The Celebration Must Go On... Mardi Gras During COVID 19

 St.Tammany is keeping Mardi Gras 2021 alive this year in a special kind of way. Two Northshore krewes spread the "house float" idea that a New Orleans resident originated. Megan Boudreaux, an insurance agent in New Orleans, came up with the idea to keep Mardi Gras going through decorating her house as a float. She posted on social media to share her idea with a few friends and the idea spread from local New Orleans up to the Northshore and now has made its way to parts of Alabama and Mississippi.

“Everyone loved the idea and wanted to jump in to make their own house floats,” she said. “A shop owner decided to call her theme Yardi Gras, and it just exploded from there.”

The idea has been making its way through neighbors and friends who have been decorating their homes and office buildings to resemble floats. Many residents are also decorating their yards calling it Yardi Gras and for animal lovers, Mardi Paws is decorating doghouses and will have an animal costume competition.

Covington residence Gina and Buddy Campo decided to decorate their house as a part of the "Northshore House Floats" and Covington-centric "Rollin' on the Three Rivers" krewes. The Northshore House Floats theme is special vacation spots so the Campo's decked their home with a Jamaican flare calling it "Jamaican Me Crazy."

To keep with their Jamaican theme, they created a thatched roof dog hut in honor of their three doodles Bourré, Dani and Gabbie Roux. The three were dressed up and photographed for the Mardi Paws' Mardi Gras Costume Competition.

The community wants to lift Carnival spirits and is doing a great job of keep Mardi Gras alive this year.

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Companies Choose the Northshore For New Headquarters

Two major companies have announced plans to locate headquarters on the Northshore. Ampirical Solutions and Medline are slated to build two new headquarters in the area.

Ampirical Solutions LLC based out of Mandeville is an electrical infrastructure firm that specializes

in design and construction of electrical substations and switchyards, protective relays and controls, transmission lines, distributions lines and related infrastructure. Customers include investor-owned utilities, municipalities, industrial plants, electrical cooperatives and independent power producers.

The company wants to take the existing St. Tammany Parish locations and combine them into the new 78,000-square foot corporate headquarters on a 5.5-acre site. The new building, located near Covington, will create 400 direct jobs over the next 10 years. The average salary will be more than $85,000 and will include the existing 120 current Ampirical employees. Indirect jobs are expected to be around 350 construction jobs that will result in a $20 million capital investment. The project is projected to be completed by the end of 2020 and would not be taking place without the help from the Louisiana Economic Development, Greater New Orleans Inc. and St. Tammany Corporation.

Medline Industries is the largest privately held company that is both a manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies and clinical programs. The company, based out of Illinois, wants to build a medical distribution center near Covington. The new center will manage packaging and shipment of all medical supplies ordered by the individual health care providers of the Southeast U.S. region, including items such as exam and surgical gloves, face masks, isolation gowns, reusable textiles, incontinence products, electrosurgical products and housekeeping supplies, according to the Louisiana Economic Development press release.

The 53-million dollar distribution center will be located north of I-12 and LA 21. The new building will replace the existing distribution center between Covington and Goodbee. The 800,000 square foot facility will create over 460 new jobs and retain the existing 36 jobs.

“As a member of the Louisiana community for more than a decade, we are very pleased to continue to grow as an employer and investor in the state,” said Bill Abington, executive vice president of global operations for Medline. “With health care growing so rapidly in the region, the location is ideal for easy access to health care providers while also letting us maintain and grow our current team. We are grateful to the state, Louisiana Economic Development and officials in St. Tammany Parish who have recognized the potential of the project and worked to bring it to fruition.”


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