Several longtime St. Tammany residents were also asked what they thought about the 1970's real estate boom. The persons interviewed included Louis Smith, Jack Lohman, Mike Osborne, Craig Sinden, and Walter Wall. Here is a reprint of some of the more interesting parts of that article. Click on the images to make them larger and more readable.
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Jack Lohman
Sheriff George Broom
Louis Smith
Walter Wall
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The Boomlet Across The Lake
By Ken Kolb
Published in New Orleans Magazine, April 1977
Way back, some 30 years ago, high adventure was at hand when Mamma and Daddy packed you in the back of the car, and armed with endless counting and recognition games, began the odyssey with: "OK, is everybody ready? Then alright kids, let's go across the lake!"
For some, that meant the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But for many others, across the lake was the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain and Bayou Liberty, Tchefuncte and Bogue Falaya Rivers, a midday break for dynamite hamburgers at the White Kitchen in Slidell, piney woods, artesian water, catching huge hampers of crabs on Salt Bayou by the Rigolets, spending the weekend with friends in a log cabin and listening to big, fat frogs go thump in the night.
Today, across the lake is big time. No longer a weekend retreat, the eastern and western shores and wooded inlands of St. Tammany Parish stand on their own in the midst of what might be called a boomlet.
Since 1960, the population of the parish has nearly doubled, as thousands, encouraged by the country atmosphere of the Ozone belt, sought their place in the sun and fun of the north shore's eight incorporated cities and countless villages and hamlets. In the past six years alone, the number of immigrants to the parish has increased by more than 15 per cent, making it the second fastest growing area in the state. And the future looks bright, with predictions the population will reach 200,000 by the year 2000. But what does it foretell of the years ahead? Will St. Tammany be faced with density problems other areas of the country have witnessed? In other words, what's up in St. Tammany Parish?
Big vs. Steady
When you speak of steady growth, that means Covington. But the big growth is in Slidell. As St. Tammany School Board member and former president Bill Folse puts it: "Slidell's two major high schools have a population today larger than the whole city in the late forties." In 1960, Slidell had a population of only 5,000; by 1975, it had tripled in size, and now stands near the 20,000 mark. Much of that growth is attributable to its proximity to the Mississippi Gulf Coast resort communities.
But the major impetus has come from the location of the NASA space facilities at Michoud, Slidell and Bay St. Louis, all of which attracted the top industry personnel from all across the country, who in turn needed convenient homes or apartments. Today Slidell has 100 per cent occupancy in apartments and its developers are building single family homes at the rate of 700 a year. The town is moving eastward, growing about 10 per cent a year, the latest surge spurred by the overspill from New Orleans and the attractiveness of the piney woods.
Builder-realtor Pat Miramon has a firm opinion about the way that surge can be harnessed and steered in the right direction. "The growth can be good if we have the right people running things," he says. "Builders can't sit around and wait for government to perform. The clock keeps running in our business, along with the interest on the interim financing. Builders are like supermarkets; we have to have volume or we fail—the profit margin is just that close. And the school board and city services are always behind —not in front of —free enterprise growth. There is no front end money in government. The building industry in Slidell is like the Mississippi River to New Orleans. It employs the most people. If it shuts down, Slidell has problems. It happened in the late
St. Tammany recently passed a one-cent sales tax. It's estimated that revenues from the tax will jump 15 to 20 per cent annually; thus growth will serve as a pump primer to the general fund. As the revenues in the fund increase, so do services that are provided to tag along close behind growth. Stop growth and you stop revenues and limit bonded indebtedness capacity. Or so the theory goes. Slidell needs money because it is building wide open with new people, new subdivisions. Covington, Mandeville and Madisonville on the western shore are growing steadily in contrast to its eastern shore neighbor. Morgan Earnest, president of upper-income-priced Beau Cherie just outside incorporated Mandeville, has his own growth philosophy.
"All the no-growth advocates are newcomers," says Earnest. "They look around and see it is filling up and'say 'wait.' What right do they have? It's shortsighted for newcomers to advocate growth restrictions under the guise of protecting the environment. You can have both and live in harmony. Houston hasn't stopped growing. Growth in St. Tammany is good for metropolitan New Orleans. It will provide jobs."
Earnest is straightforward in his belief that the free enterprise system works far better than any government controls.
"Houston doesn't have zoning and look what they've done," he says. "Responsible planners can control what people are worried about by restricting property by its usage, by subdivision restrictions, not zoning. Another layer of controls is bad. Planners think they know what's best for people, and although they are well-motivated, people know what they want better than planners. Look at it this way, the question builders face is that we are out of land to build on because that same land is not close to services. We've got all the land we need in this country if we can just find the right spots to bring in the necessary services."
In the early '60s, the Pontchartrain Causeway created a false boom to the Covington area. It ran up land values ahead of their time. The causeway never did what it was supposed to do. Today, the real estate market on the western shore is steady in places like Beau Chene, Golden Glen, Golden Shores, Country Club Estates, Tchefuncte Estates, Riverwood and Beau Rivage. And commuting has been made easier with a new causeway rate: 50 cents one way—or $20 for a book of 40 one-way tickets, provided you use them within 60 days.
