The City Planning Commission (CPC) announces the opening of a Master Plan amendment application period. According to the City Charter “at least once every five years, but not more often than once per calendar year… the Commission shall review the Master Plan and shall determine, after one or more public hearings, whether the plan requires amendment or comprehensive revision.” This year’s application period will run through August 5, 2011. The Master Plan can be reviewed and downloaded from the CPC website or the Master Plan website: www.nolamasterplan.org. Please review the following information pertaining to the amendment process.

1. What are the different types of amendment requests?
Proposed amendments may include changes to policies, the Future Land Use Map (FLUM), appendices or other components of the Plan.

2. Who may propose an amendment?
Anyone may propose an amendment to the Master Plan’s text. However, changes to the FLUM must be submitted by the owner of the property for which the change is requested. More sizable areas for possible amendment may be requested by a City Councilmember. An application form can be obtained from the City Planning Commission at 1340 Poydras Street, 9th Floor NOLA 70112.

3. When must a proposed amendment be submitted to the City?
According to the City Charter, the City Planning Commission may consider plan amendments once every year. As part of the first annual review, Master Plan amendments will be accepted June through August 5, 2011.

4. How is an amendment submitted?
A proposed amendment is submitted in writing to the City Planning Commission. A pre-application conference is required prior to submitting an amendment request to confirm that the request is germane to the Master Plan.

The proposed amendment must consist of at least:
a. A reference to the Master Plan chapter that is proposed for amendment and/or a map of the boundaries
b. Proposed amendment language
c. An explanation of why the amendment is being proposed
For more information on submittal requirements please refer to the application
packet.

5. What is the cost for filing an amendment?
In 2011, the first year of accepting applications, the City Planning Commission will not charge a fee for amendment requests or submissions.

6. What will happen once the amendment is proposed?
Once the amendment application packet is submitted for review, the City Planning Commission will schedule a public meeting and publish a notice in a local newspaper of general circulation at least fifteen days in advance of the meeting. For public benefit and convenience, these meetings may be combined Revised: June 14, 2011 with meetings to revise the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. In addition to the public meetings, the City Planning Commission will hold a formal public hearing. A staff report evaluating the requests according to criteria noted in the application will be available to aid the discussion. The Planning Commission’s recommendation will be forwarded to the City Council for final disposition.

The original document is posted here

This year, 15 walkers from as far away as Toronto and France and as close as around the corner joined The Urban Conservancy’s Dana Eness for the third annual “Only on Oak Street” walk on Saturday, May 7. Other New Orleans walks took place in the Irish Channel and on Freret Street. See photos from Jane’s Walks throughout the US.

About Jane’s Walks
Jane Jacobs was a brilliant urban proponent with a simple philosophy: if a city isn’t walkable, it isn’t functional. The more people-friendly a city’s streets, the safer and more dynamic they become.

Each year thousands across Canada and the US celebrate Jane’s work and vision with neighborhood walks the first weekend in May.

The Indie City Index also ranks cities within their region and within their population class, identifying those that outperform their peers.

Perhaps most useful for civic and community leaders, the index identified 36 metro areas that outperform their peers in both their region and their population class. While this list includes many of the leading scorers overall, there are a number of additional cities that rank as top performers by this measure, including New York; New Orleans; Portland, ME; Poughkeepsie, NY; Tucson; Louisville; Boston; Asheville, NC; and Charleston, SC. Read more.

To find out how your organization or business can volunteer, email lafittegreenway@gmail.com.

Over the past few weeks, in the wake of the fifth anniversary of Katrina, there has been particular focus on New Orleans’ relationship with water.

We have been hearing of innovative ways to provide increased flood and storm protection, not only with gates and pumps, but by more fully incorporating water into our city environment. But reactions to these insightful plans have also shown that there is a significant fear of water, in particular a fear of drowning, and this is affecting our ability to embrace these ideas. We need to address our collective fear of water in order to be in a stronger position to make the best decisions to protect our city and her people.

