BATON ROUGE, LA – Developers gathered Thursday morning to celebrate the grand opening of Baton Rouge’s newest luxury subdivision, “Oak Creek Preserve,” a sprawling neighborhood built on a completely flat former pasture containing neither oak trees, a creek, nor anything remotely resembling a preserve.
Despite the lack of oak trees, developers insisted the name was carefully chosen to “capture the spirit” of what the area looked like just days before they cut them all down and sold the lumber.
“We really wanted residents to feel connected to nature,” explained project manager Kyle Boudreaux while standing beside a retention pond and several freshly installed utility boxes. “That’s why every street here has names like Whispering Oaks Drive and Mossy Creek Lane.”
Residents entering the subdivision Thursday passed decorative stone entrance signs, two dead shrubs struggling in the Louisiana heat, and a single newly planted tree supported by three wooden stakes.
Traffic engineers meanwhile confirmed the 640-home development will rely entirely on one narrow two-lane road already backed up every morning before construction even finished.
Developers say Phase Two, “Cypress Ridge Plantation,” will start to take shape as soon as the 466 Cypress trees on the property are removed.