Real estate prices in the Covington Mandeville-Madisonville area (C-M-M) range from $27,000 for 100 x 150 golf course lots in Beau Chene; $15,000 for 100 x 150 lots in Golden Glen; $25,000 for half-acre lots in Tchefuncte Estates; $58,000 for Mike Osborne's grand six acres at the lake's edge; $10,000 for old 75 x 150 Golden Shore's lots; $19,000 for 150 x 200 Country Club Estates non-golf course lots; and $15,000 for half-acre lots in Beau Rivage. As Ed Dodson, sales manager of Latter and Blum's Covington office, puts it, "We need an inventory of $65,000-$85,000 houses." And although real estate agents need more and more listings than they think, it is true that upper-income executives want and are willing to pay for this range.
Slidell is somewhat different. Miramon has 2,000 sites starting in Cross Gates with lots 80 x 140 averaging $10,000 and homes planned in the $50,000-$60,000 range. Clover Construction and Homecraft builders, two very large and active operations, are building generally in the $35-$55 thousand range. Slidell is a broader-based market with more white- and blue-collar economics than the middle management and executive-level Covington area, but there is still a market for the $60,000, one-acre homesites offered by developer John Buttrey in his Magnolia Forest.
Jack Lohman "The Price Of Land Is Outta Sight..."
Color Jack Lohman's real world orange and white. The barns, trucks, stationery, everything is orange and white. Next, brand everything that moves with initials "CCS" and you have Clear Creek Stud Farm north of Covington. Lohman's real world is the perfect reproduction of his lifelong dream: 285 acres and the largest commercial stud farm in the state, where nearly 300 stallions and mares will produce Louisiana-bred race horses that will leave their mark at race tracks across the country.
There are some 70 farms in St. Tammany Parish, and with the exception of Joey Dorignac's racing stables, no other farm comes close in size to Lohman's Clear Creek.
As a youngster in uptown New Orleans being in the race horse business was all Lohman thought about. And Clear Creek Stud Farm is just as young Jack Lohman thought it would be: rolling hills of emerald green neatly cropped grass. Gravel roads winding through pine trees and leading to immaculate barns. Colts kicking up their hooves and drinking the cool, sweet water of underground springs that run across the land in cold, clear creeks.
"I'm afflicted with this thing, with horses," says Lohman, who is also publisher of the breeder's bible The Louisiana Horse. "But I guess you've got to be a little crazy to be in this business. Maybe I should've had a retail business where I could close the door on Friday evening and not have to worry about the place until Monday morning. But once horses get into your blood they just don't come out. I've been here since 1969 and I built everything you see here.
When I first came, there was nothing here. It's not a lucrative living. And for me it's got to be profitable...it's all I've got. There are a lot of farms around here where the owner has three or four mares on 10 acres. Well, that's when it's a hobby..."
Is the land boom in St. Tammany an omen of trouble in paradise? Not necessarily, but for Lohman's spread and those many lesser pacts of land, change seems to be coming with that boom. "The price of land over here is outta sight," Lohman says. "I wouldn't be surprised to see the time come when we go out of business. If this new assessment thing goes through, we could just go outta business. The breeders association is discussing that now. There's a need to expand, but we just can't afford to. There's not much land for sale around here, people are buying it up like candy. Every time I talk to somebody it's the same thing. They tell me, 'Keep your eyes open for some land around your place.' The guy behind me is talking about developing 120 acres in packages of a house and five acres. That's about how it goes. Everybody wants five or ten acres. You look right across the road from me. There are houses going up all down the road.
"All of that has a bearing on the assessment of land. I mean look at this place. Do you value land at ten-acre tracts or do you value this land as a horse farm? I'm just too old at this point to build another horse farm. I built one in Kentucky. I was there for 10 years. That's where I learned this business. The horse business is a good business, and I love it. But there are a lot of other things that I could get into without all these headaches."
"I Left..."
Mike Osborne wanted living space. A New Orleans lawyer, he pulled up his tap roots, took his family, and found his soon-to-be dream home on the remote beach at Jackson Park, six acres of privacy on beautiful little Bayou Castine, close to the north end of the Causeway. The price: $58,000.
"I didn't dream we'd find a place like this," says Osborne, pointing to the R-1 section of the Mandeville map. "But I have all city services. I'm going to build one block from the lake. I have everything and I still have privacy. This property was not susceptible to be subdivided into small lots because little Bayou Castine cuts through it so it is inaccessible as far as my property goes."
Here Osborne and his family plan a raised dream house on pilings. The air is cooler, the bayou is there, his boat is a bike ride away from the marina, the waves lap one block from his house, the TV reception from New Orleans is better, and although his law practice is in the FNBC Building, it is a leisurely one hour trip ($12.25 a week) by bus to the courthouse at Tulane and Loyola. The return Greyhound leaves from the Warwick Hotel.
Osborne will keep 150 x 535 for his family and subdivide the other four parcels. Although his lot is on low ground that he must fill to meet parish specifications, he planned it that way for remoteness on the lake's edge where the lower slope is.
Osborne and his wife Joan never considered subdivision living. Looking at the property you can see why. Egrets swoop in and out, birds trill in the trees and the mood is peaceful. And private.
