Lee’s, located on W Thomas St. in Downtown Hammond, caught fire earlier this year. Russell Tallo Jr. along with his family have been working for months on bringing Lee’s back. The Tallo’s have been trying to keep the heart of the restaurant while also updating the building to the 2016 codes including insulating the walls and moving the bathrooms inside.
Morgan Ledet/The Lion's Roar

Lee’s Drive In has been a part of Hammond since 1996. It began as a restaurant called Ganus’s in 1963 and has become a well-known restaurant in downtown Hammond. Lee’s caught fire earlier this year, but plans to reopen are now underway with the official opening being within the next couple of months.

“My uncle has said about 45 days,” said co-owner Russell Tallo Jr. “That is an estimation, so we’re hoping that 45 days is where we are gonna be.”

Many local residents have been questioning when Lee’s will reopen ever since the fire, but Russell Tallo Jr. and his family were also curious as to when they could begin to plan for the construction.

“We don’t know what to do on a daily basis either,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “We’re here. Me and my dad ran it, Russell Tallo Sr. Six days a week we were here, every day, every day, every day, then all of a sudden it’s like what do you do? Everybody has something to do, so I had sat down and learned what the plans were so, I helped things get put where they need to be and get things lined up. We had a lot to do.”

What most people may not know is how much damage there actually was in the building. Russell Tallo Jr. mentioned that the smoke was the worst part about the fire.

“Smoke damage was predominant,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “The smoke got to everything. The fire burned our computers, all of our operating systems, our walk-in coolers and our freezers.”

Just like their operating systems, the seating for the restaurant was also not salvageable.

“We had to buy new booths because of the smoke smell,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “They said it gets into the cushions of the booths and you basically have to take them apart and start all over again.”

With all the smoke that was in the building, saving things was difficult, but they were able to salvage some of their equipment.

“The only thing we had salvageable in the building was some equipment,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “Like grills, our hamburger grills we saved. We did save some of that, but majority of the equipment we had to buy new. We saved stainless steel tables, some of the shelving we saved. So, not much, but we did save some equipment. The stainless steel tables of course, but the rest of it we kinda gotta to start from scratch.”

Most of the walls were still standing, but it is taking them longer to come back. Heavy machinery cannot go through the building to lay concrete down, so wheelbarrows needed to be used. Russell Tallo Jr. does not think of this as a rebuilding process because of the walls that are still standing.

“To me this is a restoration,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “You’re taking something old and you’re bringing it back new again. Well to do that you got to take it apart, you can’t knock it down. So you take it apart and you put it back together. That’s how you keep the heart.”

Russell Tallo Jr. shared that construction does not take long, but the pre-planning does. This meant the restoration process could not begin immediately. It was months before they could even begin construction because everything needed to be taken out of the existing building. 

“We could start doing demolition,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “It was close to two and a half, three months before we nailed the first nail. So, we had to get plans together. It was a lot of detail that my Uncle Sam, he is the landlord, Sam Tallo and it’s his building, so he had a lot of things that he had to do before we could do anything. It was closer to three months before we could start any kind of construction.” 

Lee’s has been working on construction for a few months now. They are working on getting flooring installed, have already had stainless steel installed and are trying to get the outside looking new again.

“We have air condition,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “We got wiring. We got plumbing. Our flooring is next, the stainless steel, all the sheetrock is there. We are going to put the neon back up. They just started working on that.”

According to Russell Tallo Jr., everything had to be up to date with the modern 2016 codes. One of the things about Lee’s was that its bathrooms were located outside, but because of codes, they needed to be put inside.

“To get them here, we had to bust up concrete,” said Russell Tallo Jr.

In the kitchen, the construction that is taking place is putting in new floors. They are creating a slope, so when they clean up at night the water will all flow to one drain.

“It’s pretty neat,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “It makes it work better.”

Also new to the building is a space that was added by knocking down some of the wall that separated the second dinning room from the main dinning room.

“We tried to open it up,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “People didn’t like that, you know it’s claustrophobic. We heard from a lot of people ‘man you know it’s so claustrophobic.’”

If anyone has ever visited Lee’s, it is known for its to-go window. One feature that gives Lee’s that old time feeling is their to-go window, but trying to keep the essence of what the window was is difficult with modern equipment. Bill Payne, the man doing their construction, was asked by the Tallo’s to see if he could find one like the original.

“The to-go window is definitely a part of Lee’s, so the only thing we are trying to do is get that one rebuilt,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “We were trying to buy one, but they don’t really sell anything like that anymore.”

Near the to-go window back in the day, Russell Tallo Jr. mentioned that there were potato chip racks hanging. They tried to keep them, but they unfortunately had to take them down because the wall was not insulated.

“When you come up to the to-go windows to get your food, they used to hang potato chips,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “They had them old racks and they just hang them. We had the hooks up until we did demolition, so now we just figured insulation is more important than nostalgia where people don’t see anyway.”

Locals have been waiting for Lee’s to reopen, but there will be no event for opening day.

“We rather just kinda open,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “We’ll be a little rusty. A lot of Hammond has been watching. I mean all of Tangipahoa Parish has been watching. We want to come in. We want people to be here, but we also gonna have a lot of new systems in place. There is a lot that went into this to get it to this.”

The time and effort being put into the new building is being used to full advantage because the Tallo’s want to come back fully.

“We want it to look nice,” said Russell Tallo Jr. “We don’t wanna go through all of this and reopen and it not be one hundred percent new. We want it to have the heart it had before. We want the same floor plan. That’s why it’s little changes.”

Lee’s, located on W Thomas St. in Downtown Hammond, caught fire earlier this year. Russell Tallo Jr. along with his family have been working for months on bringing Lee’s back. The Tallo’s have been trying to keep the heart of the restaurant while also updating the building to the 2016 codes including insulating the walls and moving the bathrooms inside.
Morgan Ledet/The Lion's Roar