A little over two years after purchasing legendary New Orleans entertainer Chris Owens’ Bourbon Street Nightclub, Gayle Benson has signed a contract with a new tenant for the property and a multimillion-dollar renovation is underway.
Benson, who owns the Saints and Pelicans, has not yet announced who the new tenant will be, but a spokesman for the Benson organization confirmed that a lease has been signed and said they are “very excited.”
“We are the only tenant who has agreed to invest millions of dollars into this property,” Benson spokesman Greg Bensel said. “It will be a major renovation, but in line with Mrs. Benson’s real estate strategy, this new tenant will bring the property back into commercial activity and impact economic development.”
Bensel said details of the project are still being developed, but the organization hopes to announce them by the end of the year.
Interior demolition
Benson, a longtime friend of Owens’, purchased the property at 500-510 Bourbon in August 2022, four months after Owens died at age 89. At the time, Benson said he planned to renovate the building and rent it out.
“I’m going to do something that will move the French Quarter in a positive direction, which is what (Owens) has always tried to do,” Benson said at the time.
The 20,000-square-foot building includes a former nightclub, three commercial spaces on the first floor, Owens’ former two-story apartment building and several small residential units on the second and third floors that are now vacant.
Contractors began construction on the building earlier this summer, according to documents filed with City Hall.
New Orleans-based Reeves Construction said in the demolition permit that it received permission to perform internal demolition of the building’s existing mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems “prior to performing renovation work under a separate permit in the future.”
Contractors have also obtained permission to install construction dumpsters and turn on electricity to the building, but no plans or permits have been submitted to show the identity or plans of the new occupants.
A spokesman for Mr. Reeves declined to comment, as did Corporate Realty, a commercial real estate company owned by Mr. Benson.
French Quarter Legends
Owens has been a Bourbon Street legend for more than 50 years. The leggy Latin-style dancer got her start in the French Quarter in 1956 when auto mogul Sol Owens recruited her to star in his then-new French Quarter dance joint at the corner of Bourbon and St. Louis Streets. Owens was 23 years old at the time.
Throughout her life, she stressed that while she had become the brightest star in the titillating comics world, she remained, as she put it in a 1974 interview with The Times-Picayune, “the only legitimate thing not to do naked.”
Before COVID-19 quarantine measures banned public gatherings, Owens was a regular performer at his own club, the French Quarter Festival and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.