Chevron....many think ugh! an oil company with high prices at the gas pumps and high profits. This Chevron is a company with heart who cares about their employees. Who helped their employees when Katrina ravaged their city. Who kept their employees employed, fed and housed after Katrina. A company who went beyond what an employer has to do. An employer who is moving back to New Orleans to help get the lady back on her feet.
'Camp Chevron' exits Carencro
Guests brought welcome business boom
Kayla Gagnet
kgagnet@theadvertiser.com
CARENCRO - The roughly 150 residents of "Camp Chevron," a makeshift city-within- a-city for Chevron employees at the former Evangeline Downs race track, are going home to New Orleans.
Some already have headed back to what's left of their flood- damaged homes; others still are packing up their belongings from the mobile homes where they've lived for the past several months.
Next week, Chevron will reopen its New Orleans office that was damaged in Hurricane Katrina, inviting back the hundreds of employees who were scattered to other cities home to Chevron offices.
They'll leave behind a city and a parish happy to help and grateful for the temporary economic boom.
Gregg Gothreaux, president of the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, said an estimated 60 businesses have relocated to Lafayette after the hurricanes, and about 20 of those are oil and gas companies.
"(Camp Chevron) may be a temporary boost, but it's a wonderful boost to the economy that we appreciate," Gothreaux said.
For five months, 45-year-old Carolyn Jones, a financial analyst for Chevron, shared a three-bedroom trailer with her brother, 42-year-old Jeff Jones, an information technology project manager.
They both lived in Thibodaux, and although their homes were not damaged, they had no jobs in New Orleans. So, they moved into one of the 60 mobile homes lined up in the Evangeline Downs parking lot, dubbed "Camp Chevron," and have been working at Chevron's Lafayette office.
On Monday, the siblings will return to work in New Orleans.
"I'm excited to go back," Carolyn Jones said, "but I'm going to miss the people here. ... If something good came out of the storm - and there wasn't much - it was that we got to meet these Lafayette people."
Chevron employees like Jones spent money in Lafayette, frequently eating at area restaurants like Prejean's and Paul's Pirogue.
"It's been good for us," Carencro Mayor Glenn Brasseaux said. "I'm sure some of them have used local drug stores, gone shopping in local places."
Jeff Jones and his wife were some of them. Jones' wife would come to Lafayette on weekends, especially during the Christmas season, to do some shopping.
And, Carencro police officers, along with Scott officers and Lafayette Parish sheriff's deputies, worked hours and hours of well-paid overtime doing security for the facility, said Chevron spokesman Matt Carmichael.
Camp Chevron is nearly a self-sustaining community, complete with a mess hall serving three meals daily, two recreation rooms with pool tables and exercise equipment, a laundry trailer and a computer lab. A lighted field at the back of the camp is used for playing soccer and walking dogs.
All the trailers came fully equipped with furniture, much of which will now be donated to the Chevron employees who lost everything, Carmichael said.
"Pots, pans, dishes, silverware - everything you needed to get your life started over again," Carmichael said.
The mobile homes will also be made available to employees with no home to return to in New Orleans, and the rest will be donated, Carmichael said.
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Camp Chevron closing...company headed home to New Orleans
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