Homeward Expansion

As a boy growing up near Lakeside Swim Club, Lamont Breland would go with his family to La Normandy Inn for breakfast on Sundays after church. Today, as the head of Breland Group Realtors, he and 50 other real estate agents serve up another kind of homemade – in the very same building. “The family that ran it operated the restaurant for 54 years,” says Breland. “There’s still a commercial kitchen in the basement.” Although the building, located at 2616 Bardstown Road, has housed other businesses (including catering) in tandem with and subsequent to La Normandy, it took Breland to expand upon the original structure after leasing the space and ultimately purchasing the building from the restaurateurs’ son. 

 

In late summer, the Breland Group broke ground on a 2,300-square-foot (plus another 1,000 in the basement) expansion, including a full basement, a 475-square-foot conference room, a kitchen and a four-car garage, along with a 1,000-square-foot retail space and five offices. Breland promises that the appearance will be seamless: “The facade of the new building and old building will come together and look like the same building from the street.”

 

Breland admits that expansion in the current economy is something of an anomaly, but explains that it’s part of the company’s business model. “It’s different than a lot of companies,” he says of the real estate firm he started 15 years ago. “What we’ve always done is have a shared space office concept.” This means that no agent has his or her own office, although the five new offices are designed to attract bigger producers who may wish a bit of extra space for themselves or an assistant. Breland also says that although the market has gone down and the tax credits have expired, the agency, which almost exclusively deals with residential properties, is “pretty lean. We don’t owe anybody any money, and we have a real strong foundation. That’s evident by our ability to pull off this project in the middle of a recession.” 

 

Breland expects the transition to be complete by January 1, with the satellite office at 9900 Shelbyville Road remaining open as usual to serve, along with the main office in the Highlands, clients all over Louisville and surrounding counties. “[The construction] has been an inconvenience on our agents, but they’re patient and they share the vision.”

 

Breland, who was recently elected to a one-year term as the president of the 3,900-member Greater Louisville Association of Realtors, also has a special kind of home tie. Following the death of his mother 15 years ago, he moved his family into the house he’d grown up in. (The oldest of his three daughters, a student at Georgetown, has his old room when home.) Of course, they’ve since updated the kitchen and finished the basement, so it’s not exactly the same as it was when Breland was a kid. “It’s a great house – just not the same place anymore. But it’s a great area, great neighborhood. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

 

Breland Group Realtors is online at brelandgroup.com and their phone number is (502) 451-4107. You can see pictures of the ongoing construction on their Facebook page.