NEW ORLEANS -- The wrecking ball will clear the way for golf balls at the site of the old Times-Picayune plant along the Pontchartrain Expressway.
Officials on Tuesday afternoon will officially announce plans to build a Drive Shack location where the newspaper’s former home now stands at 3800 Howard Ave. Drive Shack is a family-oriented driving range.
Details about the project are set to be announced at 1 p.m.
The former Picayune building has sat vacant since the newspaper began to move out its operations in 2012. The building, which opened in 1967, was closed and sold in 2015 when the Times-Picayune began to be printed at its sister paper, The Mobile Press-Register.
A group of local businessmen, including developer Joseph Jaeger Jr. and float builder Barry Kern, purchased the building for $3.5 million in 2016.
Since then the building has been used as a setting for several films and TV shows, including “NCIS: New Orleans.”
An earlier plan to build a Top Golf location, a competitor to Drive Shack, fell through.
The prospect of demolition has also raised concern among some preservationists because of three-story murals in the building’s lobby called “Symbols of Communications,” done by artist Enrique Alferez.
The building’s owners have vowed to save those murals.