Osborne pulled up his tap roots in New Orleans for a home across the lake because "we couldn't wait until Friday to get outdoors. Besides that, I am a big believer in public schools and the experience it gives a child. But the public school system in New Orleans looked bleak. My son Johnny had gone about as far as he could go at Lusher Uptown and it was either private schools or else. At Lusher you got an automatic promotion to next level; at Mandeville Middle School if you don't make the grade, you repeat. So, once the Mandeville school was checked out we knew that everything else fit right in place."
Osborne talks with enthusiasm and a dreamer's deliberateness when he discusses his raised home: cedar exterior, good insulation, magnificient view of the lake, proper planting of deciduous trees for summer shade and winter sunlight. "And, if I get an itch for the city, it's no big deal back across the causeway. You know, the people in Mandeville are excellent neighbors. They live here because they want to live here. And since many are retired they keep up their property."
Osborne loves to sail. "I'm a bike ride to Prieto's Marina. In New Orleans it was a real hassle. I had to haul my gear 300 yards out to the pier and the traffic was bad. Not here. Just walk on and set sail."
It's his own self-styled planned community. "People over here are concerned about the quality of life and the environment. You can swim in the lake on the north side. It's not polluted."
Osborne is wary of over-development. "Poorly conceived real estate developments are no strangers to the north shore," he says. "Mariner's Village went broke. I understand it's back on the drawing board again. It's too much of a strain on schools, police, fire and the eco-system. I have no doubt in my mind that if Mariner's Village were put to a vote it would lose in its present form of being zoned multi-family commercial. It's completely inconsistent with this life style. Put it behind Fat City, not here."
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"Too Much, Too Fast..."
Louis Smith tucks his sandy-red hair under his fishing cap, rings up a sale of fence wire on the cash register and goes about his job at the H.J. Smith's Sons General Store— still trying to adjust to the influx of "the strangers."
"I'll tell you what I think of this growth in Covington—I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It's the crime that makes it so bad. They brought it with 'em, you know."
Smith says he's lived in Covington for 57 years and in the old days, nobody worried about any kind of crime. But things are different now. "We could leave the house unlocked all the time, sometimes for days, and we never had to worry about being robbed. Now everything's different. They'll steal everything around here—chickens, pigs, anything you own. Now you have to lock up your doors and be sure you tell the neighbors to keep an eye on things."
Smith thinks the crime doesn't have a lot to do with the people who have moved across the lake from New Orleans, but rather with the "parasites" that have come with them. "The type of people that are moving here are good," he's quick to admit, "but the parasites follow the herds."
Four of Smith's sons help him run the general store and business is better than ever. "Sure the economy is great," says Smith, "but we were surviving before all this growth started. I've worked here for 40 years, and we were getting by just fine and we haven't depended on the strangers to survive."
Smith knew just about everybody in town during past years, but that too has changed. "We used to operate on a real personal level. Of course, now we can't do that and I sure miss it."
Besides the crime, Smith says the land boom has brought pollution to the creeks and rivers he has fished for years. "I've been fishing those rivers all my life, and it just makes me mad that the pollution has been allowed to take over. I'm' pretty old so it's not as important to me that I keep fishing, but my kids have been stomped out of it too, and that's not fair.
"Too much too fast, that's what happened to Covington," proclaims Smith. "I guess it's just the price you have to pay in these changing times."
St. Tammany Hall
The political history of St. Tammany Parish is as turbulent as any to be found in Louisiana.
Two years ago, a federal jury convicted Slidell Police Chief Edward Schilleci of wiretapping, eavesdropping and perjury and a state court followed suit last year with a malfeasance conviction.
Last September, Mandeville had a police problem of its own. Chief Buell Thomas resigned, along with some of his deputies, after an unsuccessful attempt to have Mayor Bernard Smith recalled from office. There were a lot of flying accusations and counter-accusations, and although the recall effort failed, "it came damned close," according to reports.
Even Covington has had a problem with its chief of police, Bill Dobson. There have been accusations of misappropriation of city funds and an audit of Dobson's books is expected any day.
With all of those political squabbles going on, the sudden growth explosion on the north shore has only contributed to the turmoil. A longstanding friendly political rivalry between Covington and Slidell has been fanned into a burning feud by the influx of people and the resulting competition for money and power. Since representation on the parish police jury is proportionate to the population, the political weight has recently shifted to Slidell, which has used that advantage to challenge the 165-year-old parish seat in Covington.
The parish seat flap arose out of a related controversy over where to build a much-needed new courthouse and prison facility. The original proposal was to construct the new courthouse complex where U.S. 190 crosses 1-12, just outside the Covington city limits. The plan was contingent upon the Covington City Council's agreement to annex the site in question so the parish seat would remain in Covington. But Covington businessmen raised such a howl about the economic setback they'd suffer by such a move, the city council refused to annex the 1-12 site.
So the courthouse bond issue, which goes to St. Tammany voters April 16, will carry a referendum question about whether the parish seat should be moved out of Covington. And St. Tammany Farmer Editor Ron Barthet says, "a lot of people are nervous about it."
