BATON ROUGE - For almost five years, the former Salsbury Dodge car lot has been vacant and untouched. Now, it's catching the attention of the City-Parish for all the wrong reasons. 

The old dealership, located at 9550 Airline Highway, was sold for approximately $2.5 million in 2018, according to commercial real estate broker Mark Hebert who was in charge of the sale for the Salsbury family.

Hebert says the six-acre lot was sold to a group of board members on the east coast that owned majority of stock of company called Car Lotz, whose intention was to make a franchise location. 

"Then all of a sudden COVID happened and the used car crisis hit that everyone seemed to go through, and all of a sudden there weren't many used cars available," Hebert said.

The Car Lotz group then flipped the property and sold it for more than $4 million to an investor, a California Trust.

"The new owners, the trust, was going to do a turn-key build to suit based on the value of the lease that was sold with the property for Car Lotz."

Since that sale, Hebert has not heard anything from the new owners. 

"We've had calls from people wanting to buy the site, asking if it could be purchased. We've reached out to the trust and even the brokers that we know that sold them the property and absolutely have gotten no response," he said. 

In the meantime, the condition of the property has deteriorated and it has become an eyesore in the community. 

A spokesperson for the EBR City-Parish says they have received three complaints since January 2022 about the grass being too high. The most recent complaint from the public was filed Sunday, July 30. 

The City-Parish has reached out about the grass violation. If the owners do not cut the grass, it could result in a lien being put on their property.