The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Monday was granted a two-year extension on city permits it would need to revive the Topgolf project long planned for the River District neighborhood, extending the saga of the $50 million golf-entertainment complex less than two months after developers said the project had been scuttled.
The zoning variances, which were originally passed in 2023, allowed Topgolf to move a part of Melpomene Street and to build 165-feet poles and netting to enclose its driving ranges. They were due to expire later this month but will now run until August 2027, following the Board of Zoning Adjustments’ four-to-one vote in favor of the extension.
At Monday’s BZA meeting, the Convention Center’s representative, Zack Smith, said the extension was needed to give time for lawsuits over the project to be resolved. He suggested — despite statements from the developers in June indicating that they were pursuing a different project for the land — that Topgolf was still coming.
“The development team is looking forward to starting construction as soon as possible,” once those lawsuits are resolved, Smith told the board.
The move confused and angered some residents who live near the proposed project site in the Lower Garden District and who have long opposed it. They noted that the consortium working in partnership with the Convention Center, the River District Neighborhood Investors, said in June that Topgolf wouldn’t be built on that site and that they were pursuing a different project there.
The 3.5-acre site is on Tchoupitoulas Street, between Euterpe and Melpomene streets, and abuts The Saulet apartment complex.
“We are very disappointed in this outcome,” said Suzy Lamore, who is on the board of the Lower Garden District Association, a neighborhood organization representing 165 residents. The association has been among the most active opponents of the Topgolf project, which they have argued was forced through without going through the normal approvals required for developments.
The residents have said they were promised early on that the site would have apartment units and retail, including a grocery store, but that it was changed to a Topgolf and given special zoning privileges later without proper neighborhood consultation.
“We suspect that we’ve been lied to from the start and there’s never been transparency from the city related to this site,” Lamore added.
The six-year effort to build a Topgolf in the River District has drawn controversy since it began. The original deal was quietly slipped into a Convention Center board meeting agenda and sparked a rebuke from then Gov. John Bel Edwards shortly after. It resulted in developer Joe Jaeger, a former partner of the Convention Center in developing its upriver acreage, to pull out of the partnership because it would compete with his own driving range concept.
Local residents have filed several lawsuits challenging the validity of the approval process, two of which are still active. Earlier this year, the rival Five-O-Fore golf-entertainment complex — the successor to Jaeger’s project — opened three miles away on Howard Avenue.
Legal moves
It isn’t clear if the Convention Center has firm plans to follow through with the Topgolf project or is merely fulfilling legal obligations.
The Convention Center was a party to a deal covered by a “side agreement” in 2023 that obligated it to step in as the direct landlord on the Topgolf deal if RDNI terminated its lease, according to a copy of that agreement obtained by The Times-Picayune. It was signed by the former Convention Center board chair Jerry Reyes.
On Monday, a spokesperson for RDNI said they still are expecting to close a deal with a different tenant for that parcel of land. Louis Lauricella, the developer leading the consortium, said in June that a new tenant “is ready to go” on the Topgolf site, and would be announced in the next week.
“They continue to pursue their options on parcel 1A (the Topgolf site), that hasn’t changed,” said spokesperson Amy Boyle Collins. She said RDNI is close to signing a letter of intent with “a promising tenant” but said they had no comment about any other deals that may be in place.
Topgolf said in an emailed statement that the company remains “active with RDNI and MCCNO (the Convention Center) to potentially restructure the lease agreement.”
They still plan to “bring the Topgolf experience to New Orleans” but declined to respond to further questions. Neither the Convention Center’s acting chief executive, Alita Caparotta, nor the chair of its oversight board, Russell Allen, responded to multiple requests for comment.
New tenant
Two sources who have been directly involved in discussions about plans for the Topgolf project said the Convention Center may be pursuing the variances in an effort to limit its legal liability as opposed to again pursuing the Topgolf project, which was due to start construction more than two years ago.
“The Convention Center is trying to do everything they can to keep this within the four corners of the original legal agreement,” said one official who has been in discussions on the project but wasn’t authorized to be quoted. “But they’re not naive enough to think that anything good would happen on this if they try to forge their own path going forward.”
Another official who wasn’t authorized to be quoted said RDNI is close to signing PopStroke, a chain of upscale, tech-infused miniature golf entertainment venues, combining Tiger Woods-designed putting courses with a restaurant, bar and outdoor gaming environment.
Matthew Ryan, a Lower Garden District resident who has led three of the lawsuits against the project, said Monday that he and other residents are disappointed that public officials, including the Convention Center leadership and City Council member Lesli Harris, whose district covers the River District, haven’t been clear about plans for the site.
“We’ve been asking everyone we could talk to but nobody would give us a straight answer,” he said.
Harris didn’t respond to a request for comment.