Shuttered Eiffel Society building hits the market for lease
By: Andrew Valenti, Reporter December 10, 2020
One of the more unique-looking buildings on St. Charles Avenue is looking for a new tenant.
Photo courtesy SVN | Urban Properties
The structure that housed the former Eiffel Society, located across from the Pontchartrain Hotel in the Lower Garden District, is up for lease seven months following the special events venue’s closure. The owners, listed in public records as Mesa, LLC, are asking $13,500 per month, according to a flyer from the listing brokerage, SVN | Urban Properties.
The property has approximately 12,500 square feet of space with 30 on-site parking spots, the flyer said. A walkway leads to the raised polygonal glass and metal structure that fronts St. Charles Avenue.
The building also has a unique history, built from 11,062 pieces of a restaurant that was originally housed in the Eiffel Tower in Paris, according to the Eiffel Society website. The restaurant, built in the 1930s, was deconstructed in 1981 after engineers inspecting the 1,000-foot structure determined that the nearly century-old tower was too weak to continue to support it, according to the flyer. Local businessman McDonald Stevens bought the dismantled restaurant and shipped the remains to New Orleans. Construction wrapped up on the structure in 1986.
SVN | Urban Properties director Eugene Schmitt said there are no “preconceived notions” on what the future holds for the property, as the zoning, MU-1, allows for a range of residential and commercial uses. He said the facility shuttered its doors in May.
Schmitt feels there is a natural synergy of the former event space, with the Pontchartrain Hotel across the street and other hotels along St. Charles and the surrounding area.
“The possibilities are endless,” he said.
According to a New York Times article from 1986, Stevens bought the remains of the Eiffel Tower restaurant for $525,000 in 1983 and construction began in New Orleans the following year. Stevens died a few months later, and construction stopped while his business partners, John Onorio and Daniel Bonnot, sought new financing. Construction resumed in 1985, and the property opened as Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel in 1986.
”We tried to put the old restaurant in a setting that would be sympathetic to the original, with the same kinds of shadows and same kind of play with light. We elevated it 16 feet off the ground so you have to walk up to it or take the elevator,” project architect Stephen Bingler told the New York Times.
The restaurant closed in 1989 and would later become an events facility known as the Red Room and Cricket Club before becoming Eiffel Society in 2010.
The Secretary of State’s Office lists the officers of Mesa, LLC as S. Ann Mahorner and Elizabeth Landis. Tim Thompson of SVN | Urban Properties is the listing agent for the property.
It has been a rough go of it for the tourism and hospitality industry, as the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the breaks on large gatherings and leisure and business travel this year. The closing of Eiffel Society is another in a long list of New Orleans businesses to feel the effects of the viral outbreak and its financial fallout.
Louisiana Restaurant Association officials have projected as much as 30% to 40% of New Orleans-area restaurants would be lost. K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen permanently shut its doors earlier this year after operating in the French Quarter since 1979. It is not the only local restaurant to make that decision – Semolina in Metairie and Cake Café, a bakery in the Marigny, closed in June. The future remains murky for others, including Liuzza’s Restaurant & Bar, a mainstay in the Mid-City dining scene, which went on the market in November for the first time since opening in 1947. The asking price for the iconic neighborhood restaurant is $2.4 million.
