Repurposed riverboat with music venue headed to New Orleans
By: CityBusiness staff reports November 2, 2017

After more than 20 years in Indiana, the Tropicana Riverboat is headed south to call New Orleans home.

The riverboat has been sitting along the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Evansville, Indiana, since 1995. It will be turned into a music and entertainment venue that can either dock in New Orleans or cruise the Mississippi River.

The boat will also have a new name – Riverboat Louis Armstrong – once it undergoes renovations in Morgan City, according to a news release.

At 310 feet long, 70 feet wide and four decks high, it will be the largest riverboat in the region, the news release said. The boat is projected to open for business in mid-2018.

It was built by Jeffboat in Jeffersonville, Indiana and has been a casino gaming vessel since 1995.

Hospitality Enterprises New Orleans, which owns and operates the Paddlewheeler Creole Queen, plans to put it where the Paddlewheeler currently docks at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside.

“Jazzing on the river is what we want to recapture on the Mississippi River in New Orleans,” Warren Reuther Jr., the company’s president and CEO, said in a news release.

Plans call for the vessel to offer customers music of all genres. Memorabilia related to Armstrong will be located on the boat’s third level.

The riverboat is licensed to accommodate 3,000 passengers and will feature local and national musicians, according to the news release.

Its 98-foot smokestacks are too high to allow it to clear bridges on its way to Morgan City, so they are being removed in Evansville before making the journey, it said.