A long-rundown highway in Metairie is showing signs of new life thanks to the leveling of some closed businesses and a cluster of planned developments that includes a new Chick-fil-A and a strip mall.
For more than 30 years, from its opening in the 1930s until the 1960s, Airline Highway functioned as the main drag of commerce and commuters on the east bank of Jefferson Parish.
The completion of Interstate 10 siphoned away traffic, leaving Airline little more than what a 1994 Times-Picayune article called a “gantlet of working-class barrooms, dingy diners, tawdry signs and motels that rent rooms by the hour.”
It evolved in bits and pieces here and there, but it largely resisted the image makeovers encouraged by civic leaders and by a name change to Airline Drive, and it failed to deliver on predictions of major redevelopment beyond the LaSalle Tract, where the New Orleans Saints headquarters, a minor league baseball stadium, the Jefferson Performing Arts Center and a park opened beginning in 1996.
What's new
In the past few months, however, Airline has shown some signs of new life — at least in the drab, half-mile stretch between Cleary and Severn avenues. Among the changes:
- The convenience store at 3501 Airline was razed to make way for a Chick-fil-A restaurant, now under construction.
- Businessman Shane Guidry bought and pulled down the Texas Motel at 3520 Airline.
- A $2.1 million strip mall is being built at 3730 Airline, formerly the site of a used car lot and tire shop that fronted Robertson Street.
- Cajun Daiquiris opened at 3801 Airline, previously the site of a car wash.
- Appyx Technologies Inc. vacated the office and warehouse building at 3833 Airline, and the property was sold Dec. 15.
These might not qualify as big-time economic development, but they could serve to freshen the roadside appearance, much as the 1100-1300 blocks, 3900 and 5800-6600 blocks of Airline were transformed beginning in the late 1990s.
Airline between Cleary and Severn carries an average of 35,000 vehicles a day, according to the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, and two stakeholders cite Chick-fil-A and its reputation for generating traffic as a potential catalyst for recasting more nearby properties.
“That really has a domino effect,” said Cameron Lombardo, a real estate broker with a client who owns part of the long, narrow commercial strip on the south side of Airline.
Lombardo said he recently brokered the sale of property at Shrewsbury Road and Robertson Street, a block south of Airline, to a company that builds Class A office and warehouse properties.
Immediately upriver, facing Airline, is the former site of the Texas Motel. In May, Guidry said he planned to build a three-story office building there and to relocate his family-owned Harvey Gulf International Marine Inc. from the Hancock Whitney Center in New Orleans’ Central Business District. He later dropped that plan and mused of building a pickleball complex at 3520 Airline, but the vacant lot is now for sale at $3 million.
The listing agent, Matt Pittman, said Guidry will sell "if it makes business sense," but added: "I don't think he's taking anything off the table that he might do himself."
A $2.1 million strip mall being built at 3730 Airline Drive in Metairie is seen in an artist's rendering released Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023.
Two blocks upriver stood Blest Auto Sales and, next door to it before 2018, Hubcap Heaven. Both have since been leveled, and the landowner, Bal Mannino, is building a 6,385-square-foot strip mall for one to five tenants, likely retail or professional.
“It’s a generic building, but it’s going to be nice,” Mannino said.
At 3833 Airline, Appyx Technologies, a document storage and management company, was acquired in July by Vital Records Control Inc. and moved to the national company's local site in Algiers.
Vehicles travel on Airline Drive near Severn Avenue in Metairie on Saturday, Dec. 30, 2023.
The Appyx property on Airline — 2,500 square feet of office space and about 1,500 square feet of warehouse space — sold Dec. 15 for $735,000 to a corporation affiliated with Barto Appliance, 1400 Airline, which plans to use it as a retail showroom, Barto owner Bret Gervais said.
The half-mile of Airline between Cleary and Severn, Lombardo said, might represent the next wave of commerce moving upriver from the other side of Causeway Boulevard, around the Rouse’s shopping center at 2701 Airline: “I think the development close to Rouses is starting to push our way.”