News Roundup › Rebuilding New Orleans

“It’s not exactly great protection,” said John Barry, the author of “Rising Tide,” a book New Orleans college students read to learn about the corps’ efforts to tame the Mississippi.

Source: AP Wire

The stakes are high as the city finds it needs much more than great restaurants and the bawdy Bourbon Street scene to wine and dine itself to economic prosperity.
But there is no master vision for rebuilding New Orleans’ economy.

Source: AP Wire

“The time has come to see the potential for this corridor not only be used as a path for people to walk or bike to work and to better their health, but also to knit communities along the greenway together,” said Bart Everson, the FOLC’s board chair.

Source: The Times-Picayune

“As soon as Vitter said he had just gotten off the phone with Rove and other Republican officials,” Landrieu says, “he started in on the first talking point to come out of the ordeal. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe the White House has already given David Vitter talking points to talk about this.’ We weren’t going to blame anyone. We weren’t going to blame the president. I mean, is there a Republican talking point for how to get people water? But that was Karl Rove.”

Source: Salon.com

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we’ll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We’ll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We’ll have to restore local economic networks — the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed — made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

Source: Washington Post

State law says that initial incident reports are public records and it includes a list of details they are supposed to contain, such as the location of the crime and a description of what happened.

Source: Times-Picayune

“Small business is too important to the state’s economy for policymakers to ignore it.”

Source: City Business

For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.

This urban agriculture movement has grown even more vigorously elsewhere. Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that, like East New York, have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land.

Source: New York Times

“Last week, I had to get a part for my kitchen overhead vent,” said Dan Rubchinuk, 26, of Putney, shopping for gloves and a coffee press Friday at Brown & Roberts. “I call here and they spend five minutes on the phone with me. I call Home Depot and spend 15 minutes on hold while the person tries to figure out what I’m talking about.”

Source: msnbc.com

The company, which spent $4 million installing its New Orleans network, has not been able to pinpoint a specific reason why its venture into municipal wireless failed.

Source: City Business

First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

Source: gregpalast.com

The recent uptick in big-box projects and proposals in the Crescent City, fueled by tax subsidies and other costly giveaways, has left owners of smaller home-grown businesses in related industries gritting their teeth and bracing for hard times.

Source: Times-Picayune

The decrease in the number of voters from 2003 to 2007 in the eight-parish New Orleans area was more than 100,000, a 23 percent decline, Chervenak said. The number of black voters dropped disproportionately, falling 41 percent compared with a 15 percent decrease among white voters, he said.

Nineteen grants totaling more than $581,000 have been awarded to help bring to life some of the neighborhood recovery projects envisioned in the Unified New Orleans Plan for rebuilding the city after Hurricane Katrina.

Source: Times-Picayune

“This is about the future of the Warehouse District and whether it is going to continue to be four- and five-story residences or whether it’s going to be a series of Miami South Beach towers. If I wanted to live in South Beach I would have moved there,” Rubenstein said

Source: City Business

“We built the opera house in two months, the botanical gardens in three months, Niemeyer’s museum in five months. We transformed the city’s main street into a pedestrian area in 72 hours. It wasn’t that we were chasing after records - it was necessity.”

Wally N’Dow, former head of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), has described Curitiba as “a wonderful example, because cities that follow this lead can jumpstart the economies, assist the poorest of their poor, and clean up their cities.”

Source: Guardian

Beginning on Aug. 31, 2005, and continuing for at least five days, Gretna police, Crescent City Connection bridge police and Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s deputies turned back hundreds of people trying to walk across the bridge to escape the misery of New Orleans, which was flooded, blacked out and in short suppy of food and drinking water.

Source: City Business

“It took us 11 years to do downtown Oakland,” said Mr. Blakely, an academic from California who specializes in helping cities recover from disasters. “This is a process of urban redevelopment. You cannot do this overnight, no city, anyplace in the world.”

Source: New York Times

It’s not necessarily the billion-euro development, star-architect-designed gallery or shiny new ferris wheel that makes locals feel good about their town. Monocle believes that the measure of a city is more about everyday wonders — pavements, well-designed schools, punctual transport — rather than one-off, grand projets. Here’s our list of the top 25 urban elements that make the city.

Source: International Herald Tribune

“We’ve identified more than 6,000 blocks, or 17,000 individual sites, that will undergo repairs,” said Robert Mendoza, director of the city’s Department of Public Works.

Source: City Business

The school improvements cost $68,612 and are expected to save the school $26,438 per year in energy costs, so the green investment will be recouped in about 2.5 years, program assistant Linda Morgano said.

Source: City Business

The twin hospitals would consume nearly 70 acres of a national historic district, obliterating the Deutsches Haus, a German cultural center; the former McDonogh No. 11 school, a landmark that dates to 1879; and scores of classic shotgun- and sidehall-style homes, including four that were renovated after Katrina with $45,000 in historic preservation grants from the state. The Dixie Brewery and the modernist City Hall annex also sit inside the hospital footprint, although city leaders have indicated those buildings could be spared.

Source: Times-Picayune

The opening note has been sounded on the long-awaited renovation of a historic jazz hall in Treme, signaling progress for what is expected to become a major tourist attraction in a part of the city long ignored by most tourists, despite its storied past.

Source: City Business

Once completed, the concrete segment of the Wisner route will be among the city’s major paved off-street bike infrastructure, joining the 1.79-mile Mississippi River Levee path and the 1.38-mile West End path, said Jennifer Ruley, a bicycle and pedestrian engineer with the Louisiana Public Health Institute.

