October 30, 2008

Mr. Sean Cummings
Chief Executive Officer
New Orleans Building Corporation
2 Canal Street, Suite 1843
New Orleans, LA 70130

Ms. Jennifer Zurik
Project Manager
New Orleans Building Corporation
2 Canal Street, Suite 1843
New Orleans, LA 70130

RE: New Orleans Riverfront: Reinventing the Crescent

Dear Sean and Jennifer:

I first of all would like to thank Jennifer and Allan Eskew for presenting me and my senior staff with a preview of the riverfront plans between Esplanade Avenue and Poland Avenue. The artist renderings were most helpful in getting our hearts and minds around the project.

After reviewing the plans the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad is supportive of this project but would like to reiterate three operating concems for the railroad.

Continued» 

You may have seen the article at right in Wednesday's Times-Picayune. Here's more information...

On January 17, 2008, community leaders from riverfront neighborhoods saw a presentation by Sean Cummings about his "Reinventing the Crescent" project. The meeting was hosted by Councilman James Carter. During this presentation -- which was an update of the plan last seen in July 2007, we were very surprised to see that Sean's committee had added a new slide about the Mandeville Street Wharf in the Marigny.

Sean said in this meeting that the Mandeville Street Wharf in the Marigny Neighborhood should include an open air/outdoor nightclub with performances like you might have seen at the "Warehouse nightclub in the 1970's." Be sure to check out this Wikipedia link for more info about the Warehouse. Oh, be sure to notice - it was indoors!! Can you imagine living anywhere near this?

Has there really been a market study saying there is a need for such a nightclub on government property, competing with privately-owned clubs? Isn't this going to be a terrible noise nuisance for the neighborhood - especially since it's open air?

None of this was discussed in any of the public meetings. Neighborhood leaders are asking: where did this come from?

 

The New Orleans Building Corporation (NOBC) is pleased to announce that the team led by Chan Krieger Sieniewicz / Hargreaves Associates / TEN Arquitectos / Eskew+Dumez+Ripple was unanimously selected by the Board of Directors on December 21, 2006 as the winner of its "Reinventing the Crescent" competition.

The team brings to New Orleans not only international acclaim and design excellence but remarkable diversity. St. Martin, Brown & Associates, Kulkarni Engineering, Julie Brown, Carol Bebelle, Moffatt & Nichol, Development Strategies and Robinson et al. complete a team that includes African American, Indian American, Latin American, female, male, local, national, international, ambitious youth on the rise and highly-experienced mentors at the top of their professions.

The team will provide design and development planning services for the redevelopment of the New Orleans Riverfront from Jackson to Poland Avenue. Over the course of the last twenty years, fundamental changes in the maritime industry have resulted in major restructuring and consolidation of New Orleans’ port operations.

Today, we have for the first time in 150 years the lifetime chance to reconnect the city to its riverfront and embrace it in new and exciting ways. New Orleans, the nation’s most soulful city—so often at the vanguard of American creative culture—stands poised to realize a new 21st century urban landscape that will become a model of design excellence.

This is no small task. New Orleans is asking these talented professionals to prepare a bold and specific development plan capable of redefining the riverfront and transforming the city’s edge into an internationally prominent waterfront. We are looking for a contemporary symbol of a reinvigorated city. We are looking for individual elements animated by voice, light, view and human footsteps. We are looking for an ensemble, a consonant whole which redefines this waterfront. We want the greatest riverfront in North America. We want to reinvent the Crescent.

Planning began in February and is expected to be complete in June 2007.

http://www.neworiverfront.com/nemo.html

Continued» 

The New Orleans Building Corporation, a public benefit corporation that owns, develops, and operates properties owned by the city, is turning to big-name architects to help develop a stretch of the city’s riverfront.

On November 3 the group announced five finalist teams made up of architects, urban planners, landscape architects, engineers, and consultants. Architects on the teams include Zaha Hadid with Baton Rouge-based Trahan Architects; New York–based Reiser + Umemoto with New Orleans–based Studio Matrixx; Frank Gehry, FAIA; Mexican firm TEN Arquitectos with New Orleans–based Eskew+Dumez+Ripple; and Studio Daniel Libeskind with New Orleans–based Mathes Brieere Architects.