A first step in accomplishing this is to understand that providing access to water can be safer then trying to only protect ourselves from it. We need to have safe, comfortable, and fun ways for the people of New Orleans to engage with water. This, specifically, brings the example of the reconstruction of the revetments in Chicago along Lake Michigan to mind.

Chicago has the wonderful resource of Lake Michigan, in which many people swim. The continuous park that extends 20 miles along the lake’s edge has a combination of revetments and beaches. The old revetments were large stones that were stacked like a staircase coming out of the water. This provided a place for people to sit and get into the water, if they wanted. As these old revetments fell into disrepair, the Corps of Engineers came up with new designs for the revetments that consisted of large terraces of concrete ending abruptly at the water’s edge with a seven-foot drop-off to the water below. This caused a huge uproar as the citizens preferred the design of the old stone staircase revetments.

The primary concerns were comfortable and safe access to the water. With this new design, it wasn’t possible to sit with your feet in the lake, and it was very intimidating to get in the water. There was no place to hold onto if you got into trouble and only an occasional ladder to get out. And with the abrupt edge of the lowest terrace, it was much easier to fall in the lake by accident. One argument for the new design was that people should only be getting into the water at the beaches anyway, but if deterrence was the intent, clearly the only solution wasn’t to make it more dangerous in these other areas.

Neighborhoods that had the political will (Hyde Park specifically) were able to get the revetments redesigned to address these concerns. The revetment built here is based on the stone staircase approach and the benefits of thoughtful design at the water’s edge is notable. While it provides comfortable safe access for swimmers, it also does its job in creating an anxiety-free relationship with the water for the non-swimmer. People can comfortably sit on the edge without the concern of what may happen if they fall in. They can safely touch and engage the water, even as non-swimmers.

Here in New Orleans, Audubon Park, Bayou St. John, and City Park are good examples of places where you can walk up to the water’s edge and engage the water. And if you happen to fall in, you can get out with relative ease and minimal peril, as some young over-eager duck feeders can attest.

While there is a tendency to protect people from themselves, the way to do this is not to create barriers that are potentially more dangerous, but to give citizens safe access where they can be in control of their situation.

Before we are able to teach the majority of people to swim (which we need to do), we need to provide safe, comfortable, and fun ways for the people of New Orleans to engage the water where they are in control and feel like they are in control. And much of this can be accomplished with design and engineering that is sensitive to this issue.

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Taylor Galyean is a principal of Feldmeier Galyean, a New Orleans based architecture and design firm whose projects include: campus design, resorts, spas, and aquatic centers.

A concise video summary of The New Orleans Index at Five released by The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) and Brookings Institution urges cautious optimism. The Index includes a report called Measuring New Orleans’ Progress Towards Prosperity which provides 20 indicators (such as wages, affordable housing, public safety, coastal wetlands) in four broad categories (economic growth, inclusion, quality of life, and sustainability).

The indicators do in many cases suggest progress towards prosperity, with improvements in school performance, neighborhood quality, and median household income. But the report also acknowledges areas that need our continued attention, including overall population decline, displaced residents, lost housing, deficiencies in public transportation and crime rates. Read the full report here.

A new and sobering report from the Bureau of Governmental Research (BGR), titled The Price of Civilization, alerts us that the $67 million operating budget shortfall our city faces is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions needed to shore up and maintain our deteriorating street, drainage and sewerage systems. “Without prioritization and coordination,” says the report, “New Orleans risks making substantial investments in streets, only to have the work undone by leaking subsurface infrastructure. The city could end up with leafy neutral grounds flanked by neighborhoods that flood too easily.”

Even so, it is imperative that we analyze these challenges within the context of all that is right in post-Katrina New Orleans for two very important reasons. First, the good news stories are not merely window dressing or wishful thinking; we are seeing long-fought and hard-won profound, historic, systemic change in our city affecting access and equity, transparency and consistency. They show us what successful citizen-led transformation looks like when projects are indeed prioritized and coordinated. Second, recognizing these extraordinary victories for what they are strengthen our resolve to maintain our forward momentum through whatever challenges lie ahead.

