. We feel we can't do the numbers that we need to do in that location, so basically we've come to an agreement with Dreamland that we're going away."

His restaurant, which opened last June in the Southdowns Shopping Center, will reopen in April as The Grill.

Paul Voorhies says the period from 1992 to 1998 when Jarreau brokered deals for him was productive because Jarreau knew everybody and was constantly getting calls about deal proposals.

"We could not have bought as much property if we had some dull guy who was sitting there," Voorhies says. "He did quite well, and we bought quite a lot of property."

Jarreau's later success with his own operation comes partly from his ability to recognize a good deal when it's presented to him, Voorhies says, in addition to "knowing everybody."

"A lot of people are in the right place at the right time, but they don't know they're there. Donnie would recognize an opportunity," says Voorhies.

As for expanding his realm, "King" Jarreau insists he has no plans to grow much beyond his current operation, which includes a $10 million-a-year construction company, a $5 million health club company and a commercial brokerage firm that does between $25 million and $30 million in real estate deals annually.

"We're having fun. We have a great client list. We've found a good niche in small retail development. We do a lot of projects that larger guys don't want to do. We're a small firm. It works best that way."