After more than 50 years in New Orleans East, the National Finance Center has signed a lease to move its local operations to The Beach at UNO, a research and technology park next to the University of New Orleans in Gentilly.
The announcement ends a seven-year search for a permanent home for roughly 600 of the center’s local employees after a tornado damaged the federal agency’s longtime office at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East.
When asked about the deal, Rebecca Conwell, who leads the nonprofit that runs the research park, confirmed that the lease was signed but declined to discuss details. NFC representatives also declined to comment, but employees were notified about the news via email this week.
“We are thrilled to give the National Finance Center a home,” Conwell said. “They will be a great addition to The Beach community.”
The NFC, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, manages payroll for federal government employees nationwide. It has leased space at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility since 1973 along with offices in several other states.
At one time employing more than 1,000 people locally, the center has provided a decades-long economic boost to a part of the city that has needed it, and it’s been protected by local and federal elected officials as the prize that it is.
A tornado in February 2017 brought down an exterior wall and blew out windows at the building that housed the NSC on Michoud’s campus. Since 2018, the agency’s personnel have been working out of temporary buildings on the site.
Now, they will move into 80,000 square feet on four floors of the Information and Technology Center 2 building at The Beach, a research park operated by the UNO Research & Technology Foundation. The 30-acre, six-building campus is home to 41 tech and startup companies.
The NFC’s new office space was occupied until early 2024 by the U.S. Navy, which has reduced the size of its operations on campus but still has more than 500 personnel and contractors on site.
The lease is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2025, but Mike Siegel of Corporate Realty, the property manager for The Beach, said personnel may move to the site sooner.
“One of the beauties of the space is it is in exceptionally good condition,” he said. “They can move in with little to no improvements.”
The Beach competed for the tenant after the General Services Agency, which manages building leasing for other federal agencies, released a request for lease proposals this summer.
“They’ve been working out of trailers for several years,” Siegel said. “Now they’re moving into Class A office space.”
Slow process
In the months after the 2017 tornado, about a quarter of the center’s employees worked on a rotating basis out of offices near Shreveport. Others worked remotely for most of a year.
A campus of 14 modular buildings was completed in the summer of 2018, but two years later a USDA spokesperson said the prefab structures had already developed problems with leaks and mold.
Reports circulated in 2019 that USDA officials were considering moving the operation out of New Orleans altogether. That raised alarm bells among elected officials and economic development champions, who lobbied to keep it.
Over the years, federal and local officials in both parties — including Republican congressmen Steve Scalise, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, and former Democratic congressman Cedric Richmond — have worked to keep the NFC in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina caused a temporary shutdown of the office, it became common for Louisiana’s delegation to insert language in appropriations bills that required congressional committee approval to make any moves.
In 2019, the GSA was reported to have identified three possible locations for a permanent home for the center, but news that a former mall in Slidell was under consideration caused an outcry from New Orleans politicians and derailed the process.
Tornado damage to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in February, 2017.
Elected officials said they feared a move to the suburbs could be a prelude to a move out of state. There was justification for their concern: In 2019, the USDA moved 550 employees from an office in Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, Missouri, in a cost-cutting move.
As recently as 2020, Richmond, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and NASA all supported a plan to build a new home for the finance center at Michoud. Greater New Orleans Inc., the city’s regional economic development nonprofit, also was on board with that plan.
USDA officials disagreed, saying that a new building would be expensive and finding the money could be a slow process. They preferred a plan to lease existing office space somewhere “in the New Orleans region,” but not necessarily New Orleans East.
In early 2020, USDA officials said that they had no idea how long it would take to find, lease and refurbish a space.
The answer turned out to be close to another five years.
Siegel said the finance center’s leaders are enthusiastic about moving to their new home on the site of the former Pontchartrain Beach amusement park.
“It’s great for the city that this large employer is going to stay here,” Siegel said. “It’s great for The Beach, the tenant and the neighborhood. When they come in, the campus will be over 90% leased with great tenants, including the Navy, which has been here for more than two decades. It’s already vibrant but this will add another 600 people.”
The NFC has offices in New Orleans, Denver and Washington, D.C. It has backup facilities in St. Louis and Shreveport.
It provides financial, administrative and human resources support to the Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, and Department of Treasury.
Representatives from NASA and New Orleans City Councilmember Oliver Thomas, whose district includes the 832-acre industrial complex, did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment.