KENNER, La. — Hurricane Ida impacted southeast Louisiana greatly. Many people have lost homes, and some have lost businesses. City officials in Kenner lost their entire administration building.
But the city government has turned to a creative solution to get the everyday work of bureaucracy done.
"Now we want you to come inside," Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn said.
City staff came up with a plan to temporary house city hall inside the Macy's Building at the Esplanade Mall in Kenner since it is not in operation.
"Government never stopped. We had a trailer that we were working out of .... we were on the street serving constituents in this parking lot," Zahn said.
City officials say code enforcement has a one location on the first floor. Council chambers, courts and councilmembers' offices share one side of the building.
"We started with 3 thousand square feet, then 10 thousand at this point we are still less than 50 percent of the first floor of Macy's, so we're about including the housing units about 40 thousand square feet," Deborah Foshee, Kenner's Chief Administrative Officer, said.
Some of the buildings at Kenner City Hall are completely uninhabitable.
City staff said to have the Macy's space available is convenient for folks.
"We lost between buildings A, B, C, the recreation administrative and programing administrative areas we lost 72 thousand square feet of usable space, we're doing the best we can to provide an outlet to continue to provide city services," Foshee said.
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