News Roundup

Federal City Construction To Make Mini-Metropolis

City Business
by Stephen Maloney Staff Writer
November 6, 2007

NEW ORLEANS — When officials break ground on the Federal City project in 2008, it will open the way for up to 10,000 new jobs in Algiers.

After selecting the master development team Oct. 17, retired Marine Maj. Gen. David Mize said the project took a giant leap forward.

ECC Inc. of Chantilly, Va., a construction and development company that has built military bases in Iraq, and New Orleans real estate developers HRI Properties will work on the $200-million project as a development team adept at handling federal regulations and securing tax incentives, Mize said.

“It was an important milestone we just hit when we recently selected our master developer, who will be charged with planning architectural features during the construction and then managing the operations of the project once we get the tenants in there,” said Mize, chairman of Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s Mayor’s Military Advisory Committee.

HRI President Pres Kabacoff said he will turn to West Bank residents to craft a public-private partnership among surrounding neighborhoods and civilian and military tenants of the Federal City.

Mize and other Louisiana officials used the Federal City concept to remove the Algiers Naval Support Activity base off a federal Base Realignment and Closure list.

To retain the base, the Federal City plans called for NSA to consolidate its Bywater facilities to new facilities in Algiers. The plans were accepted and the base was saved.

NSA serves as the headquarters for the U. S. Marine and Naval Reserves and employs about 4,600 people. Another 2,000 Marine reservists will be based at Federal City when it’s done.

The 162-acre site will be a mini-metropolis with movie theaters, restaurants, shopping, residences, gyms and schools, all helping revitalize Algiers, Kabacoff said.

“Our concept opens up substantial portions of the base to community access,” Kabacoff said. “It includes public access to the waterfront area and the levee area of the base that will occur over time… . Our concept involves community participation with various groups in the area who would come on and try to reuse some of the existing buildings there.”

Project manager Ken Milvid said it will cost about $160 million to relocate 2,000 Marines to Algiers in the first phase.

“We will take approximately 15 to 20 acres for them and build a 4,000-square-foot force-protected office park with parade grounds, meeting space, a mess hall: all the facilities that the Marine Corps Reserves need to function on a daily basis,” Milvid said. “That’s going to be a self-contained unit. Basically, it will be a base where the Marines that perform their current functions on the East Bank of the Naval Support Activity will be able to do them on the West Bank.”

Phase two will involve creating a new town center for the West Bank with a high degree of public participation and use, Milvid said.

“What we want to do is complement the current historical Algiers town center with a new town center as a place to support the Marine Corps facilities there and the people that are going to work there with restaurants and shopping and childcare and those kinds of things,” Milvid said.

It is too early for HRI to contract with private companies interested in creating a presence in Federal City, but Kabacoff said a campaign to attract potential clients will begin in the first quarter 2008.

“The residential portion of this plan, which is phase three, will be located even further downriver from the town center,” Milvid said. “There is currently military housing there and that is under lease right now, but the housing stock is not going to outlast the lease, so it is going to need to be redone and the company (Patrician Management) that has the lease is receptive to working with us so we are going to integrate that into the program.”

In addition to the military housing, market rate housing will open to the public, although Milvid said it is too early to pin down a definite number of units.

The biggest unknown for Federal City is rising construction costs, Kabacoff said.

“Construction costs, from three years ago to today, might be 60 (percent) to 70 percent higher,” Kabacoff said. “I think construction costs have gone up dramatically, which is an issue with every construction project in the city of New Orleans.”

Even with those variables, Mize said the overall plans are on pace for a groundbreaking in September 2008, the deadline the federal government has set for construction to begin on Federal City.

“We’re working to beat our deadline as much as we can,” Mize said. “There will be some things that are out of our control… it will really depend on how long it takes the Navy to approve our lease proposal. As soon as they approve it, we will break ground and we’ll be off to the races.”