“I’m thrilled that people recognized at the top of their profession have stepped up,” says the building corporation’s executive director Sean Cummings, a local hotel developer. “It would be really exciting for this community to do something very contemporary that is still based in this place.” The group had issued a request for qualifications on September 18, sending special invitations to big names including Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, FAIA, Richard Rogers, Morphosis, Rem Koolhas, Norman Foster, Hadid, SOM, Rafael Viñoly, FAIA, SHoP Architects, and Field Operations. The corporation has a $500,000 budget for its search.

» Read the entire article.

 

"New Orleans is one of the world’s great cities, home to a culture of invention that has seeded the nation’s music, literature, cooking, art, and business. The unfortunate destruction wrought by Katrina provides an unparalleled opportunity to rebuild the city employing world-class design.

Fortunately, most of New Orleans’ unique urban character remains. The city’s marvelous and unusual street grid remains intact. Most of the historic architecture survived the storm. Citizens are anxious to rebuild. Many neighborhoods are organizing and beginning their planning process. They want to do so in a fashion that will support the city’s character, while providing for a safer, more sustainable future.

We are seeking visionary, yet practical responses to the challenge of reinventing the city’s waterfront. Respondents are urged to think outside the box, but to remember that the box must still be built at an affordable price.

Think. Imagine. Create. "

www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=122

 

The Bring New Orleans Back Commission was established by Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, Louisiana, after the flooding caused by a major civil engineering failure in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.[1]

The goal of the commission is to advise, assist, plan and help the City of New Orleans develop recommendations on all aspects of rebuilding. The Bring New Orleans Back Fund is also a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
[Source: Wikipedia]

bringneworleansback.org

 

By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS

Not far from the madness that was Mardi Gras in downtown New Orleans, developers are hoping to start a frenzy of their own—in real estate along the Mississippi River. The French, it turns out, knew what they were doing when they built the Vieux Carre at the bend in the river. That section of the city didn't flood after Hurricane Katrina, even after the levees broke, because it was on higher ground. Now, while homeowners in suburban New Orleans worry that neighborhoods will be bulldozed for parks and greenways, the moneymen are hoping to lure people back into the city to live nearer the waterfront.

A half dozen developers, including Donald Trump, are eying high-rise condo projects downtown that would offer stunning views of the mighty Mississippi. The Port of New Orleans just signed an agreement to open up four miles of riverfront for development, including a one-mile-long park replacing wharves. Nearby, developer Pres Kabacoff's $318 million plan to transform the St. Thomas housing project into River Garden—a mixed-income neighborhood with Creole cottages, Victorian doubles and Greek Revival houses—should get back on track this month. And a few blocks away, KB Home, one of the nation's largest builders, will turn dirt this spring on 58 lots for Orleans-style homes. With $50 billion in private insurance payouts and government help on its way to the region, Mayor Ray Nagin is predicting an "explosion of growth," especially downtown.

Nagin, who is up for reelection April 22, is finalizing the rebuild plan prepared over four months by his Bring New Orleans Back Commission (see plans at www.bnobc.com). The final release is expected next week. Some 70 neighborhood groups, divided into 13 planning districts, attended a meeting with the mayor last month and have until late May to submit rebuilding plans in each area of the city. Already, neighborhood associations from heavily damaged areas like the lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and Lakeview are tracking down residents, finding out who is returning and what services are needed. (For a complete list of neighborhood meetings, go to Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans at www.prcno.org.)

» Read the entire article.

» Download the article (PDF)
 

Levee work might imperil French Quarter

» Download this article (PDF)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The government's repairs to New Orleans' hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn't be helped, at least for now.

Experts say the stronger levees and flood walls could funnel storm water into the cul-de-sac of the Industrial Canal, only 2 miles from Bourbon Street, and overwhelm the waterway's 12-foot-high concrete flood walls that shield some of the city's most cherished neighborhoods.

