The area next door to Mandeville High School and the city’s sewer treatment facility that was once supposed to be a residential neighborhood is now home to a thriving industrial production facility.

Tuesday night Marine Technologies LLC presented its request to rezone another section of property in the area off of Decker Road from Planned Residential District to M1-Industrial.

The property, which was zoned Industrial in the past, was going unused and was rezoned to allow for a neighborhood to be built. However, the homes and infrastructure were never put in and the parcels are slowly being sold off. The St. Tammany Parish School Board purchased one parcel adjacent to the high school.

Marine Technologies, founded in 2002, bought a parcel and established its headquarters in Mandeville. Marine Technologies develops control systems for offshore vessels.

They have since purchased a second parcel to expand the business.

“We are busting at the seams,” Shannon Malborough, executive assistant, said.

This site will be used for both production and additional office space. However, she said, their production is computer generated and thus will not produce a noise concern for adjacent residents.

Planning and Zoning Commission members were happy to hear of an industry growing and bringing new jobs to Mandeville.

“You’re our only industry,” Zoning Chairman Nixon Adams said.

Malborough said the company is already looking at purchasing the fourth and final parcel in the area, and she said if the company continues to grow the commission may see her back in the future seeking to have that parcel rezoned to M1 as well.

The commission will vote on the rezoning when it meets again later this month.

In a separate issue, the commission granted a temporary variance allowing a dry cleaning company to leave up an illegally placed sign with window tinting on two of the building’s windows that advertises window-tinting services.

The owners of the business, Dry Cleaning by Louis, said the window tinting hides the areas where the plant and business officers are located. The sign and window tinting may remain in place for a year.

Meanwhile the commission is looking into making changes to the portion of the city’s Comprehensive Land Use Ordinance having to do with signage.

The CLURO currently does not address the kind of window tinting the dry cleaning business has installed. Therefore, it is counted in with the total square footage of signage allowed on the façade. With the window sign, the companyfar exceeds its allowable square footage.

If the CLURO is changed before the year is up and the window tinting is still found to be out of compliance it will have to be taken down at that time.