In that hopeful spirit, the Urban Conservancy presents its “Top 10 Post-Katrina Victories List.” The items come in no particular order. We’d love to hear yours.

1. Master Plan and CZO. In early August, the City Council adopted the Master Plan that was developed with community input; creation of the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance is underway. Both documents should provide assurances for developers, businesses, and residents of transparency and consistent application of rules and regulations. “The rules won’t change in the middle of the game,” says Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson. “You will not be able to just whimsy and whamsy change zoning.”

2. Engaged citizenry. This has been evident since Katrina, as individuals, neighborhood associations, and small nonprofits worked together to rebuild and renew their home town. The Master Plan, the Lafitte Corridor, the streamlining of assessor, levee board, and sheriff departments, the creation of the Inspector General’s office and the general vibrant localism all come from the passionate devotion of New Orleanians to their city.

City Park’s renaissance is another example of citizen engagement. Who can forget the ragtag volunteer brigade of residents living around the park, self-deprecatingly dubbed the “Mow-rons” who provided their own lawnmowers and labor to keep the park grounds under control when the Park staff had been decimated? Remember the Mow-rons fondly next time you visit this cultural and recreational jewel among urban green spaces. The New Orleans Museum of Art is surrounded by acres of playgrounds, bike trails, boat-friendly lagoons, and beautifully refurbished iconic mainstays like Storyland, Botanical, Sculpture and Carousel Gardens, as well as new amenities like the dog park and the Great Lawn.

3. Trees. Newly planted trees on South Claiborne, St. Claude, Louisiana, and other avenues are an important investment in future air quality and general quality of life. Starting with the guerrilla gardening in 2005 and 2006 - people planting in neutral grounds and sprucing up public spaces when the city was MIA — there has been a renewed focus on the benefits of greenspace, the tree canopy, and walking paths by individuals, nonprofits like Hike for Katreena, and the City.

4. Engaged city government. While we haven’t yet seen enough of Mitch Landrieu’s administration to judge it, early evidence suggests that there is much more focus on public policy, reform and fiscal accountability than we saw during C. Ray Nagin’s tenure. Mayor Landrieu has demonstrated that he is listening and thinking and actually doing. His emphasis on transparency, his commitment to opening the hospital in New Orleans East, his advocacy for better hospital design for the LSU-VA complex (link), and his administration’s functional working relationship with the City Council are all examples of a responsive City Hall. Many of Landrieu’s 100 Projects reflect the priorities of New Orleans’ citizens.

5. Transit improvements. Support for biodiesel busses, additional bike lanes and bike racks, pedicabs, and expansion of streetcar service are all indicators that alternative transit options are multiplying. We still have far to go to make New Orleans a bike friendly community, but it’s progress. And organizations like the New Orleans Metro Bicycle Coalition the NolaCycle Bike Route Project are keeping the biking community connected, informed, and engaged.

6. Education. While quality education options continue to fall far short of demand, the gap is perceptibly narrowing as innovative charter schools open and capital improvements in school facilities get underway, creating new learning environments.

Not every school has been or will be successful, but performance indicators suggest that we have made dramatic improvements over the dysfunctional school system that prevailed before the storm. These improvements coupled with Louisiana’s commitment to improving early childhood services through programs like Bright Start could result in major changes in our city’s PK-12 educational systems.

7. Cultural offerings. New galleries are popping up along commercial corridors like Oak Street, Freret Street, and St. Claude Avenue and 18 other areas throughout the city that have been designated Cultural Products Districts, enabling works of art to be sold tax-free and providing historic tax credits to stimulate commercial and residential investment. It is not coincidental that the music and theatre, restaurant and art scenes along these corridors are also vibrant.

