Top Golf out, Drive shack in @ old T.P. building?
It's a terrible spot for anything. I can't for the life of me imagine why the TP set up shop there, other than maybe it was a decent space for presses and delivery trucks.
When my father arrived in this country from Cuba his first job was as a paper boy for the TP, as he grew he never left and my brothers and I all had an opportunity to work with him. Getting up at 2am to get the papers, go to the dock, wait for an hour, pull up to the dock, my dad in the truck pulling the conveyor into the truck, I was on the dock pushing our bundles to the conveyor so he could stack them in the back of the truck 6ft high. Once our papers were loaded we would go to the little glass booth with our paper manifesting how many papers we received that day. I can still smell that place. The ink, the papers, the machinery, the old guys smoking black n milds (or whatever they could bum off of someone).
Head out to deliver the papers, run across drunk College kids on Maple St., professional drinkers at Snake n Jakes Christmas Bar, run across dangerous people in Pigeon town at 3 am, run across dangerous people in the Garden District at 4am, meet coffee shop owners, and the managers of Winn Dixie and Canal Villerie as well as K&B to give them their papers. Putting papers in newspaper machines on our route, knocking off cans and cups of beers that were sitting on the vending machines. Tapping the drunks who were sleeping on the machines so that they would move. Passing cemeteries in the middle of the night, and moving our machines back into place but not so much that it woke the neighbors. Stopping to put papers in the vending machine at PJ’s coffee on Tulane’s campus at 6am and being greated by Ron Forman, James Carville, Moon and Mitch (though not all at the same time).
I learned a lot working with my father for those few years. I learned that I never wanted to do for a living what he did (which is why he took all of us). I learned how big and beautiful New Orleans truly is. I learned a great deal of history, and world events, and about life from a man who barely had a high school education and never stepped foot in a college classroom because he came here from Cuba by himself, and didn’t have anyone supporting him financially or otherwise. I consider myself extremely lucky to have worked that job.
As to why TP picked that location, if you notice the structure is in Howard Ave. Howard Avenue spans from around Xavier all the way down to the the Warehouse district. When the TP purchased that property the I10 wasn’t there. It just so happened that the I10 cut right through Howard Ave. If the I-0 doesn’t do that then the TP has quick and easy access to the CBD and all the businesses in the area. But unfortunately due to poor foresight they caught a bad break, and the wholesalers (guys like my dad) and company drivers (the guys who drove the big trucks) had to re-route and find different ways to get to their spots. But yeah, originally that spot was going to be a perfect location for their needs, but for progress.