Belle Chasse Marine Transportation, a family-run operator that has grown into a major force in Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico marine logistics, has purchased an office building in Metairie that will serve as the company’s corporate headquarters.
The firm, now led by the second generation of the Konrad family, paid $9.3 million for the three-story Latter Center West building at 2800 Veterans Blvd., according to parish land records. The building, which covers about 100,000 square feet, will allow the company to bring together its 24 head office personnel under one roof for the first time.
The property was sold by SHRLA LLC, an Alpharetta, Georgia–based institutional real estate owner, in a transaction brokered by NAI Rampart. The purchase marks a rare, sizable owner-occupant sale in the Metairie office market, where post-pandemic shifts have drawn many tenants away from downtown New Orleans high-rises and toward lower-density, suburban buildings along Veterans Memorial Boulevard.
A second-generation expansion
BCMT was acquired at auction in 1971 by Gordon Konrad, a lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who built the business into one of the region’s most significant marine transport firms before his death in 2017 at age 76. Today, BCMT is run by his sons Rob, Shawn and Ian Konrad…