8. NOLA Awareness. Both locals and the rest of the world increasingly see and appreciate our unique and fragile city and its surrounding region through a more nuanced lens. Part of this burgeoning awareness comes from the media saturation post-Katrina and post-Oil Spill, but if skyrocketing numbers of applications for slots in Tulane University’s freshman class are any indication, the attention is on balance good for the region.

9. Capacity for disaster response. There is still a long way to go before an effective coordinated disaster response plan is in place, but there is a growing recognition of the need for a coordinated response at federal, state and local levels in the case of a major event. Businesses are demonstrating growing awareness of the importance of planning for disruptions and New Orleanians have become skilled at developing persona disaster plans as well.

10. Criminal justice. Reform-minded Chief of Police Ronal Serpas doesn’t mince words; his new “You Lie, You Die” zero-tolerance campaign to rout out and immediately dismiss dishonest police officers is an example of reforms underway at tne NOPD. Development of advocacy organizations like Safe Streets/Strong Communities, creation of the office of the Independent Police Monitor, and top-to-bottom reform of the public defense system are all steps in the right direction.

What- we’ve hit 10 already? Well, here’s your lagniappe:

11. The World Champion New Orleans Saints. Enough said.

If there is a leit-motif to all of the documentaries, reports, memoirs and retrospectives on New Orleans five years after Katrina, it is this: we are a city that is at once rich in excess and desperately in need.

Both the Price of Civilization and the New Orleans Index at Five reports highlight a second, less headline-grabbing but equally resonant theme for residents shoring up our infrastructure, our levees and our coastline: prioritization and coordination. Between Katrina’s aftermath, the Great Recession, and the BP Oil Disaster, New Orleanians have developed organizational skills that make us a particularly scrappy and self-reliant tribe. Let’s reflect on our victories and revel in them for a moment, and then get back to work. There’s a lot left to do.

Monique Verdin is a resident of St Bernard Parish and a native daughter of southeast Louisiana. Her collection of photo and video documentation, exposing her homeland and indigenous heritage, began over a decade ago. Verdin has intimately witnessed and captured the backlash of Louisiana’s environmental loss and the marsh-level realities of global climate change that challenge the bayou communities of her homeland. Her photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is included in The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous, Yale University Press (2008) and Nonesuch Records’ Habitat for Humanity benefit album Our New Orleans (2005).

Monique is in the process of updating her website and will be posting regular updates from the affected parishes.

We Delta Dwellers living in the bayou communities of South Louisiana wait with uncertainty as a black tide rolls in.

Five thousand feet below sea-level BP’s Deepwater Horizon well continues to leak hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. They tell us they are weeks away from implementing a quick fix that they are not sure will work and months away from drilling another hole to siphon the leaking well.

South Louisiana is famous for end-of-the-road highways, leading down fingerling ridges reaching south towards the Gulf of Mexico. On Friday, April 30, I drove to Venice, the southernmost drivable dead-end along side the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish to watch the sunrise and see if I could smell that sweet Louisiana crude washing into the delta.

Later in the afternoon, I ventured down the road from my house to the little Isleno fishing village in St. Bernard Parish known as Ysyclosky and another dead-end known as Shell Beach, overlooking the decommissioned saltwater dagger called the MRGO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet).

In Ysyclosky, Brad Robin, an old podnah of my fathers, watched as deckhands unloaded the last sacks of oysters from the Ms. Donna Ann. “I’m an oyster fisherman today,” he said, “but I don’t know what I’m going to be tomorrow.”

Selena and Josie Gonzales, senior citizen friends of mine who have fished oysters for over 40 years fear what the black tide of oil will bring to their lives and to the lives of those around them. Mrs. Selena said she thought it might be the end of the world, citing 2012 prophesies.

On April 24, I was at a Blessing of the Fleet in Pointe au Chenes, our ceremonial celebration to usher in the shrimp season. The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries opened the season last week, 3 weeks early, so fishermen would have a chance to harvest before the estuaries are inundated with oil.

Fisheries in St. Bernard Parish were closed as of yesterday, May 1, 2010.