The one man who's not nervous about it is St. Tammany Parish Sheriff George A. Broom, a name that's been synonymous with north shore politics for the past quarter century. The sheriff and his brother, Police Jury President Earl Broom, are Slidell natives who understand their neighbors better than most. "I don't see a problem with the rivalry between Covington and Slidell," says Broom, who makes daily treks across the 30 miles of interstate highway that separate his offices in each of the two towns.
Nor is he worried about the rapid pace of growth in the parish. "I'm a realist at heart," says Broom, who served as president of the Slidell Chamber of Commerce during the early days of the NASA space program when the city was booming and was instrumental in getting the Causeway approved and built in 1959. "I believe that a community that grows is a viable community. One that regresses is in serious trouble."
Paul Lewis, a land-use architect familiar with such potential, says Slidell has the best developable land.
"The soil consistency is good," he says. "And the interstate corridor makes it ideal to distribute cheaper to New Orleans and also to points east and west." Slidell is sitting smack dab in the flow of progress and knows it. What does all this mean? Can St. Tammany handle its growth hand in hand with the environment? Will the goose that laid the golden egg foul its nest, polluting the very thing that it loves? Blessed with a fantastic lake, fresh water rivers, flushing bayous, hardwood forests, clean air and artesian water, St. Tammany is at the intersection of its destiny and the way it is planned and developed now will be on the hands of her ancestors for hundreds of years to come.
The Wetlands: Enchancement or Encroachment?
Craig Sinden is the 31-year-old director of planning for the Planning Commission of St. Tammany. He is paid by the St. Tammany Police Jury, the state and the federal government. Sinden's is not an easy job. His immediate concern is the over use of septic tanks which he says pollute the ground with their run-off from lot to lot. But his long-range preoccupations are a new zoning ordinance and the resolution of livable coastal zone management standards for St. Tammany's wetlands along the lake's eco-system.
"The public, the Police Jury and the Planning Commission will shortly be presented the proposed new zoning ordinance to set standards of quality for growth," he says. "As of now, we have only one classification for commercial; the new one will have five. Shopping centers, barrooms, industrial zones, neighborhoods—all these need hearings to determine how we grow with taste rather than the spot zoning that now exists to our detriment."
Certainly St. Tammany must face its future with some method of fairness and well-planned standards. The Central Zone Management Area hearings are part of this future.
"About three per cent of our land in St. Tammany is below the five-foot contour...the wetlands. This should be saved. If not," Sinden says, "we've destroyed something that is beautiful and irreplaceable. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of high and dry land for development. Hopefully the 20 or more groups being consulted can come to agreement on standards for development within this five-foot contour plan where vegetation, soils and geography break from coastal to upland at five feet of sea level. Our police jury, if it sees fit, is empowered to make this area more restrictive, not less, and with these standards we can set up a regulatory arm to guide ecological and any commercial development within our wetland contour."
Sinden realizes it will be a complex issue with many groups out to satisfy their own special interests. But, as he says, "hopefully good wetlands standards will protect the developer. He knows he faces extensive litigation if he goes into a wetland area today. Standards will let him know just what to expect and what is right and what is wrong. Developers and environmentalists have to live together. After all, saving three per cent is not asking too much, is it?" eastern and western shores and wooded inlands of St. Tammany Parish stand on their own in the midst of what might be called a boomlet.
"We Gotta Protect What We Got..."
Walter Wall chomps on a cigar as he plants his huge frame in the doorway of his log cabin dance hall, The Ozone Club, outside Slidell. While the band is on break, the words pour out of the Wurlitzer juke box and over the jam-packed wooden floor, every inch of which is occupied by talkers, drinkers and dancers.
On the dance floor, two men abandon their dates and discuss the respective merits of their Chevy trucks. They settle their argument outside on the cool pine-scented strip of Hwy. 190 that runs past the club.
Back inside, exhausted dancers will 'shuffle to the music until the sun comes up, then they'll pour into their trucks and head back to Slidell, Lacombe and Brookhaven. Walter Wall will then go to bed. A lot of Saturday nights were spent that way at the Ozone Club for many years. But subdivisions and shopping centers and the influx of assembly line food outlets have perched the Saturday night dances at the Ozone Club on the shelf of oblivion.
The dusty green velvet curtain still lines the tiny band niche at the Ozone Club, but the bands don't play there any more and those Saturday night dances have been replaced by meetings of the Optimist Club and the Sportsman's League. Today Walter Wall sits at the bar of the Ozone Club still chomping on a cigar. But St. Tammany parish and life in general has changed drastically for Wall over the 29 years he's owned the Ozone Club. "Yeah, this club has taken a lot outta me," Wall says. "I was a strong man at one time. I could whip hell outta anybody ... Not any more though. Besides, over the years I done weeded out all the bad actors around here."
The 71-year-old Wall, who also rents trailers on the five acres he owns behind the Ozone Club, says although the influx of people and money have changed his way of life over the years, he isn't even thinking about retiring. He's a part of St. Tammany Parish. He still has goals to reach.
"The growth of these parts has affected us somewhat.' Wall says. "Our people used to come here from all over: Mandeville, Brookhaven, McComb. All over Mississippi. Now most of them come from Lacombe, or around the neighborhood or they're just passing through. Bar business is good, but we don't have dances no more like we used to.
