Letters From Our Readers

The Lafayette Square Neighborhood Needs Your Help!

Dear friends and neighbors:

Thanks to all of you for your support in early June against the Riverview at Julia high-rise. Because of your letters and calls to Councilmember Head’s office, the developers withdrew their request for a zoning variance.

However, we are facing an even greater threat to the future of the Lafayette Square Historic District and we need your help.

During the UNOP-1 process, our district requested to be down-zoned from 125 feet to 60 feet in height, so that future growth would enhance the historic aspect of our neighborhood and pre-existing buildings. (A similar down-zoning was first proposed by the City Planning Commission in the late 1990s.) After discussion, Councilmember Head’s office has drafted a temporary moratorium on construction over 75 feet high in our historic district, the area generally bounded by Magazine to O’Keefe and Lafayette to St. Joseph.

Now, after all our hard work on the UNOP-1 plan, a few developers who want the right to build inappropriate high-rises in our historic neighborhood in the future are trying to kill the moratorium. To settle the question, Councilmember Stacy Head has called a town hall meeting on Monday, September 17 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at Gallier Hall.

Please attend the meeting and tell Ms. Head that you support the height moratorium in the Lafayette Square Historic District. Emails and phone calls won’t help at this point. We need you to attend and bring friends, neighbors and children to run up and down the aisles. All of us who care about whether our UNOP neighborhood plans will be respected by our government, and not derailed by developers, need to attend in person and make themselves heard!

To make the evening more pleasant, you are invited to attend a pre-town hall meeting cocktail party at the home of Patty Gay at 628 Julia Street, starting at 5:00 pm. This will be a great time to go over any additional questions. We will return to her home for a buffet dinner following the town hall meeting.

We have listed some talking points below. If you have any questions at all, please call me at (504) 553-9556 or page me at (504) 544-2643.

Your support is greatly appreciated.

Jack Stewart
Lafayette Square Association

Talking Points

1. The proposed CBD-7 moratorium in volume, or square footage, is almost identical to the City Planning Commission’s proposed changes in the late 1990’s. The Proposed Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance called for 80 ft in height versus 75 ft in the moratorium. However, there are less step-backs in the proposed moratorium – 1 floor versus 4, so the moratorium square-footage is actually greater.
2. Vacant tracts on O’Keefe Avenue (with planned projects) will be removed from the moratorium final text.
3. National Park Service approved “tax credit” projects for historic buildings will be exempt from the moratorium in the final text.
4. This moratorium is part of the UNOP-1 Plan which was completed over a 1 1⁄2 year period with everyone invited to participate.
5. Very few developers chose to participate in the planning process, and many are now predictably and characteristically complaining that they were excluded from the process.
6. Our consultant for the plan, Dave Dixon with Goody Clancy has constantly re-iterated that a four or five story building in the Lafayette Square District is more economically beneficial for the neighborhood, the CBD and the city, than a ten story building would be.
7. The UNOP-1 Plan concludes that the Lafayette Square District should be developed as a low-rise historic district in order to create the greatest economic benefit for the city.
8. To complement the Lafayette Square District, the UNOP-1 Plan projects a high-rise, mixed-income residential area in the South Rampart Street Corridor. Heights step up from the historic district boundary at or near O’Keefe to the greatest height at Loyola Avenue, with South Rampart Street seen as the main street of the area. This residential land-use plan would extend to Common Street/Tulane Avenue where it would continue out Tulane Avenue through the Medical District.
9. When the CBD Historic Districts were first proposed by the Growth Management Plan in the middle 1970s, the Picayune Place District was the only one given appropriate zoning. The other historic districts were thought of as tentative.
10. Now that the Lafayette Square District is a mature and vital historic district, let’s finish the planning. The appropriate zoning for our historic district has never been implemented. Now is the time!