Louisiana Assessments Begin Post-Hurricane Gustav

Developers and brokers have begun to assess damages done during Hurricane Gustav at the beginning of the week in the Gulf Coast area.  According to a GlobeSt.com article, developers began looking at completed or under-construction assets more than 24 hours after Gustav came ashore in Houma -- and are already predicting that damages will surpass $2 billion.  David Trusty, director of commercial real estate for Gully, Phelps McKey Real Estate in Baton Rouge, says the majority of the city is still without power and many mature trees were downed in the region. "We had 94 mph gusts coming through here and sustained winds in the low 70s, which lasted for two hours.  You can imagine the impact on the city."

New Orleans seems to have escaped Gustav's wrath. "We saw a lot of damage, a lot of trees down," says Entergy's Dennis Dawsey, vice president of distribution operations, "but not nearly the type of physical damage in New Orleans that we saw in Katrina. The winds that did come in were significant, not catastrophic."   In a press release yesterday, Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment Inc.'s management team says its Boomtown New Orleans property in the West Bank neighborhood and the L'Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles, LA, both sustained minor damage and should reopen later this week.

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