"Those people who used to come here to dance on Saturday night are the same ones who come here now as members of the Sportsman's League. They're in here now tryin' to find ways to protect the game. Some damned fools come around here and shoot everything in sight...then they move on. We gotta protect what we got, don't we?"
By Ken Kolb
Published in New Orleans Magazine, April 1977
Way back, some 30 years ago, high adventure was at hand when Mamma and Daddy packed you in the back of the car, and armed with endless counting and recognition games, began the odyssey with: "OK, is everybody ready? Then alright kids, let's go across the lake!"
For some, that meant the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But for many others, across the lake was the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain and Bayou Liberty, Tchefuncte and Bogue Falaya Rivers, a midday break for dynamite hamburgers at the White Kitchen in Slidell, piney woods, artesian water, catching huge hampers of crabs on Salt Bayou by the Rigolets, spending the weekend with friends in a log cabin and listening to big, fat frogs go thump in the night.
Today, across the lake is big time. No longer a weekend retreat, the eastern and western shores and wooded inlands of St. Tammany Parish stand on their own in the midst of what might be called a boomlet.
Since 1960, the population of the parish has nearly doubled, as thousands, encouraged by the country atmosphere of the Ozone belt, sought their place in the sun and fun of the north shore's eight incorporated cities and countless villages and hamlets. In the past six years alone, the number of immigrants to the parish has increased by more than 15 per cent, making it the second fastest growing area in the state. And the future looks bright, with predictions the population will reach 200,000 by the year 2000. But what does it foretell of the years ahead? Will St. Tammany be faced with density problems other areas of the country have witnessed? In other words, what's up in St. Tammany Parish?
Big vs. Steady
When you speak of steady growth, that means Covington. But the big growth is in Slidell. As St. Tammany School Board member and former president Bill Folse puts it: "Slidell's two major high schools have a population today larger than the whole city in the late forties." In 1960, Slidell had a population of only 5,000; by 1975, it had tripled in size, and now stands near the 20,000 mark. Much of that growth is attributable to its proximity to the Mississippi Gulf Coast resort communities.
But the major impetus has come from the location of the NASA space facilities at Michoud, Slidell and Bay St. Louis, all of which attracted the top industry personnel from all across the country, who in turn needed convenient homes or apartments. Today Slidell has 100 per cent occupancy in apartments and its developers are building single family homes at the rate of 700 a year. The town is moving eastward, growing about 10 per cent a year, the latest surge spurred by the overspill from New Orleans and the attractiveness of the piney woods.
Builder-realtor Pat Miramon has a firm opinion about the way that surge can be harnessed and steered in the right direction. "The growth can be good if we have the right people running things," he says. "Builders can't sit around and wait for government to perform. The clock keeps running in our business, along with the interest on the interim financing. Builders are like supermarkets; we have to have volume or we fail—the profit margin is just that close. And the school board and city services are always behind —not in front of —free enterprise growth. There is no front end money in government. The building industry in Slidell is like the Mississippi River to New Orleans. It employs the most people. If it shuts down, Slidell has problems. It happened in the late
St. Tammany recently passed a one-cent sales tax. It's estimated that revenues from the tax will jump 15 to 20 per cent annually; thus growth will serve as a pump primer to the general fund. As the revenues in the fund increase, so do services that are provided to tag along close behind growth. Stop growth and you stop revenues and limit bonded indebtedness capacity. Or so the theory goes. Slidell needs money because it is building wide open with new people, new subdivisions. Covington, Mandeville and Madisonville on the western shore are growing steadily in contrast to its eastern shore neighbor. Morgan Earnest, president of upper-income-priced Beau Cherie just outside incorporated Mandeville, has his own growth philosophy.
"All the no-growth advocates are newcomers," says Earnest. "They look around and see it is filling up and'say 'wait.' What right do they have? It's shortsighted for newcomers to advocate growth restrictions under the guise of protecting the environment. You can have both and live in harmony. Houston hasn't stopped growing. Growth in St. Tammany is good for metropolitan New Orleans. It will provide jobs."
Earnest is straightforward in his belief that the free enterprise system works far better than any government controls.
"Houston doesn't have zoning and look what they've done," he says. "Responsible planners can control what people are worried about by restricting property by its usage, by subdivision restrictions, not zoning. Another layer of controls is bad. Planners think they know what's best for people, and although they are well-motivated, people know what they want better than planners. Look at it this way, the question builders face is that we are out of land to build on because that same land is not close to services. We've got all the land we need in this country if we can just find the right spots to bring in the necessary services."
In the early '60s, the Pontchartrain Causeway created a false boom to the Covington area. It ran up land values ahead of their time. The causeway never did what it was supposed to do. Today, the real estate market on the western shore is steady in places like Beau Chene, Golden Glen, Golden Shores, Country Club Estates, Tchefuncte Estates, Riverwood and Beau Rivage. And commuting has been made easier with a new causeway rate: 50 cents one way—or $20 for a book of 40 one-way tickets, provided you use them within 60 days.
Real estate prices in the Covington Mandeville-Madisonville area (C-M-M) range from $27,000 for 100 x 150 golf course lots in Beau Chene; $15,000 for 100 x 150 lots in Golden Glen; $25,000 for half-acre lots in Tchefuncte Estates; $58,000 for Mike Osborne's grand six acres at the lake's edge; $10,000 for old 75 x 150 Golden Shore's lots; $19,000 for 150 x 200 Country Club Estates non-golf course lots; and $15,000 for half-acre lots in Beau Rivage. As Ed Dodson, sales manager of Latter and Blum's Covington office, puts it, "We need an inventory of $65,000-$85,000 houses." And although real estate agents need more and more listings than they think, it is true that upper-income executives want and are willing to pay for this range.
Slidell is somewhat different. Miramon has 2,000 sites starting in Cross Gates with lots 80 x 140 averaging $10,000 and homes planned in the $50,000-$60,000 range. Clover Construction and Homecraft builders, two very large and active operations, are building generally in the $35-$55 thousand range. Slidell is a broader-based market with more white- and blue-collar economics than the middle management and executive-level Covington area, but there is still a market for the $60,000, one-acre homesites offered by developer John Buttrey in his Magnolia Forest.
Jack Lohman "The Price Of Land Is Outta Sight..."
Color Jack Lohman's real world orange and white. The barns, trucks, stationery, everything is orange and white. Next, brand everything that moves with initials "CCS" and you have Clear Creek Stud Farm north of Covington. Lohman's real world is the perfect reproduction of his lifelong dream: 285 acres and the largest commercial stud farm in the state, where nearly 300 stallions and mares will produce Louisiana-bred race horses that will leave their mark at race tracks across the country.
There are some 70 farms in St. Tammany Parish, and with the exception of Joey Dorignac's racing stables, no other farm comes close in size to Lohman's Clear Creek.
As a youngster in uptown New Orleans being in the race horse business was all Lohman thought about. And Clear Creek Stud Farm is just as young Jack Lohman thought it would be: rolling hills of emerald green neatly cropped grass. Gravel roads winding through pine trees and leading to immaculate barns. Colts kicking up their hooves and drinking the cool, sweet water of underground springs that run across the land in cold, clear creeks.
"I'm afflicted with this thing, with horses," says Lohman, who is also publisher of the breeder's bible The Louisiana Horse. "But I guess you've got to be a little crazy to be in this business. Maybe I should've had a retail business where I could close the door on Friday evening and not have to worry about the place until Monday morning. But once horses get into your blood they just don't come out. I've been here since 1969 and I built everything you see here.
When I first came, there was nothing here. It's not a lucrative living. And for me it's got to be profitable...it's all I've got. There are a lot of farms around here where the owner has three or four mares on 10 acres. Well, that's when it's a hobby..."
Is the land boom in St. Tammany an omen of trouble in paradise? Not necessarily, but for Lohman's spread and those many lesser pacts of land, change seems to be coming with that boom. "The price of land over here is outta sight," Lohman says. "I wouldn't be surprised to see the time come when we go out of business. If this new assessment thing goes through, we could just go outta business. The breeders association is discussing that now. There's a need to expand, but we just can't afford to. There's not much land for sale around here, people are buying it up like candy. Every time I talk to somebody it's the same thing. They tell me, 'Keep your eyes open for some land around your place.' The guy behind me is talking about developing 120 acres in packages of a house and five acres. That's about how it goes. Everybody wants five or ten acres. You look right across the road from me. There are houses going up all down the road.
"All of that has a bearing on the assessment of land. I mean look at this place. Do you value land at ten-acre tracts or do you value this land as a horse farm? I'm just too old at this point to build another horse farm. I built one in Kentucky. I was there for 10 years. That's where I learned this business. The horse business is a good business, and I love it. But there are a lot of other things that I could get into without all these headaches."
"I Left..."
Mike Osborne wanted living space. A New Orleans lawyer, he pulled up his tap roots, took his family, and found his soon-to-be dream home on the remote beach at Jackson Park, six acres of privacy on beautiful little Bayou Castine, close to the north end of the Causeway. The price: $58,000.
"I didn't dream we'd find a place like this," says Osborne, pointing to the R-1 section of the Mandeville map. "But I have all city services. I'm going to build one block from the lake. I have everything and I still have privacy. This property was not susceptible to be subdivided into small lots because little Bayou Castine cuts through it so it is inaccessible as far as my property goes."
Here Osborne and his family plan a raised dream house on pilings. The air is cooler, the bayou is there, his boat is a bike ride away from the marina, the waves lap one block from his house, the TV reception from New Orleans is better, and although his law practice is in the FNBC Building, it is a leisurely one hour trip ($12.25 a week) by bus to the courthouse at Tulane and Loyola. The return Greyhound leaves from the Warwick Hotel.
Osborne will keep 150 x 535 for his family and subdivide the other four parcels. Although his lot is on low ground that he must fill to meet parish specifications, he planned it that way for remoteness on the lake's edge where the lower slope is.
Osborne and his wife Joan never considered subdivision living. Looking at the property you can see why. Egrets swoop in and out, birds trill in the trees and the mood is peaceful. And private.
