News Roundup

Grants to foster Main Streets pave: 4 neighborhoods in city get money

Times-Picayune
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
By Ronette King

Four commercial districts will be awarded a total of $1.5 million in redevelopment grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation today.

The grants will be presented by Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and the Louisiana Urban Main Street Program at a gathering at the Basin Street Station in New Orleans.

The Main Street Program, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, links economic development and historic preservation with neighborhood redevelopment. The program targets commercial districts in rural areas and small towns left behind as people moved to the suburbs and giant shopping malls.

“The Main Street Program really has been a wonderful program in the state,” Landrieu said. “This is the first time we’re using it in an urban area and it makes sense because New Orleans used to be a number of small towns and cities.”

The $1.5 million in grant money will be distributed over five years to four neighborhood commercial districts. They are: Oak Street, from Carrollton Avenue to the levee; St. Claude Avenue, from Elysian Fields Avenue to Press Street; North Rampart Street, from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue; and Oretha C. Haley Boulevard from Philips Street to the Pontchartrain Expressway.

The state’s Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism oversees the program in Louisiana. After the destruction wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the department was looking for ways to help rebuild the state’s tourism industry, preserve the cultural economy and people’s lives, said Pam Breaux, the department’s assistant secretary.

Under the Main Street Program, ideas for putting older, often underutilized buildings on a commercial thoroughfare to new uses will come from the community, the people whom the district serves. The Louisiana program has helped redevelop rural areas for 25 years. Tourism officials figure the idea works in New Orleans where the neighborhoods, much like rural towns, have shopping districts that were largely abandoned as suburbs developed, and a cache of older buildings that could be put to new uses.

“The benefit of the Main Street Program is it’s grassroots,” said Phil Boggan, state coordinator for the Louisiana Main Street Program. “It builds from a strong volunteer base from the people who would benefit the most, the ones living and working in the area.” Community volunteers will decide how they want to redevelop the district, whether as an arts district with artist studios or housing on upper floors, for example.

Each neighborhood will figure out what it needs. In the St. Claude district, the Urban Main Street redevelopment effort could address some pre-Katrina deficits in basic services that have been exacerbated by storm-induced shutdowns. The neighborhood is currently without a drugstore, supermarket or pharmacy, said Greta Gladney, who worked as executive director of the Renaissance Project that lends financial support to community projects in the Lower 9th Ward and on St. Claude Avenue.

The Main Street Program gives neighborhood districts cash as well as technical assistance, such as architects and interior designers, to give property owners ideas about how to restore their structures. Participants get help with design, organization, promotion and economic restructuring from the National Trust and the state’s tourism department.

Operating a Main Street Program requires about $60,000 a year, so the neighborhood groups must raise matching money to get the grants, Boggan said.

The grants will total about $40,000 for each of the business corridors during each of the first three years and will taper off in the last two years. In the first year, $5,000 of the grant must be spent on some fast fixes, such as sprucing up the facades of key buildings, painting them or making small repairs. Operating a Main Street Program requires about $60,000 a year by the time an executive director is hired and other administrative expenses are factored in. So each group must raise $25,000 in matching money, Boggan said.

“When people see quick changes, more people will be willing to buy into the program,” Boggan said.

In January representatives from the National Trust will visit each of the four zones to begin a market analysis and give each community a report on ways to revitalize their commercial corridor. They will interview business owners and the people who live in the area to see what they want.

The four Urban Main Street neighborhoods were chosen from about a dozen strong proposals, Breaux said. The other neighborhoods not chosen for the program will be allowed to participate in the technical assistance and training that the National Trust offers.

Henry Holzenthal, who moved his Graffiti Graphics to Oak Street three years ago after operating nearby for 21 years, says his immediate goal is to keep the current businesses operating. His long-term view for the eight-block stretch is to draw new business to the area and have a collection of shops where you can get shoes repaired, buy hardware or fill a prescription.

“I would love to see some of that old-time things come back with a modern twist,” he said. In short, he said, he wants “to have Oak Street return to the glory it once was when it was the main street and Carrollton was a town,” he said.