Iconic Structure Derby is back on

The city is going to try again to redevelop the Trade Mart building.

The City of New Orleans is launching another effort to bring the vacant former World Trade Center tower, sitting on the city's prime riverfront real estate, back into use.

Since the late 1990s, negotiations with developers over long-term leases for the 33-story tower have failed three times. Most recently, after a months-long selection process, the city broke off talks in April with Gatehouse Capital Corp., which had hopes of turning the building into apartments and a hotel.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration this week issued a "request for qualifications" which begins a two-step process to pick a new developer.

Now might be a good time to open the betting pool on which one of New Orleans's "iconic" but vacant triple towers gets developed first.  The Plaza Tower was just sold (flipped for a nice profit, most likely) and will probably be sold again before anything happens.  Charity Hospital is still not in any hurry to become City Hall.  And now we're starting over with the WTC.  

I'm pretty sure the last one left vacant just gets donated to Tom Benson for free.