Osborne pulled up his tap roots in New Orleans for a home across the lake because "we couldn't wait until Friday to get outdoors. Besides that, I am a big believer in public schools and the experience it gives a child. But the public school system in New Orleans looked bleak. My son Johnny had gone about as far as he could go at Lusher Uptown and it was either private schools or else. At Lusher you got an automatic promotion to next level; at Mandeville Middle School if you don't make the grade, you repeat. So, once the Mandeville school was checked out we knew that everything else fit right in place."
Osborne talks with enthusiasm and a dreamer's deliberateness when he discusses his raised home: cedar exterior, good insulation, magnificient view of the lake, proper planting of deciduous trees for summer shade and winter sunlight. "And, if I get an itch for the city, it's no big deal back across the causeway. You know, the people in Mandeville are excellent neighbors. They live here because they want to live here. And since many are retired they keep up their property."
Osborne loves to sail. "I'm a bike ride to Prieto's Marina. In New Orleans it was a real hassle. I had to haul my gear 300 yards out to the pier and the traffic was bad. Not here. Just walk on and set sail."
It's his own self-styled planned community. "People over here are concerned about the quality of life and the environment. You can swim in the lake on the north side. It's not polluted."
Osborne is wary of over-development. "Poorly conceived real estate developments are no strangers to the north shore," he says. "Mariner's Village went broke. I understand it's back on the drawing board again. It's too much of a strain on schools, police, fire and the eco-system. I have no doubt in my mind that if Mariner's Village were put to a vote it would lose in its present form of being zoned multi-family commercial. It's completely inconsistent with this life style. Put it behind Fat City, not here."
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"Too Much, Too Fast..."
Louis Smith tucks his sandy-red hair under his fishing cap, rings up a sale of fence wire on the cash register and goes about his job at the H.J. Smith's Sons General Store— still trying to adjust to the influx of "the strangers."
"I'll tell you what I think of this growth in Covington—I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It's the crime that makes it so bad. They brought it with 'em, you know."
Smith says he's lived in Covington for 57 years and in the old days, nobody worried about any kind of crime. But things are different now. "We could leave the house unlocked all the time, sometimes for days, and we never had to worry about being robbed. Now everything's different. They'll steal everything around here—chickens, pigs, anything you own. Now you have to lock up your doors and be sure you tell the neighbors to keep an eye on things."
Smith thinks the crime doesn't have a lot to do with the people who have moved across the lake from New Orleans, but rather with the "parasites" that have come with them. "The type of people that are moving here are good," he's quick to admit, "but the parasites follow the herds."
Four of Smith's sons help him run the general store and business is better than ever. "Sure the economy is great," says Smith, "but we were surviving before all this growth started. I've worked here for 40 years, and we were getting by just fine and we haven't depended on the strangers to survive."
Smith knew just about everybody in town during past years, but that too has changed. "We used to operate on a real personal level. Of course, now we can't do that and I sure miss it."
Besides the crime, Smith says the land boom has brought pollution to the creeks and rivers he has fished for years. "I've been fishing those rivers all my life, and it just makes me mad that the pollution has been allowed to take over. I'm' pretty old so it's not as important to me that I keep fishing, but my kids have been stomped out of it too, and that's not fair.
"Too much too fast, that's what happened to Covington," proclaims Smith. "I guess it's just the price you have to pay in these changing times."
St. Tammany Hall
The political history of St. Tammany Parish is as turbulent as any to be found in Louisiana.
Two years ago, a federal jury convicted Slidell Police Chief Edward Schilleci of wiretapping, eavesdropping and perjury and a state court followed suit last year with a malfeasance conviction.
Last September, Mandeville had a police problem of its own. Chief Buell Thomas resigned, along with some of his deputies, after an unsuccessful attempt to have Mayor Bernard Smith recalled from office. There were a lot of flying accusations and counter-accusations, and although the recall effort failed, "it came damned close," according to reports.
Even Covington has had a problem with its chief of police, Bill Dobson. There have been accusations of misappropriation of city funds and an audit of Dobson's books is expected any day.
With all of those political squabbles going on, the sudden growth explosion on the north shore has only contributed to the turmoil. A longstanding friendly political rivalry between Covington and Slidell has been fanned into a burning feud by the influx of people and the resulting competition for money and power. Since representation on the parish police jury is proportionate to the population, the political weight has recently shifted to Slidell, which has used that advantage to challenge the 165-year-old parish seat in Covington.
The parish seat flap arose out of a related controversy over where to build a much-needed new courthouse and prison facility. The original proposal was to construct the new courthouse complex where U.S. 190 crosses 1-12, just outside the Covington city limits. The plan was contingent upon the Covington City Council's agreement to annex the site in question so the parish seat would remain in Covington. But Covington businessmen raised such a howl about the economic setback they'd suffer by such a move, the city council refused to annex the 1-12 site.
So the courthouse bond issue, which goes to St. Tammany voters April 16, will carry a referendum question about whether the parish seat should be moved out of Covington. And St. Tammany Farmer Editor Ron Barthet says, "a lot of people are nervous about it."
The one man who's not nervous about it is St. Tammany Parish Sheriff George A. Broom, a name that's been synonymous with north shore politics for the past quarter century. The sheriff and his brother, Police Jury President Earl Broom, are Slidell natives who understand their neighbors better than most. "I don't see a problem with the rivalry between Covington and Slidell," says Broom, who makes daily treks across the 30 miles of interstate highway that separate his offices in each of the two towns.
