BATON ROUGE — A garage fire at an abandoned property on Laurel Street has left neighbors concerned about the neglect in their neighborhood. They reached out to 2 On Your Side about the troubled properties, which share the same owner.

For years, 2 On Your Side has highlighted abandoned and neglected properties in Baton Rouge and the effects they have on the people and the neighborhoods they're in. Last year, the city tore down a record number of blighted properties.

Through these stories, one name continues to pop up: Collis Temple. The former LSU basketball trailblazer owns dozens of properties across East Baton Rouge Parish. Many of those properties have remained untouched for years and are the type of blight the parish wants to eliminate. 

Behind a blue house on Laurel Street, visible from the Greyhound Bus station, are the charred remains of a garage. The Baton Rouge Fire Department was called to the property in the early morning of July 9. A neighbor, who wishes to remain anonymous, reached out following the fire.

"It did damage the neighbor's house; thankfully, it didn't spread any further," she said.

That neighbor says the home has been unoccupied for at least six years. Over the years, visitors have frequented the property. The coroner's office responded to the address in August 2023, where they found a homeless man who had died of seizure complications.

The house and singed remains are part of a web of properties in East Baton Rouge Parish. At the center of the web is Collis Temple, Jr. His last name is painted on the front of the house, visible from the street. 

"If you don't need it, just sell it to someone who will put some investment in this neighborhood," said the neighbor.

It's not the first time 2 On Your Side has visited Laurel Street. In February 2025, the same neighbor contacted WBRZ about the house on the corner, which is also owned by Temple. A city inspection from March 22 noted that homeless people were staying inside. Inspectors referred it to the parish for condemnation. Last year, the house was worked on, but a year later it remains unoccupied. The front door is boarded up again.

Over the past 18 months, 2 On Your Side has found that Temple has ties to dozens of properties in EBR under various names, family members, corporations, and companies. Some of the properties are listed under Temple's non-profit, The Harmony Center. According to the website, the non-profit is "committed to providing services that help the developmentally disabled, adjudicated, mentally and medically ill, abused and neglected individuals of our communities."

In January 2025, a couple of good Samaritans reached out to 2 On Your Side about a man living in deplorable conditions on East Boulevard. Raymond Crane is blind and mobile thanks to a wheelchair. He was living in a house without running water, a kitchen, or a functioning bathroom. 

"The tenant-landlord situation has totally deteriorated," said Richard Mahoney, who helped Crane move to a new home.

Because of the conditions he was living in, Crane said he stopped paying rent to his landlord, Collis Temple.

"You're making money on being a slumlord," said Mahoney.

Crane's living situation has improved, but he is still in need of care that has yet to be secured. 

The three houses just south of the interstate on East Boulevard are all owned by Temple and are boarded up. Two of them have had the eye of the city before. They were investigated and recommended for condemnation, but were ultimately deleted from the agenda by Councilwoman Carolyn Coleman. 

The garage on Laurel Street is not the first of Temple's properties to catch fire. On November 4, 2025, the BRFD responded to heavy smoke and flames coming from a storage shed along North 23rd Street. Maxima Industries is used as a day program for people with developmental disabilities. Temple was on scene the day of the fire and spoke with WBRZ's Sarah Gray Barr. 

In February 2026, Temple spoke with WBRZ's Brittany Weiss at an LSU Board of Supervisors meeting, where Temple has been a board member since 2020. Then, he said he had plans to fix up the East Boulevard houses.

"We're going to repurpose them, hopefully this summer," said Temple.

The condition of the three houses has not changed much.

"Well, we put new roofs on them, on all three we put new roofs, they're in the process of being remodeled," said Temple. 

The city says the roofing work was done without permits, and Temple faces code violations for that project. Temple tells WBRZ that he employs "hundreds and hundreds" of people to make sure his properties are in good standing, and his single-family properties take a back seat to the larger, commercial properties. 

Many properties around East Baton Rouge connected to Temple remain boarded up or unsecured. Both residential homes like those on Convention Street and Atkinson Street, and commercial buildings. The Temple family purchased the Old Gerry Lane on Florida Boulevard in 2021. The building was destroyed by vandals, but almost all openings have been secured recently. Temple couldn't share much about his plans for that location.

"We have a couple of major things on the horizon that I'm not at liberty to talk specifically about," he said.

The story is similar for many properties owned by Temple in a state of disrepair. It all adds up to a bigger blight problem in Baton Rouge, where boarding up a property is allowed.

Even Mayor-President Sid Edwards doesn't like the look. But can it change?

"Yeah, it can change; some people might keep property for sentimental sake, but it doesn't look good in the fabric in our community," Edwards said.

One of the mayor's campaign promises was to tackle blight in East Baton Rouge Parish. To date, the parish has torn down 268 blighted properties, but some of them don't make it to his list for demolition. They're instead blocked or deleted by the council or get caught up in red tape.

"There's got to be a time when we do what we say we're going to do, that we're going to go out there and we're going to clean this up," Edwards said.

Other properties tied to Temple have been on and off the condemnation list. A property on Longfellow Drive, which caught fire, was torn down without a permit in 2025. That lot remains empty, but a multi-unit building on the same block is boarded up. 

Neighbors say Temple is aware of the recent fire on Laurel Street. He did not answer Brittany Weiss' call following the incident. 

"We are worried about this place being left unsecured," said the anonymous neighbor. 

Those neighbors remain hopeful he will evaluate the damage soon.

Temple has applied for a permit at the North 23rd Street property that caught fire in November, but it remains unsecured.