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A new Walgreens store is under construction on the long-derelict Robèrt Grocery site at the intersection of N. Carrollton Avenue and Canal Street.

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.

Filed under: Rebuilding New Orleans