VA/LSU stuff

This morning on WWL radio Bob and Monica ran down a list of three "significant" buildings in lower Mid-City. On their list were the Dixie Brewery, the City Hall Annex and the Deutsches Haus (which Bob referred to as a "German restaurant"). Bob declared that the owners of all of these properties should be glad they're about to be "bailed out" by the forthcoming forced buyouts that will make room for the VA/LSU hospital project because "who would want to buy that stuff?"

As for the less "significant" homes in the neighborhood many of which have been painstakingly rehabilitated during the post-flood years, they amounted to, in Bob DelGiorno's considered estimation, "a bunch of dilapidated buildings that need to come down"

The residents of those buildings would beg to differ.



Council member Fielkow was a guest on Bob and Monica's show this morning. He not only offered no refutation of Bob's boorish statements, but instead urged listeners to rejoice in the progress ushered in by the neighborhood demolition. He also used the phrase "move forward" a lot.

Obviously New Orleans needs its Charity and VA hospitals back. No one... outside of maybe David Vitter will deny that. But the decision to build these facilities on top of an existing and soon-to-be crushed community has been carried out with little regard for the public input process and no regard for the affected residents.

And that's what this is really all about. I'm nowhere near qualified to judge whether or not renovating and reopening the old Charity Hospital building makes sense financially or operationally. I have seen it argued either way by interested parties, however.

I'm also only tangentially interested in "historic preservation". While architecturally significant buildings possess beauty and value in their own right, they and the neighborhoods they exist in are given their true value by the people who use and live in them. Karen says this far better than I can.

The decision to place the VA project on top of this neighborhood, to me, looks like yet another example of the political leadership in this city choosing to place the desires of the powerful and the connected before the needs of its residents.

But as long as people like Bob and Monica get to be the arbiters of public discussion, we're allowed only a shrug and a grunt about dilapidated buildings before Arnie Fielkow tells us to "move forward".