Cyrille Neville will perform at groundbreaking ceremonies for the Dew Drop Inn Hotel and Lounge on Thursday, July 7, at 4 p.m. Developers will commence the restoration of the historic music venue and hotel that once hosted such icons as Ray Charles and Little Richard, along with local legends like Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas. The property will soon be a newly-renovated live music venue and 17-room boutique hotel in New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood with a resort-style pool accessible by memberships and daily passes.

The ceremony will include remarks by Mayor LaToya Cantrell, State Representative Tanner Magee who serves as Speaker Pro Tempore and others to an audience of community leaders and members and project stakeholders, complemented by musical performances. The long-abandoned property, which operated from the late 1930s through the late 1960s as a popular hotel and performance space is located at 2836 LaSalle Street.

“The Dew Drop Inn means so much to our city and our culture,” said Curtis Doucette, Jr., developer of the project. “We are looking forward to celebrating the history and continuing the legacy! It’s been a long time coming and I couldn’t be more excited that this is actually, finally happening.” 

The hotel and nightclub project is separate from plans to build a museum devoted to New Orleans’ role in the emergence of R&B and rock music under the auspices of the Louisiana State Museum. The Louisiana legislature allocated $1 million to construct a new museum in the vicinity of the Dew Drop.

The funding bill, HB 899, has this to say about the project:  “The museum shall be a historical, cultural, scientific, and technological educational institution whose primary purpose shall be to research, collect, preserve, and present, as an educational resource, the music, recordings, pictures, documents, artifacts, objects of art, and the like that reflect the social, cultural, and economic history of rock and roll music in the state of Louisiana and in the Orleans Parish area in particular.”