My neighbors Phillip and Jason are two brothers born and raised in St. Bernard with deep Delacroix Island roots and strong ties to the marshes and waterways that surround it. One is a fulltime commercial crab fisherman the other a fireman who fishes on the side.

The fisherman brother was not allowed into the water yesterday, losing out on his crab trap investment. BP is training fishermen to harvest hazardous material in an attempt to save their way of life. For the last two days, the fireman brother has been diligently working on his crab boat, the Devil in Disguise, converting it into an oil clean-up vessel.

The weather here on south Louisiana’s coast is oddly similar to tropical storm weather, grey skies and spitting rain mixed with strong erratic winds. The south wind continues to blow out of the south at 30 mph, churning the oil storm’s gulf waters.

We wait with uncertainty as the Black Tide rolls in.

Oil Storm permitting, we are planning a Black Tide Blues Bash on Pensacola Beach, Florida, at the Paradise Bar and Grill on Friday, May 7, 2010 from 6-10pm. The event will be a fundraiser for Gulf Restoration Network and Voice of the Wetlands. Their work is more important now than ever.

Houma blues boys Josh Garrett and the Bottomline will be playing and Zack Smith and I will be exhibiting Wetland photography.

The LSU/VA project has been mired in controversy since its inception in November 2007, when Mayor C. Ray Nagin signed a deal with the Veterans Administration to provide land currently occupied by homes and businesses “construction ready.” Now, over two years later, these proceedings on street closures mark the first public hearing and formal action by any municipal body on the proposed hospital complex. Opponents brought two years’ worth of anxiety and frustration with them to the hearing on February 23.

Ironically, the City Planning Commission erred on the side of generosity when applying the rules governing public meetings as dictated by the Commission’s Administrative Rules, Policies and Procedures. It gave adjacent property owners 25 days notice of the meeting date rather than the 10 required. It advertised in The Times-Picayune starting on Feb. 12, exceeding the 3 day requirement. It extended the speaking time limit for those opposed and in favor from the required 25 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes.

And yet, for several procedural reasons, the hearing left the public feeling shut out and demanding redress:

• The period to submit written comments was first advertised to the public the Friday before Mardi Gras (Feb. 12), and Ash Wednesday (Feb. 17) was the deadline to submit written comments. The only day City Hall was accessible to the public was Feb. 17.

• The staff report was technically available Thursday, Feb. 18, but since the staff reports are not available online and City Hall is closed on Fridays, it was difficult to access before Monday, Feb. 22- 5 days after the close of the comment period and one day before the hearing.

• With a limit of 2 minutes per speaker, and with the period to submit written responses closed, the staff report was shielded from any meaningful scrutiny or comment regarding inaccurate, incomplete or otherwise misleading details, yet was the document that the members of the City Planning Commission relied on to make their decision.

• According to the hearing minutes, of the 35 people who signed up to speak in opposition to the closures, 20 were able to speak with within the allotted 40 minute time frame (limited to 2 minutes each) and 15 people were denied the right to speak, despite the hearing’s advertisement which stated that All interested parties will be given the opportunity to be heard in reference to this request.

• A staff member gave a verbal accounting of the report after the public comment was concluded, so that anyone who might have questions to raise after hearing that summary was precluded from commenting. According to Yolanda Rodriguez, Executive Director of the City Planning Commission, “It is not customary for the public to comment on the staff’s verbal presentation to the Commission.”

Certainly, the City Planning Commission should have had a greater role in this project from its inception; now it is feeling pressure to expedite the process. In comments directed to its members on the 23rd, Mary Howell, a lawyer whose office is a block outside the VA footprint, said, “Fairness has not been part of this process. Somehow, y’all got left out. You have been a bystander to this, and that’s something that has harmed us from the beginning. You have an important role to play. Please don’t abdicate it.”

Abdicate they have, in a move with all the hallmarks of a municipal government facing the prospect of a project deemed “too big to fail.” Commissioner Joe Williams stated, “I for one can say I’m not happy about involving the Planning Commission so late in the process,” he said. “But we sit here almost five years after the storm. … At some point, we have to say it’s time to move on.”