The only things separating Creole bungalows and St. Louis Cathedral from a hurricane's storm surge are those barriers, similar in design to the walls that broke during Katrina.

"A system is much like a chain. We have strengthened some of the lengths, and those areas are now better protected," said Robert Bea, a lead investigator of an independent National Science Foundation team that examined Katrina's levee failures. "When the chain is challenged by high water again, it will break at those weak links, and they are now next to some of the oldest neighborhoods, including the French Quarter, Marigny, and all of those areas west of the cul-de-sac."

J. David Rogers, another engineer with the National Science Foundation team, concurred with Bea's assessment that the French Quarter may now be in more peril than before Katrina.

» Download this article to read the rest.]

 

Katy M. Boutwell, Les Amis Marigny, October 1999

» Download this article (PDF)

Kady Boutwell was recently interviewed about responses to floodwall problems by the agencies involved.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Kady still questions how yearly inspecitions of the floodwall didn't uncover the plugged drains, leaking joints (seepage is expected below ground, but there shoudl not be leaks along the above ground wall) and deteriorating railroad tracks? By getting involved aafter the Council directed them the Corps has pulled together the other agencies involved. Everything now pases the Corps' desk first, and they are coordinating efforts.

The Levee Board: Kady believes they should have taken the complaints seriously a year ago and not waited until the Council became involved. They cleaned the drains and then reported that everything was fine. However, Kady inspected their work and found that areas around the cleaned drains had sunk and the water was not draining into them. Several pictures and explanations later the problem was finally acknowledged. She believes that they are now working well with the Corps as team platers.

Sewerage and Water Board: An inital inspection by the S&WB suggested that their pipes were in order, but in fact it was an abandoned S&WB pipe that was problematic. This was eventually fixed. The biggest remaining problem seems to be the S&WB's lack of money. They are willing engouh to effect repairs but budget problems preven them from doing all that is necessary.

» Download this article to read the rest.

 

John Tierney, New York Times

» Download this article (PDF)]

If you love cities, this is a time for optimism. Now that the stadium planned for New York’s West Side is dead, it doesn’t look likely that the Olympics will be coming to New York.

If the city had gotten the 2012 Games, its leaders would have basked for seven years in Olympic photo opportunities, and mayors across America would have watched enviously. They would have succumbed further to what I think of as the Circus Maximus syndrome.

The victims of this urban-planning syndrome believe, like some Roman emperors, that a leader’s prime civic responsibility is to build entertainment palaces for the masses. American mayors haven’t yet built anything quite like the Circus Maximus, where a quarter of a million Romans watched chariot races, but their combined output makes it look puny.

They’ve endowed downtowns with stadiums, arenas, theaters, concert halls, museums, and aquariums. They imagine drawing hordes of out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the visitors don’t materialize, the mayors’ solution is to build an even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door.

» Download this article to read the rest.]

 

by Fred Bernstein

» Download this article (PDF)]

At noon on a Sunday, the streets of the most exclusive neighborhood in Charleston, SC, the square mile south of Broad Street on the city’s historic peninsula, looked like a movie set—minus the cast and crew.

Pastel-colored houses appeared freshly painted; gas lamps flickered (despite the glaring sunlight); and ornate fountains gurgled in courtyards behind wrought-iron gates. Occasionally, a tourist sauntered by, guidebook in hand, checking out the Georgian, Federal and Greek Revival mansions. But actual inhabitants were nowhere to be seen.

These gracious houses, commissioned by merchants in the 18th and 19th centuries, are still private homes. But they are attracting a new type of owner—one that has Charleston alarmed.

The locals call them “drive-by neighbors”—wealthy outsiders who restore houses to perfection, but then shutter them and rarely appear, preferring to spend the bulk of their time in other homes in other cities. Some drive-bys come for the 17 days of the Spoleto Festival, an arts gathering that enlivens the city each spring, and then close up their houses. Others may parachute in for Christmas or show up for a few days in the fal» Download this article to read the rest]