Source: Times-Picayune

The open-air center will include a 140,000-square-foot Lowe’s Home Center, another 200,000-square-foot anchor, two other 100,000-square-foot anchors and 650,000 square feet of other assorted retail and a movie theater… . The New Orleans-based developer is still finalizing the development’s total costs, but the TIF bonds will provide some percentage of that cost, he said. Last summer, Kailas estimated a total cost of $200 million.

Source: City Business

The New Orleans Police Department’s headquarters at 715 S. Broad St. will reopen today after undergoing repairs of Hurricane Katrina damage.

Source: City Business

Construction will begin within 60 days on the live-and-work loft apartment development at 400 St. Joseph Street near Constance Street, said developer Jay Trevor of J& T Development, who is pairing with Idea Village on the project, the St. Joe Lofts.

Source: City Business

Jeffrey Thomas, a special assistant with the city’s recovery office, said Kabacoff was working with city leaders to make sure his plan for the Universal Furniture building dovetailed with the recovery plan that citizens helped developed for St. Roch and the Bywater.

Source: Times-Picayune

In an competitive bid process, Mayor Nagin awarded MWH firm which is an international firm with over 7000 employees worldwide.

The agreement will provide services to manage and expedite the repair and reconstruction of police and fire stations, streets, recreation centers, court buildings, museums, libraries, parks and other projects.

Source: BayouBuzz

National homebuilder KB Home has scrapped 35 planned market-rate homes in River Garden, the mixed-income development that replaced the St. Thomas housing project in New Orleans … . New Orleans may not be ready for mixed-income development, said Szubinski, who has worked with a mixed-income project in Dallas.

Source: City Business

Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

Source: Fresh Air

The streetcar has represented something else besides the connections through time and space: the city’s living room, a privileged spot for tentative social encounters across lines of race, class and nationality, in a place not otherwise given to them. Thanks to an accelerated repair schedule, that meeting place, absent since the hurricane, is back.

Source: New York Times

The 2,500 square feet of space on the first floor of the circa-1820 building, which by the summer of 2009 will contain half a million dollars’ worth of exhibits, will launch what the superintendent calls the “soft opening” of one of 391 national parks.

It also could refer tourists and others to its satellite site, a $12 million “world-class jazz museum” under development at the Old U.S. Mint in the French Quarter, and to a jazz walk of fame along the levee in Algiers, a short ferry ride away.

Source: Times-Picayune

When Ochsner Health System last summer announced plans to buy three New Orleans area hospitals that were badly battered by Hurricane Katrina, health care advocates hailed the move as salvation for a region in dire need of medical services.

But many observers were unaware that the deal to buy the properties from Tenet Healthcare Corp. hinged on a promise to block the reopening of Lindy Boggs Medical Center, a hospital Tenet owned in Mid-City that has been shuttered since the storm.

Source: Times-Picayune

After protesters clashed violently with the police inside and outside the New Orleans City Council chambers on Thursday, the Council voted unanimously to allow the federal government to demolish 4,500 apartments in the four biggest public housing projects here.

Source: New York Times

When city officials reorganized the Office of Recovery Management into the Office of Recovery and Development Administration, Blakely gained responsibility for the code enforcement and safety and permits departments — two catalysts for rebuilding. The departments have the power to cite negligent property owners for blight and provide permits for reconstruction, respectively.

Source: City Business

“This is good news for the city, both in receiving more than $600,000 in taxes and equally important, for the indication that this landmark building will be ready for occupancy as the city of New Orleans continues to recover,” said City Council President Arnie Fielkow.

Source: City Business

The New Orleans Recovery Authority (NORA) will receive millions of dollars for various programs, including eradicating blight, supporting homeownership, repairing property, voluntary housing swaps and expedited permitting.

Source: City Business

Far from being what the market wants, sprawl is a Ponzi scheme that depended on the securitization of mortgages into pools mixing form, content and risk into an unrecognizable hash. It was great bait—“what the market wants”—until the trawler nets came up empty.

Source: Counter Punch

“Ultimately, we need to make the connection at the policy level of what these commercial corridors and micro-businesses mean to the economy,” Eness said.

“What would happen if the large government grants awarded as part of the recovery effort had been broken up and given to these businesses? What kind of transformation would we see then?” Eness asked.

Source: Times-Picayune

The new construction is occurring largely in or near the city’s historic center, which suffered less extensive damage than eastern neighborhoods. And it is being heavily subsidized, mostly through federal low-income-housing tax credits and additional incentives. These complexes will have a mixture of low-income and market-rate tenants; such a mix of income levels is largely untested in this city.

Source: New York Times

Today, though, Wal-Mart’s influence over the retail universe is slipping. In fact, the industry’s titan is scrambling to keep up with swifter rivals that are redefining the business all around it. It can still disrupt prices, as it did last year by cutting some generic prescriptions in the United States to $4. But success is no longer guaranteed.

Source: MSN

“It became abundantly clear that defendant Thomas had relevant information, was adamantly refusing to provide it, and understood this was in violation of his agreement to do so,” the filing said.

Source: Forbes.com

The antique carousel in City Park, built in 1906 and closed since Hurricane Katrina left its painted horses standing in water for three weeks, reopened Tuesday with a belated 100th birthday party.

Source: Journalgazette.net

Herschel Abbott, NORA board chairman, said disposition of properties will be in line with market demand. “We don’t want to flood the market with properties and precipitate a decline in property values,” Abbott said.

Source: City Business

Pre-Katrina, the St. Charles line, which extended from Canal Street to Carrollton Avenue and Claiborne Avenue, ran 24 hours a day, but the new Canal-to-Napoleon service will operate daily from 5:27 a.m. to 11:55 p.m. with a fleet of five 1923 Perley Thomas streetcars running 10 minutes apart.

Source: Times-Picayune

KB Home, which once announced a 3,000-home subdivision project in the New Orleans area and later abandoned it, is leaving Louisiana altogether. Clint Szubinski, president of the company’s Gulf Coast division, said residents are rebuilding instead of buying new homes.

Source: City Business

Source: Times-Picayune

A dozen boats, remnants of a commercial fishing fleet that once numbered 150 vessels, have returned to their historic home in Bucktown for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.

Source: Times-Picayune

The Universal Furniture building at the intersection of St. Roch and St. Claude avenues will serve as an office until the Fifth District’s permanent headquarters are rebuilt.

Source: City Business

The ORM has $2.4 million of an estimated $2.5 million needed to complete phase one, which includes developing a greenway between North Broad and Jefferson Davis Parkway. ORM will use $2 million from the $117 million authorized by the Louisiana Recovery Authority for the city, $313,000 from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and a $95,000 grant from the American Institute of Architects to develop the park.

Source: City Business

Third-generation owner Mike Massey said that locally owned Massey’s Outfitters, which offers a line of back-packing, camping, canoeing, kayaking, and other outdoor equipment, has three existing locations in Baton Rouge, Covington and on Severn Avenue in Metairie. To date the Severn store has doubled as the company headquarters. That store will remain open, but all administration will be moved into the city, along with 20 to 30 jobs.

Source: Times-Picayune

What was once a dysfunctional, centralized department riddled with everything from favoritism to corruption, is now a highly regarded professional law enforcement agency. In the past four years, Providence’s murder rate has been cut in half.

Source: Business Innovation Factory

Yet what Wal-Mart does not disclose in site fights—but is revealed for the first time in a new report by Good Jobs First—is the extent to which the company later in effect concedes the point about reduced property values. Once a store has been in operation for a while, Wal-Mart frequently challenges the assessed value that local officials assign to it for tax purposes. In an effort to cut the property tax it pays to local governments—revenue that pays for public education, police and fire protection and other vital services—Wal-Mart routinely tries to belittle the value of its own facilities.

Source: Corporate Research Project

Moises has said the the first three floors of the hospital could be reopened in months. Following Katrina, Moises and a team of nearly 200 doctors, nurses and military personnel spent a month cleaning and decontaminating the first three floors of the hospital, intent on returning at least a portion of it to operational status.

Source: City Business

“This rat-infested property has ben abandoned for two years since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. We are tired of it, so we’re cleaning it up and boarding it up,” … . The abandoned Taco Bell on Bullard Avenue has been an eyesore for two years. The grass is overgrown, The owner has so far refused to clean it up.

Source: City Business

We need to have higher expectations for the leaders we elect and hold them to those standards. We need to work with our national and local leaders to make sure America does not forget the city of New Orleans. This should be on the platform of every presidential candidate. Please join me in ensuring the people of New Orleans are not forgotten.

Source: The Capital Times

The study also features “Where did the Katrina money go?” — an in-depth analysis of federal Katrina spending since 2005. The Institute reveals that, out of the $116 billion in Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding—and less than half of that 30% has been spent, much less reached those most in need.

Source: The Institute for Southern Studies

The mere mention of gentrification has so inflamed the discussion … that stereotypes and political grandstanding have obscured the facts and tangible impacts on real people. Austin succeeded, at least in part, in detaching itself from much of the hyperbole by conducting a set of separate, relatively rigorous studies on the intersection of gentrification and preservation. The city’s efforts have suggested that the answer to gentrification is not found in broad-brush generalizations, but rather in analyzing each neighborhood’s specific economic and social concerns, understanding them as inextricably tied to a complex local history, and devising appropriate solutions and strategies responsive to the community’s needs and aspirations.

Source: The Next American City

Source: City Business

Source: Times-Picayune

Thomas, whose guilty plea represents the most significant development to date in a sprawling federal probe of government corruption overseen by U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, admitted to accepting nearly $20,000 in bribes in 2002 from restaurateur Stan “Pampy” Barre, a confidant of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial.

Source: Times-Picayune

Source: City Business

Thanks to new and returning businesses opening in 2006, retail sales tax collections in Orleans Parish are emerging from a steep post-Katrina decline. Sales tax collections in Orleans Parish made big gains in January and February compared with the same period in 2006, while revenues for that period declined in Jefferson and St. Tammany parishes.

Source: City Business

“The most surprising finding in this study is that, for the first time in 20 years, something rivals crime as the biggest problem facing New Orleans,” researchers wrote in the “Keeping People” 2007 Quality of Life Survey in Orleans and Jefferson Parishes.

Planetizen talks with Blakely about his work in the city and the process of rebuilding a devastated physical environment and a shaken economy. This interview was conducted by Planetizen Managing Editor Christian Peralta and Planetizen Assistant Editor Nate Berg on June 3, 2007, at a coffeeshop in New Orleans.

Source: Planetizen

These pockets of productivity are notable in that people succeeded with little if any involvement from the central government. To my colleague Peter Gordon of the University of Southern California and me, this sends an important message: Rather than try to fix a doomed political process, neighborhoods should be allowed to secede from the city.

Source: Mercatus Center

Mayor C. Ray Nagin and the city have given NORA another 1,500 to 1,800 properties, but NORA can’t do anything until titles are cleared on those sites, Couhig said.

Source: City Business

Rubensteins, a men’s and women’s specialty clothing store in a historic site at the corner of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue, plans to invest more than $2 million to redesign and expand the 12,000-square-foot store.

Source: City Business

The 17 development zones, each about a half-mile in diameter, are scattered throughout New Orleans. They vary from a devastated shopping plaza in the eastern section of the city, to blocks in the ruined Lower Ninth Ward and to areas not hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina but still in need of renewal, as officials put it, including the old St. Roch Market in the Bywater area.

Source: New York Times

Speaking from Jackson Square in New Orleans on Sept. 15, 2005, Mr. Bush said, “When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better and stronger than before the storm … . We’ll not just rebuild, we’ll build higher and better.” Such progress is being tripped up by thick rolls of red tape. Mr. Bush can clear those obstacles and help turn his far-reaching vision into reality with a stroke of a pen by waiving the 10 percent FEMA match requirement. He should do it now.

Source: Washington Post

Make no mistake — the devastation in New Orleans and southern Louisiana was a government-enabled disaster. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed and built the levees and floodwalls that were supposed to protect us. The failure of these structures resulted in the devastation of our city. This is not the crank conspiracy theory of angry New Orleanians. This is the conclusion that the Corps reached in a 6,600-page report, released June 1.

Source: Washington Post

Months before Hurricane Katrina hit, the Small Business Administration deliberately shunned disaster planning that would have sped aid to thousands of companies in dire need, saying it would yield only “limited benefits,” investigators say.

Source: Truthout.org

Even with the reduction, the tower would be more than three times the 85-foot height limit allowed in the block by the city’s zoning law.

Source: The Times-Picayune

Penalosa made strides by ignoring some experts and their conventional wisdom. When Japanese consultants suggested he build seven elevated highways to solve the city’s traffic woes, Penalosa recalled, he did the opposite. Instead, the city invested in a world-class bus system, built pedestrian-only streets (one stretches 20 miles) and restricted car use in downtown Bogota. Thanks to a much-improved and “sexier” bus system, Penalosa said, public transportation in his city is actually too popular and 20% of rail riders own cars they don’t use.

Source: LA Downtown News Online

Those of us who suffered through a year of painful planning meetings sensed that it was happening, but last week we got the final word. The money is gone.

Source: The New Orleans Agenda

The metro area is riddled with boarded-up remnants of McDonald’s, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Burger King and Wendy’s locations while their locally owned counterparts are open for business.

Source: City Business

Brown pioneered the concept of community policing, which is based upon the philosophy that crime cannot be controlled without a partnership between the police and the people they serve.

Source: City Business

“What you won’t see in the plan (are) directives that prioritize certain neighborhoods or districts over another, because we believe that they’re all viable,” said Joe Butler, a spokesman for the planning process. “And we are not in any position to select how they are brought back and the timeline (on which) they are brought back.”

Source: Times-Picayune

Although there had been uncertainty over whether the city’s charter allowed the IG to have subpoena powers, the ordinance provides such authority. Without subpoena powers, some officials have said, the IG cannot be truly effective.

The Regional Transit Authority will receive $43 million to repair its hurricane-damaged public transportation system.

Source: City Business

Bernazzani said that the disbursement of Road Home loans — federal money— gives the FBI jurisdiction, and any contractor stealing or fraudulently taking the money will be high on the FBI’s radar. “If you are a contractor fraudulently (taking) recovery money from homeowners, the FBI will take a very, very hard look at it,” he said.

Source: Times Picayune

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

Source: Times-Picayune

The story of how the Army Corps of Engineers drowned New Orleans does not pack the kind of emotional power that leaves telepathic TV personalities almost speechless. It is a story that takes place mostly in the fine print of technical studies and appropriation bills, long before the rooftop rescues. But it’s still a story that should tighten your throat.

Source: Dallas Morning News

“While in the short term, such funding may appear difficult based on the city’s current financial constraints, this funding is necessary to accommodate the timely rebuilding process and redevelopment of the city. The future long-range financial return and benefits to the city through economic redevelopment and expansion are anticipated to be significant.”

Source: City Business

Many locals, in fact, gave Mr. Anderson a lot of credit for kick-starting the Quarter’s recovery. So it is especially poignant that the Andersons have now decided to leave. But their story is not unique: many in this city are suffering the same continuing loss and strain that led these two to their decision. So their departure raises the question of whether others who can afford to leave, those who have not sunk every penny into a now-moldy house or a devastated store, will also move on.

Source: New York Times

Unless the New Orleans City Council authorizes more employees for the City Planning Commission and Safety and Permits Department, delays in the planning review process could force developers to scrap billions of dollars worth of projects, potentially dealing a blow to the city’s recovery, a group of prominent business people told council members this week.

Source: Times-Picayune

Failing to rebuild a viable city would have consequences far beyond Louisiana. New Orleans’ two ports are, by tonnage, the nation’s biggest. They need to be - the region handles a third of the nation’s seafood and more than a quarter of its oil and natural gas. Some 4,000 oil and natural-gas platforms, linked by 33,000 miles of pipeline, spread out along the Louisiana coast. Among the facilities are the four largest refineries in the Western Hemisphere. Southern Louisiana is easily as important to the nation’s energy supply as the Persian Gulf.

Source: Fortune Magazine

all parties at the planning table must first be prepared to do even more hard work - “to be vigilant at nurturing and strengthening, making sure some of the key elements of the plan are in place: transparency, openness in participation, and communication.” And, he added, “the Community Support Organization - which doesn’t appear to exist yet - will be critical in its policy role.”

Source: NOLA.com

While there are no concrete estimates of how many people with disabilities died as a result of Hurricane Katrina, 71 percent of the 1,330 victims were older than 60, according to a 2006 report by the White House, suggesting people with special needs suffered disproportionately.

Source: Alternet

They were supposed to be safe. Gentrification demolished the largest public housing complexes and got rid of the most troublesome tenants. The new D.C. featured an “entertainment core” to die for — a refurbished downtown that sparkled with upscale restaurants, fancy boutiques and swank nightclubs. Crime dropped, and everybody who had stayed away because of fear was being lured back by Mayor Anthony A. Williams, whose greatest claim to fame was that he was not Marion Barry.

But the all-clear sign from city hall is turning out to be premature.

Source: Washington Post

As New Orleans residents gather this month to finalize plans for rebuilding, the Prevention Research Center at Tulane University is releasing data from a survey of residents’ priorities for their neighborhoods. Chief among those priorities are low crime and good street lighting.

Source: Tulane New Wave

Ed Blakely, an urban affairs professor who led recovery efforts after Oakland’s 1988 earthquake and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, said success in those and other massive rebuilding efforts resulted from leaders’ swift action, sometimes laying out recovery plans within 24 hours of a disaster.

Source: Times-Picayune

Nearly halfway through Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s first 100 days in office since being re-elected, most New Orleanians have not heard word one from him about his “100-day plan.”

Source: City Business

“Louisiana residents need the tools to rebuild their homes and their lives,” said Donna Fraiche, LRA Board Member and Long Term Community Planning Task Force Chair. “The LRA’s Louisiana Speaks Pattern Book will guide Louisianans toward rebuilding their homes safer, stronger and smarter.”

Source: Louisiana Recovery Authority

Developer Theodore “Tad” Mondale, nephew of former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, closed with a business partner on the purchase of the old Falstaff Brewery building last week for $1.1 million and plans to build 150 affordable apartments in the complex.

Source: Times-Picayune

They survived Hurricane Katrina’s Category 3 winds and the ensuing looters. They reopened despite the long odds of doing business in a devastated city. The last thing the Magazine Street shop owners expected to threaten their survival was a crime ring of transvestites.

Source: City Business

FEMA has developed Hurricane Katrina Surge Inundation and Advisory Base Flood Elevation Maps (referred to as, “Katrina Recovery Maps”) to aid Orleans Parish property owners to repair or rebuild structures to newly determined advisory coastal flood elevations. These maps are based on Flood Recovery Guidance for Orleans Parish (PDF 211KB) that FEMA published in April 2006.

Source: FEMA

“Altruism didn’t move me to do it,” Geller said. “I have no choice but to get this done. I have a $200 million investment doing nothing on my balance sheet.”

Right now, Strategic has committed $430 million toward the project, Geller said, about $130 million of which comes from insurance. Strategic will spend $210 million of the $430 million to redevelop the Hyatt.

Source: The Times-Picayune

“It’s a rare thing to see people just kind of come together in a collective to really tackle a project like this,” he said. “Most planning efforts tend to be top-down.”

Source: Times Picayune

If a letter from one professional planning group assigned to one neighborhood under the New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilding Plan is an indication of the general approach, we are about to be steamrolled by someone with an agenda.

Source: Wet Bank Guide

[I]t was that same “dysfunctional interaction” that defeated a recent legislative move to form one consolidated board to more holistically oversee south Louisiana levee districts.

“Even in the wake of this disaster, with so many bodies recently interred, these groups still couldn’t get past their dysfunctions,” Seed said.

Source: The Times-Picayune

Planning the future of New Orleans neighborhoods presents one of the largest, most challenging planning projects in American history. Yet, at a time when resources are scarce, the City Council has awarded a $3 million contract for that purpose without inviting competition.

Source: Bureau of Governmental Research

A multimillion-dollar subcontract involving the inspection of the city’s damaged sewer system was awarded in October to a company organized by a politically active minister who incorporated the firm months after the work began.

How MCCI came to be hired — given that it didn’t exist on paper and still lacks a listed phone number — is something of a mystery.

Coleman, who was one of a group of African-American ministers to express support for Nagin midway through his first term after the mayor came under fire from another powerful group of black ministers led by Bishop Paul Morton, declined to discuss the contract, calling it a private matter.

“I don’t feel I need to explain myself,” he said, adding that his lawyers had advised him not to talk to the media.

Source: The Times-Picayune

The landfill lacks some of the safeguards that existing dumps do, like special clay liners. The government says they are not needed because demolition debris is cleaner than other rubbish.

Residents and environmentalists think otherwise, because after Hurricane
Katrina the state expanded the definition of construction and demolition
debris to include most of a house’s contents, down to the moldy mattresses and soggy sofas.

Source: The New York Times

People who visit New Orleans are amazed at how devastated it still is. Where has all the money gone, they ask? Follow the money. “How many contractors does it take to haul a pile of tree branches?” asked the Washington Post. If it’s government work, at least four: a contractor, his subcontractor, the subcontractor’s subcontractor, and finally, the local man with a truck and chainsaw. The big contractors typically receive between $28 to $30 a cubic yard for the debris. By the time they subcontract the work out to smaller and smaller companies, the guy in the truck receives about $6 to $8 per cubic yard.

The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers. The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck!

Source: commondreams.org

So, Barbara Bush was right after all when she said, “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.” And Rep. Richard Baker, a 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge, was right when he was overheard telling lobbyists: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” The publication of both statements elicited public condemnation and was followed by a flurry of hairsplitting denials. But it is now clear that their only transgression was to say in unvarnished language what many pundits, politicians, and policy wonks were thinking.

Source: The Black Commentator

HUD’s Secretary Alphonso Jackson has approved $368.4 million for Louisiana’s action plan. Today Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco learned Hud has approved $368.4 million for Louisiana’s action plan to help the state recover from the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Source: BayouBuzz.com

Archbishop Alfred Hughes said Saturday that he will reopen historic St. Augustine parish for 18 months, giving its parishioners a chance to meet recovery benchmarks they and the archdiocese worked out in two days of behind-the-scenes meetings last week.
The agreement, which all sides praised as a “win/win,” ends the most contentious public dispute in recent memory within the local Catholic community.

Source: Times-Picayune

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) threatened yesterday to hold President Bush’s executive-branch nominees hostage until the administration agrees to a series of demands that would increase funding for coastal Louisiana.

Source: The Hill

Donald Smithburg, who heads LSU’s Health Care Services Division, strongly disagreed with the report’s contention that Hurricane Katrina had “right-sized” the number of hospital beds in the New Orleans area.

“(For) the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm to have thought, let alone write, the notion that we don’t need more beds in the New Orleans region is unconscionable to me, and indicates that they really have not absorbed the impact of Katrina and her floods on that area,” Smithburg said.

Source: Times-Picayune

Of the top candidates seeking the job, only a few have offered comprehensive proposals for how they would manage restoration efforts, including whether some sections of town should be off-limits to rebuilding.

Framing the debate are the recommendations of Mayor Ray Nagin’s Bring New Orleans Back Commission, which began meeting about a month after the storm struck Aug. 29. Nagin fundamentally changed the group’s report last month to allow rebuilding in all parts of the city, but put no organizational structure in place to assist neighborhoods in charting their own futures.

Even more circumspect have been Nagin’s two major challengers, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Nature Institute Chief Executive Ron Forman, who have talked about rebuilding in broad terms, but offered few details about what changes, if any, they would make to the city’s footprint. Both, however, have promised to clue in residents quickly to the status of city services. Landrieu said he will bring in professionals to guide neighborhood planning efforts, and Forman wants to speed federal dollars into homeowners’ hands.

Meanwhile, two candidates nipping at the front-runners’ heels, lawyers Rob Couhig and Virginia Boulet, have offered bolder courses. They favor explicit rebuilding plans that include city-driven financing proposals, and even take the politically precarious step of calling for a pause in construction or cessation of city services in the hard-hit neighborhoods east of the Industrial Canal.

Source: Times-Picayune

This strategy is reportedly driven by local African-American ministers in daily contact with their dispersed congregations. The central role that the churches have in New Orleans’ Black society has long been central to political organizing, from the Civil Rights movement onward. Congregants are accustomed to turning to their clergy to receive political information and advice.

Source: Bayoubuzz.com

A litany of environmental and health unknowns hangs over the region more than six months after Hurricane Katrina, from 46 potential hot spots of contamination and the continuing cleanup of 8 million gallons of spilled oil, to health care workers raising the alarm over a spike in Legionnaires’ disease.

Source: Times Picayune

In a statement released Wednesday evening, it appears that President Bush’s Gulf Czar, Donald Powell has given the Louisiana delegation some very bad news. Based upon information obtained by Bayoubuzz, Powell has been informed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needs $6 billion dollars more for the Corps to certify levee systems. Without the money and the ultimate certification, FEMA will not release its maps that have been so anxiously awaited by so many neighborhoods, property owners and evacuees.

Source: Bayou Buzz

At 30,000 feet, the president is parsing words on recovery, quibbling about the security of the levees and trying to pretend that what the Army Corp of Engineers and the federal government broke, they should somehow not have to fix. If the tragedy of Katrina and New Orleans proved anything, it proved that we need an effective government, putting a lie to the “less is more” rhetoric of recent administrations. At the same level, Congress is strangling the city by joining with the Bush administration and FEMA to prevent resources from being appropriated to get the job done. We in New Orleans are so desperate for resources that we’ll support any measure that promises them.

Source: TomPaine.com

WASHINGTON—The annual cost of the Bush administration’s missile defense plans could more than double to $19 billion by 2013, and total $247 billion from 2006 through fiscal 2024, according to a U.S. government report (see GSN, Nov. 30, 2005).

The report, “The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans and Alternatives: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2006,” was produced by the Congressional Budget Office and released this month as an update to a September 2004 report.

The study projects an average $13 billion per year cost for missile defense through 2024.

The administration requested about $8.5 billion for the program last year for the current fiscal 2006, according to the report. The annual cost should climb rapidly to $19 billion by 2013, due to major equipment purchases, before dropping significantly to about $8 billion annually by 2024, it says. All figures are in 2006 dollars.

Source: Global Security Newswire

They could almost imagine that they were in New Orleans, a place they visited regularly and where Mr. Jacobs used to live.

And that was the point. For the Jacobses were at Disney World in Florida - at the French Quarter replica in the Port Orleans Resort, a place that duplicates the Big Easy right down to its lampposts, wrought-iron railings and hurricane cocktails.

“It’s not the real New Orleans, but it’ll have to do for now,” Mr. Jacobs said, drinking a beer at Scat Cat’s, the resort’s jazz-themed lounge whose walls are covered with mounted saxophones and trombones, photographs of Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines and sheet music for “Basin Street Blues.”

Source: NY Times Travel

BGR’s second release in a series of short commentaries on post-Katrina developments in New Orleans. In “Wanted: A Realistic Development Strategy,” BGR addresses recent debate over strategies for the physical redevelopment of the City.

Source: Bureau of Governmental Research

What Bush said would be one of the largest public reconstruction efforts ever is becoming a private affair, leaving the tough choices to residents as their risks increase.

December 4, 2005 - Laurie Vignaud faces a double dilemma: If she rebuilds her wrecked ranch house at 1249 Granada Drive in the great suburban expanse south of Lake Pontchartrain, will her neighbors do the same? And even if they do, will that guarantee their Gentilly neighborhood does not end up an isolated pocket in a diminished, post-Katrina New Orleans?

Lost amid continued talk of billions in federal aid is the fact that most homeowners and businesses are being left to make the toughest calls on their own. Lost is that New Orleans’ recovery — which President Bush once suggested would be one of the largest public reconstruction efforts the world had ever seen — is quickly becoming a private market affair.

Source: LA Times

December 11, 2005 - We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn’t happen. President Bush said it wouldn’t happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, “There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans.” But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don’t believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

Source: New York Times

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, something strange happened: architects kept their mouths shut and their hands off their pens.

November 21, 2005 - Something very strange, and perhaps salutary, took place last September: architects kept their mouths shut and their hands off their pens. As of this writing, in early October, I have not heard of a single provocative statement made by a would-be taste leader of the profession. Richard Meier has not risen to claim that the city must be rebuilt in white panels. Diller and Scofidio have not pleaded, as they did within days of September 11, to preserve the poignant “erasure.” Rem Koolhaas has not gone on the record to tie the storm to American imperialism. Daniel Libeskind, perhaps most surprisingly, has not yet profitably emoted. Just as miraculous, there has been no eye candy. No plans for walled or walking or floating cities (A true American Venice! Think of the possibilities!) are making the e-mail rounds. There has been some under-the-radar action—the Rural Studio reacted with an idea for reusing shipping containers, Gregg Pasquarelli and a team from SHoP Architects flew down to help out in Mississippi, another New York architect was in talks with Halliburton to produce her innovative shelter design—but there was a marked absence of star-caliber grandstanding. Do you hear that? Listen close: it’s the sound of humility. In New York glib visionary talk had started just hours after the World Trade Center became Ground Zero, and noted architects—Norman Foster among them—got busy with specific designs. But about the desolation of an entire city? The greats had nothing to say, and amazingly, they said nothing.

Source: Metropolis Magazine

Ideally, FEMA planners and displaced Orleanians would prefer temporary quarters in the city itself, closer to families, jobs and neighborhoods they hope to re-occupy. But outside of one large Habitat for Humanity project being discussed for City Park, there are few workable sites in the densely developed city.

And when housing space is found, NIMBY is often at the door. The city administration halted construction on a 44-trailer site in a public park in the Lower Garden District when neighbors complained of the loss of green space. One suspects that green is not the color they are worried about.

Source: BayouBuzz.com

1 December, 2005 - Once the enemy of urban planners for small towns, Wal-Mart has turned into a formidable presence for the rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast.

“Wal-Mart has long been derided by urban planners as an instrument of destruction for small towns, whose locally owned stores and downtowns inevitably collapse against the onslaught of the Goliath’s low prices…To bring the plans to fruition will require tremendous private investment, political will, and in the case of Pass Christian, involvement from giant corporations like Wal-Mart. It will also require patience from home and business owners eager to rebuild and local officials anxious to get those properties back on the tax rolls, no matter what the plans call for.”

Source: Mid-South News

2 December, 2005 - A special six-member team of planners assembled by the APA put published its report, “Charting the Course for Rebuilding a Great American City,” which includes short-and long-term recommendations for improving the city’s planning.

The American Planning Association (APA), in response to requests from the New Orleans City Planning Commission and APA’s Louisiana chapter, assembled a team of six qualified urban planners to assess the capacity of the city’s planning function in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

After gathering preliminary information about its assignment, APA’s New Orleans Planning Assessment Team visited the city from October 23 to 28, 2005; conducted a tour of the city’s devastation; interviewed a cross section of public officials and community leaders; and thus formulated a set of conclusions and recommendations that might assist local officials as they seek to make sound decisions about the city’s restoration and redevelopment. This report presents the APA Team’s general observations about the city’s planning function, including activities of the City Planning Commission and the Mayor’s Bring New Orleans Back (BNOB) Commission. On the basis of those observations, the report proceeds to make recommendations for addressing short—and long-term planning issues, and suggests appropriate next steps.

Source: American Planning Association

Hurricane evacuees and their dependents still in Texas shelters, hotels and motels who wish to relocate have until Dec. 31st to get a free one-way ticket.

The offer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency applies to evacuees from Katrina and Rita. One-way plane, train or bus tickets are available. Travel is restricted to the 48 states in the continental United States. To apply, call: 1-800-621-FEMA.

Source: Biz New Orleans

Investigators in New Orleans are determining that a patchwork of local agencies supposedly responsible for overseeing the levee system, called ‘levee districts’ are to blame for many system failures. “Engineers and others now say substantial blame for some of those failures lies with the ineffectual patchwork of agencies overseeing the system. A big part of the problem is a colorful relic of 19th-century Louisiana: the local “levee districts” that own and maintain most of the levees and floodwalls. Held up as an essential defense against floods, they also became vehicles for government contracts and political patronage, critics say.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nov 25, 2005

While no one can agree on an exact price for rebuilding the infrastructure of the city, most experts say the bill will top $100 billion. “More than two months after the storm, no one else has come up with a definitive estimate, either. Guesses tend to range well above $100 billion but vary wildly from there.

Source: The Washington Post, Nov 22, 2005

The researchers found significant erosion and inconsistencies in crest heights at “transition” points where the earthen embankment meets up with concrete structural sections in the levee system. The disparities in levee sections exist, the report points out, because multiple authorities are responsible for designing and maintaining different sections of the levee system.

Source: UC Berkeley News

I don’t recall much about last Thanksgiving. Happy days tend to blur together, I guess. But I’ll remember for the rest of my life every detail of the bitter holiday we’ll celebrate tomorrow.

The mood here has turned angry in the last month, as we’ve begun to lose hope we will get the hurricane protection the future of the city depends on. On the street, the sense of betrayal boils over into empty talk of closing our oil and gas pipelines, which supply much of the nation’s needs: “They won’t build us levees that work? Then let them freeze in the dark.”

Source: NYT

All 24 of the new cars for the recently completed Canal Street line and six of seven of the River Front cars were destroyed by the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. The antique St. Charles cars were safe, but the power system that propels them past the famous mansions, universities and parks was wrecked and must be totally rebuilt.

Source: wwl

For New Orleans to adequately rebuild, officials need to fully fund the city’s planning department and do a better job of coordinating communications between recovery groups, according to a report from a national planning organization. The American Planning Association released [a report](http://www.planning.org/katrina/pdf/rebuildingreport.pdf “Read the Report [PDF]”) today calling on city officials to expand planning operations to make sure the city is rebuilt to its highest potential.

Source: Biz New Orleans

Author Ian McNulty is a UC member and resident of Mid-City, where he is now living in and repairing his flood-damaged home. He works for Hibernia Corp. and is a freelance writer, covering New Orleans food for the Gambit Weekly.

For people who care about New Orleans, living here has long meant living in a state of struggle and compromise, of yearning for improvement. That’s because the city, with its irreplaceable heritage and culture, fulfills so many dreams and satisfies so many desires in a way nowhere else possibly could.

Source: The Times-Picayune Op-Ed

The Crescent City Farmers Market at 200 Broadway at Uptown Square returns for the first time since Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, Nov. 22 with expanded hours of 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Source: Biz New Orleans

“Welcome to the Third World!” More than one person said this to me when I moved to New Orleans in 2001. Living there, I learned to tell direction, not by north or south, but by upriver or downriver. I learned a new vocabulary of pirogues, po’ boys, second-lining and making groceries. I learned what Mardi Gras was really all about. And I learned something about what it meant to live in one of the poorest cities, in one of the poorest metropolitan areas, in one of the poorest regions of the country.

Source: National Housing Institute

One doesn’t have to talk to too many residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, which was wrecked by Katrina and Rita, to discover that this historic, mostly African American New Orleans enclave is a remarkable human community.

Source: Michigan Land Use Institute

Rebuilding any city is a complicated business. As soon as the flood waters began to subside in New Orleans, suggestions for what to do with a devastated city started coming from everywhere. Two local citizens suggest twenty points of entry.

Source: Metropolis Magazine

In New Orleans: Ethnic Cleansing, GOP-Style.
In a recent email to Louisiana officials, FEMA curtly turned down the state’s request for funding to notify displaced residents that they could cast absentee ballots in the city’s crucial February mayoral election.

Source: Mother Jones

A month after the creation of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission by Mayor C. Ray Nagin - before it has even had a chance to take up basic procedural questions - there are already signs the commission is in trouble. It is struggling to focus on major rebuilding issues rather than smaller complaints, and sharp divisions have begun to develop among its members.

Source: The New York Times

I have worked with environmental advocates in Louisiana for over a decade in support of campaigns that have defeated nuclear waste dumps, toxic industrial facilities, and relocated whole communities. Community-led efforts waged and won against overwhelming odds. For five years now I have been thrilled and inspired by the brilliance, dedication and success of new green building movement. I’m here to say that together we can do this.

Source: Green Relief

The story of how New Orleans ended up underwater begins with its founding nearly 300 years ago, at the liquid crossroads of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. But that precarious geography was not destiny. A review of several decades of decisions by officials responsible for defending New Orleans — especially the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Congress — shows that the nation’s dysfunctional system for selecting, funding and designing water projects helped seal the city’s fate.
Thanks, Michael

Source: The Washington Post