Before somebody drops a house on you too

Local "preservationists" have not only nearly killed the hospital project (despite failing to save the neighborhood it is designated for) they've also managed to sprinkle little packets of blight all over town.

Away from the microphones and photo-ops, residents carped that if Landrieu was so zealous about eradicating blight, why was the city allowing houses removed from the site of the planned medical center to be plopped down helter-skelter in their neighborhood and left open to the elements. In the last four months of 2010, no fewer than 21 of the 73 houses removed — at Landrieu’s behest — from the medical center site wound up in the Triangle.

The medical center site, which will eventually accommodate a new Veterans Administration hospital as well as the Louisiana State University teaching hospital, is being cleared of houses that stood on 27 blocks bounded by Tulane Avenue and Canal Street, between S. Rocheblave Street and Claiborne Avenue. Early plans for the multi-billion-dollar project called for simply demolishing the houses. Most dated to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and 165 were deemed of historic significance — too many to move. But upon taking office, the Landrieu administration reviewed the situation and yielded to preservationist pressure to save as many as possible.