It’s always fun to drop in at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. They still have the blow-up poster of when we put them on the cover, so it makes us feel special! Also,

there’s always something interesting or unusual being painted. And while it’s not the easiest job in the world,

if you’re a painter at a facility this big, there’s defi-

nitely the security of knowing there will always be something to do.

Anthony Edgerson was on staff when we first started covering the facility in 2009, and he’s now the Building Maintenance Foreman, Operations Department. Better yet, he’s got his own office with certifications, family photos, and of course that Paint Contractor cover. For a while, he said, his new job took him away from actual painting, but while he still spends a lot of time on the phone and filling out reports, he’s glad to be back behind a roller.

And there was a lot of rolling to be done. Our first article about the center discussed an exterior repaint, at that time they put up a whole new color scheme, sort of

Rolling by the River

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By jerry raBushka, editor

Painting the outside of the building gives everyone a lift. Photos this page courtesy of the Convention Center.

A visit to the paint department at the New Orleans Convention Center

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Rolling by the Rivera “new start” after Hurricane Katrina. This time, it was a bit of “keeping up.” Across from the back side of the center, a large outlet mall called Riverwalk New Orleans was just finishing up $70 million renovation; final paint-ing was going on at the time of our visit in mid-May. The grand re-opening took place on May 22, and that event plus the shopping after would bring a lot of people right up to the back side of the Convention Center.

Time to spruce up, said Anthony. You don’t want the outlet mall shoppers to see a faded façade! And, this being downtown, there was lots of traffic, so spraying was out

of the question. Time to break out the rollers. Since it’s huge building, Edgerson notes, you don’t want to paint the whole thing at once. For this phase, they used 38 Gallons of Sherwin Williams Sher-Cryl HPA in a color called “NOCC Green,” a color customized for the facility. Phase one of the operation to cover the “over the glass” work only.

Over the glass means it’s up pretty high—the sur-faces above the windows. Edgerson, along with painters Edward Franklin and Ricky Smith, did the work up in the air while Keelan Sneed was their ground safety man. An important part of safety here was keeping traffic

L to R: Anthony Edgerson, Keelan Sneed, Ricky

Smith, and Edward Franklin.

A visit to the paint department at the New Orleans Convention Center

Above and left: before and after shots of paint-ing a lift. In a facility of this size something always needs to be painted. Crew members gain experience working on all types of surfaces and environ-ments.

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from speeding by and endangering the workers.“We had a safety light with an arrow pointing to use the other lane while

the painters were on the lift—about 50 feet in the air with safety harness,” Edgerson explained. And it’s New Orleans, so it gets hot often, and fast. That means early to rise. “We painted from 5:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. so we could beat the morning traffic and the heat of the day,” he said. “We had some rain days as well as the hot ones, but everything went well. This is my meaning of the word TEAM—Together Everyone Achieves More.”

After this, it’s time to go blue! “We will start on the blue stripe that’s on the front of the building next,” he said.

Inside, there were several proj-ects going on, such as putting black paint on the ceiling in the training rooms—this was done to make the top of the room “disap-pear” so trainees could concentrate on the training program. Edgerson takes a lot of photos, some of which you see here—it’s great for public-ity and for articles like this, plus it shows his boss what he’s been doing. We thank the convention center for letting us in behind the scenes. mccno.com tpc

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Top: We met and profiled painter Elaine Thompson back in 2012. She had since retired, but she can’t seem to put down a brush, and now works part time. Here she’s painting a green room for the New Orleans Theater, a 4,000 seat facility at the Center which features big name events and world-class entertainers. Each green room is painted a dif-ferent, but relaxing color. Note that even a painter with 40 years’ experi-ence is taking time to tape!

Above: The Center is producing its own trade shows; this white picket fence was painted as part of a “farm to table” exhibit.

Left: Anthony Edgerson, building maintenance foreman, in his office.Top right: Another view of exterior painting. Below: stencils are painted all over the facility; we'll take the advice and stop here too.