Nor is he worried about the rapid pace of growth in the parish. "I'm a realist at heart," says Broom, who served as president of the Slidell Chamber of Commerce during the early days of the NASA space program when the city was booming and was instrumental in getting the Causeway approved and built in 1959. "I believe that a community that grows is a viable community. One that regresses is in serious trouble."
Paul Lewis, a land-use architect familiar with such potential, says Slidell has the best developable land.
"The soil consistency is good," he says. "And the interstate corridor makes it ideal to distribute cheaper to New Orleans and also to points east and west." Slidell is sitting smack dab in the flow of progress and knows it. What does all this mean? Can St. Tammany handle its growth hand in hand with the environment? Will the goose that laid the golden egg foul its nest, polluting the very thing that it loves? Blessed with a fantastic lake, fresh water rivers, flushing bayous, hardwood forests, clean air and artesian water, St. Tammany is at the intersection of its destiny and the way it is planned and developed now will be on the hands of her ancestors for hundreds of years to come.
The Wetlands: Enchancement or Encroachment?
Craig Sinden is the 31-year-old director of planning for the Planning Commission of St. Tammany. He is paid by the St. Tammany Police Jury, the state and the federal government. Sinden's is not an easy job. His immediate concern is the over use of septic tanks which he says pollute the ground with their run-off from lot to lot. But his long-range preoccupations are a new zoning ordinance and the resolution of livable coastal zone management standards for St. Tammany's wetlands along the lake's eco-system.
"The public, the Police Jury and the Planning Commission will shortly be presented the proposed new zoning ordinance to set standards of quality for growth," he says. "As of now, we have only one classification for commercial; the new one will have five. Shopping centers, barrooms, industrial zones, neighborhoods—all these need hearings to determine how we grow with taste rather than the spot zoning that now exists to our detriment."
Certainly St. Tammany must face its future with some method of fairness and well-planned standards. The Central Zone Management Area hearings are part of this future.
"About three per cent of our land in St. Tammany is below the five-foot contour...the wetlands. This should be saved. If not," Sinden says, "we've destroyed something that is beautiful and irreplaceable. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of high and dry land for development. Hopefully the 20 or more groups being consulted can come to agreement on standards for development within this five-foot contour plan where vegetation, soils and geography break from coastal to upland at five feet of sea level. Our police jury, if it sees fit, is empowered to make this area more restrictive, not less, and with these standards we can set up a regulatory arm to guide ecological and any commercial development within our wetland contour."
Sinden realizes it will be a complex issue with many groups out to satisfy their own special interests. But, as he says, "hopefully good wetlands standards will protect the developer. He knows he faces extensive litigation if he goes into a wetland area today. Standards will let him know just what to expect and what is right and what is wrong. Developers and environmentalists have to live together. After all, saving three per cent is not asking too much, is it?" eastern and western shores and wooded inlands of St. Tammany Parish stand on their own in the midst of what might be called a boomlet.
"We Gotta Protect What We Got..."
Walter Wall chomps on a cigar as he plants his huge frame in the doorway of his log cabin dance hall, The Ozone Club, outside Slidell. While the band is on break, the words pour out of the Wurlitzer juke box and over the jam-packed wooden floor, every inch of which is occupied by talkers, drinkers and dancers.
On the dance floor, two men abandon their dates and discuss the respective merits of their Chevy trucks. They settle their argument outside on the cool pine-scented strip of Hwy. 190 that runs past the club.
Back inside, exhausted dancers will 'shuffle to the music until the sun comes up, then they'll pour into their trucks and head back to Slidell, Lacombe and Brookhaven. Walter Wall will then go to bed. A lot of Saturday nights were spent that way at the Ozone Club for many years. But subdivisions and shopping centers and the influx of assembly line food outlets have perched the Saturday night dances at the Ozone Club on the shelf of oblivion.
The dusty green velvet curtain still lines the tiny band niche at the Ozone Club, but the bands don't play there any more and those Saturday night dances have been replaced by meetings of the Optimist Club and the Sportsman's League. Today Walter Wall sits at the bar of the Ozone Club still chomping on a cigar. But St. Tammany parish and life in general has changed drastically for Wall over the 29 years he's owned the Ozone Club. "Yeah, this club has taken a lot outta me," Wall says. "I was a strong man at one time. I could whip hell outta anybody ... Not any more though. Besides, over the years I done weeded out all the bad actors around here."
The 71-year-old Wall, who also rents trailers on the five acres he owns behind the Ozone Club, says although the influx of people and money have changed his way of life over the years, he isn't even thinking about retiring. He's a part of St. Tammany Parish. He still has goals to reach.
"The growth of these parts has affected us somewhat.' Wall says. "Our people used to come here from all over: Mandeville, Brookhaven, McComb. All over Mississippi. Now most of them come from Lacombe, or around the neighborhood or they're just passing through. Bar business is good, but we don't have dances no more like we used to.
"Those people who used to come here to dance on Saturday night are the same ones who come here now as members of the Sportsman's League. They're in here now tryin' to find ways to protect the game. Some damned fools come around here and shoot everything in sight...then they move on. We gotta protect what we got, don't we?"