No one wants to appear to be an obstructionist when a proposal promises great economic and social benefit for the city. But evading public input does nothing to quell concerns. Simple changes in the timing of notice publication, instructing attendees on the protocol for public input, and honoring the procedures as advertised would make civic participation more likely and more productive. For any process to work, all parties must act in good faith.

The bank and automotive bailouts a year ago taught us that process matters. If the existing process is short-circuiting public input, the process needs retooling. Moving forward on projects promising public benefit before legitimate questions from the public are answered won’t make a flawed project better, and won’t make the questions go away.

Last year, a consultant from Miami’s Beacon Council, a public-private economic development enterprise, advised the New Orleans City Council to put quality of life issues first and foremost in efforts to recruit outside investment. After all, the consultant said, corporations are made up of people and people come with families.

While the investment opportunity may look tantalizing to corporate leadership, it still has to pass “the spouse test.” Spouses of employees will want to be sure there are quality schools, nearby groceries and safe neighborhoods before they make the move.

To draw new money into the local economy and keep it here earning dividends, we must capitalize on our strengths. As a recent Travel and Leisure survey of America’s 30 Favorite Cities demonstrates, our music, food and architecture are certainly world-class. And in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their distinctive local character.

But character is not enough.

We must be a community with a well-educated labor pool, low crime, excellent schools and financially stable families.

In other words, we must have a healthy local economy firmly in place.

The Urban Conservancy, in partnership with urban retail analysis firm Civic Economics, recently released its study, Thinking Outside the Box: A Report on Independent Merchants and the New Orleans Economy.

Data collected from Magazine Street merchants on taxes, revenue, charitable giving and payroll shows local retailers, when compared with leading chain competitors, generate twice the annual sales, recirculate revenue within the local economy at twice the rate, and, on a per-square-foot basis, have four times the economic impact while consuming a fraction of the land.

Implications for New Orleans’ redevelopment are enormous. The study demonstrates that investing in locally owned businesses is a cost-effective way to grow the New Orleans economy and is compatible with development patterns in existing commercial districts.

The city can stimulate wealth creation and retention by developing a coordinated strategy that focuses on local businesses growth and retention as a prerequisite for business attraction.

Full retail occupancy along St. Claude Avenue, Freret, Canal, and Oak streets and our other commercial corridors is one indicator of success in stimulating local economic growth and stabilizing surrounding neighborhoods. Enforced procurement practices demonstrating New Orleans’ determination to build from within by sourcing with local vendors first and whenever possible will accelerate such a transformation. So will a more responsive City Hall that facilitates rather than impedes local business success.

Firms whose business models require continual expansion in order to avoid collapse will always invest in New Orleans, and every other population center with a pulse. We will never want for Walgreens, Family Dollar, or Dollar General stores. They need us far more than we need them. And residents tired of blighted and vacant commercial spaces will shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, well. It’s better than what was there before.”

For the long-term health and vibrancy of our city, we need to attract firms that are investing in New Orleans because of its unique qualities, not in spite of them. Such firms will strengthen existing economic investment, not cannibalize it the way formula retailers requiring homogeneity and taxpayer-funded subsidies do.

Ultimately, however, the the robustness of our local economy is what matters most. Strong place-based businesses are key to the survivability, livability and prosperity of every community. And as quirky as New Orleans is, it is no exception to this rule.

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A condensed version of this article originally ran as a guest editorial in CityBusiness on October 5, 2009.

Of the three, the least obvious and most pervasive threat of the three is internet retail. Consumers are drawn to the convenience and savings that tax-free online shopping provides, but don’t realize that their community pays for these savings in three significant ways.

First, low-income families carry an unfair tax burden since credit card and internet access, and therefore tax-free online retail, are most available to higher income brackets. Thus, the most regressive form of taxation becomes even more regressive.

