The New Orleans TopGolf Mess Is A Perfect Example Of Why This State Stinks For Business

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The New Orleans TopGolf Mess Is A Perfect Example Of Why This State Stinks For Business

You see stories like this, and if you’ve lived all your life in Louisiana you shrug your shoulders and say “Well, that’s how it goes sometimes.” And if you haven’t lived all your life in Louisiana you see stories like this and they piss you off like there’s no tomorrow BECAUSE IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THIS ELSEWHERE.

So let’s start from the beginning. There are two different companies which build high-end golf driving ranges with lots of extras to them – TopGolf and Drive Shack. It appears that TopGolf is the bigger player in that market – they’ve just opened a facility in Baton Rouge which is, so far, hugely successful and packed all day, every day.

TopGolf and Drive Shack were both interested in putting something into the New Orleans market, and both were interested in building somewhere in downtown New Orleans by the river. In particular there was land along the Mississippi nearby to the New Orleans Convention Center – land, in fact, owned by the Convention Center itself – that was considered as a potential site for a TopGolf or Drive Shack driving range.

The Hayride - Louisiana

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Let’s start with the story of the land near the convention center. It was brought to the New Orleans Convention Center board that maybe a golf driving range might be a good idea, and Joe Jaeger, a real estate developer with property holdings near to the Convention Center, was interested in building one.

What we’re talking about is property on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Euterpe Streets, just upriver from the New Orleans Convention Center. As we understand it, that property was discussed as a potential driving range site, and Jaeger was involved in trying to book one. But nothing much happened in 2017 when it was first discussed, and unlike in most cases where there’s public land up for development when a master developer is chosen and then decisions go through that entity who’s responsible for the totality of the project, this one was parceled out per the usual Louisiana way.

So ultimately what happened was that Jaeger gave up on the convention center/riverfront site and did a deal with Drive Shack to build a driving range on the Howard Avenue site right off I-10 where the Times-Picayune’s headquarters used to be, in the thinking that he’d have the only high-end driving range in the city – since the TopGolf thing had fallen through.

And Jaeger went ballistic. He penned an op-ed at the New Orleans Advocate trashing the Convention Center and pulling out of a hotel project he was slated to be involved in with the Convention Center board. And that wasn’t all – Jaeger announced he was pulling the plug on his Drive Shack plans at the old T-P headquarters site, saying that he couldn’t hold Drive Shack to the lease given the circumstances of the TopGolf contract. “Holding their feet to the fire over the lease wouldn’t be right. … They’ve been duped by the leadership (of the Convention Center), and it’s not fair, it’s not right and I can’t make them do something I don’t believe in,” he said.

Which was enough of a black eye in and of itself, and then on Tuesday the other shoe dropped – which was that Gov. John Bel Edwards said that the state – meaning the Convention Center board – was going to pull out of the TopGolf plans because the whole thing was “problematic.”

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