Second, the community loses needed tax revenue to fund public services including police protection, healthcare, and schools. Internet retailers with no physical presence or “nexus” in a state are not required to collect sales taxes on purchases. In theory, consumers are required to keep track of their online purchases and then pay the appropriate amount owed in sales tax as “use tax” on their state tax return. In practice, this “fair use tax law” is nearly unenforceable. A 2009 University of Tennessee study estimated that uncollected sales taxes on e-commerce cost Louisiana $269 million in 2008 and predicts those losses will rise to $396 million by 2012.

Finally, exempting online retailers from collecting sales taxes puts bricks-and-mortar businesses at a competitive disadvantage. In Orleans and Jefferson parishes, where sales taxes approach ten percent, companies like Amazon, the nation’s 20th largest retailer, are granted, in effect, a nearly 10 percent price advantage over local businesses.

A consumer who buys a camera for $2699 at Lakeside Camera Photoworks, for example, will end up spending $2935 including taxes. Online, that same purchase will not entail paying sales tax, putting Lakeside at a $236 price disadvantage. Jefferson Parish and Louisiana lose out on $236 in taxes and Lakeside Camera will lose out on the sale. The $329 gross margin Lakeside would have made on the sale of that camera would have gone to training salespeople, and paying rent, utilities, advertising and other costs locally. Instead, it will enrich a different community. The out-of-state vendor’s gain is Lakeside Camera’s-and Jefferson Parish’s-loss.

It’s time that Louisiana level the playing field for all retailers. Other states have already taken steps in this direction. This year, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and New York passed laws requiring many large online retailers to collect sales taxes for purchases within their borders. (All three states exempt smaller online retailers.)

Meanwhile, 41 states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, a coordinated effort to align sales tax policies. The goal is to make sales tax rules so similar across states that it will be easy for large online retailers to collect taxes nationwide (which all national chains already do, using widely available software). With sales taxes more uniform nationally, theses states plan to call on Congress to pass the Main Street Fairness Act, which would make it possible to extend the requirement to collect sales taxes to all retailers with more than $5 million in annual sales.

Of the 45 states that have a sales tax, all but four have signed on to this multi-state initiative. Louisiana is one of the states that has not.

As we work to convince Louisiana lawmakers that our local businesses deserve a level playing field, it’s crucial that we remember that the money we “save” by shopping online is in fact no savings at all, but a drain on our region’s ability to create jobs, generate wealth, educate our children, and provide essential services.

Article by Dana Eness and David Guidry. Dana Eness is the executive director of The Urban Conservancy and can be reached at dana@staylocal.org. David Guidry is second-generation owner of Lakeside Camera Photoworks and can be reached at david@lakesidecamera.com.

With this project, Mid-City gains a low-density, single story, single-use construction much like any of the other 50-odd Walgreens stores already saturating the New Orleans market and the 7000 other stores nationwide. It will conform to a prototype of 14,500 square feet and a single lane drive-through pharmacy Walgreens uses in the New Orleans market.

We can reasonably expect the final product to have slight design modifications that acknowledge the dense, walkable streetcar-oriented neighborhood of restaurants and businesses surrounding it. But design modifications such as landscaping and building placement closer to sidewalks are not sufficient to add momentum to the area’s renaissance or serve as a catalyst for walkable urban development.

Developers sidestepped the active and often contentious community engagement that accompanied the construction of the Walgreens at S. Carrollton and S. Claiborne two years ago by devising a design for the Mid-City site that complies fully with the Carrollton overlay and all zoning requirements. Since a waiver wasn’t required, neither was community input.

The Walgreens at Canal and Carrollton illustrates that even when development is done “right,” that is, in compliance with existing review standards and zoning regulations, the result can be underperforming in its ability to provide the host community not only inspiring design, but also quality job creation, tax revenue, and sales revenue recirculated within the local economy.

In 2006, faculty and students of the Urban Planning + Design program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City engaged in research and analysis of the Mid-City neighborhood as a cultural heritage tourism node, with the assistance of The Urban Conservancy, members of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Recommended adaptation of the Walgreens site conformed to neighborhood plans and were sensitive to flood mitigation. The team recommended transit-oriented development of a signature building or buildings on the parcel with limited parking reflecting the intention of a walkable restaurant district and streetcar route adjacent to it. The building(s) would accommodate multiple street-level commercial spaces—including, conceivably, a Walgreens with housing safe from flooding on floors above the retail.

Such a design would also provide space for small business start-ups, a critical component given the strong pattern of local business commitment to Mid-City’s recovery. The development would have been more consistent with Mid-City’s vision of a pedestrian and bike-friendly, mixed use neighborhood and with the proposed zoning for that high-visibility intersection as reflected in the April 2009 draft of the Master Plan land use map.

As a community, New Orleans needs to give itself permission to raise the bar on our expectations of what our neighborhoods deserve and should expect from new development.

One tool other communities use to good effect is the community impact review which requires projects of certain sizes to submit economic impact analysis evaluating whether the project will adversely affect existing retailers in the area; its net impact on jobs and job quality; and its impact on tax revenue and city costs.

Another tool at our disposal is the Master Plan and Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance. The City Planning Commission intends to issue a Public Hearing Draft on September 14th. The public will have one month to review it. A final citywide forum will be held and structured as an open house workshop in mid-September and will give the public an opportunity to ask questions.

The feedback provided by the public on September 14 won’t change a thing at the corner of Carrollton and Canal. But it will be a step in the right direction for better, higher impact development throughout the city in the future.

Walgreens can and does make significant exceptions to its design prototype. See examples here.

Business Council members Leslie Jacobs and George Wilson, and Managing Director Bob Brown joined with New Orleans City Council members Jackie Clarkson, Stacy Head and Shelley Midura in going to Baton Rouge over a week-long period with personal appeals to legislators to defeat this legislation. They were joined in the effort by Henry Charlot and Kurt Weigle from the downtown Development District, Jaci Coles and Eric Strachan from Councilwoman Clarkson’s office, Leslie Alley, Bill Robinson and Yolanda Rodriguez from the City Planning Commission, Ruthie Frierson from Citizen’s for 1 Greater New Orleans, Meg Lousteau from the Vieux Carre Property Owners Association, Michelle Kimball from the Preservation Resource Center, Letitia Clark George of the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors and, local attorney Bill Borah. Each of them had a direct hand in rallying the support of House members. Also playing key roles in engaging legislators were veteran Governmental Affairs professionals C. J. Blache, Derrell Cohoon, C.B. Forgotston, Deborah Harkins and Byron Stewart.

Senator Murray and his supporters argued that his bill would give the voters the final say over planning decisions in their neighborhoods. The more insidious effect, however, would have been to push the city back to the old-school, politicized and dysfunctional planning process that has crippled development in New Orleans for decades. The defeat of Senate Bill 75 represents a triumph of smart and progressive decision-making over the failed policies of the past.

It is now up to us to make certain - not just that this hearing is comprehensive and legitimate - but also that the City Planning Commission and its staff meet their obligation and responsibility to the public as the city’s department of planning experts. A public forum alone does not guarantee the reasonable, independent analysis of the competing hospital plans we need to ensure that officials are making the best possible choice for the best possible outcome for residents and taxpayers.

This is what we should expect our City Planning Commission to accomplish:

1. Include both the FHL/RMJM and LSU/VA site proposals in the Master Plan planning process in order to determine the impact the projects will have on Mid-City, the Central Business District, and the City of New Orleans.

2. Use the testimony presented and the materials submitted at this public hearing to produce a recommendation to City Council concerning which of the hospital proposals is in the best interest of Mid-City, the CBD, and the City of New Orleans.

3. Request the City Council to hold a public hearing on the recommendations presented to them by the Commission in order that the Council will be in a position to adopt a resolution expressing its opinion on which hospital proposal is in the best interest of Mid-City, the CBD, and the City of New Orleans.

Please attend this pivotal civic event.