Free the Krewe Of Chad!

The Corps has good news!

Napoleon Avenue parade-goers can get their “Neutral Ground Side” T-shirts out of the mothballs for Mardi Gras 2017, because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that all construction on the avenue will be complete before the first parades roll in 2017.


“The project is scheduled to be complete early next year and the neutral ground will be available for parade goers to stand on for Mardi Gras 2017!” according to a celebratory post on the Facebook page for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control project.

Yay, we did it. On time for Mardi Gras. You're welcome, everybody. 

Except we won't be all the way all the way finished. 

More specifically, all major construction on Napoleon Avenue will be finished by the time the first Uptown parade, the Krewe of Oshun, rolls at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, according to information released by U.S. Army Corps spokesman Ricky Boyett’s office. The sod will be placed on entire length of the neutral ground, no areas of it will be fenced off, and no holes will remain open in the ground because construction on the underground box culvert is already finished.

If any work on Napoleon Avenue is still unfinished by that point, it will only be minor items like individual curb or sidewalk repairs, Boyett’s office said. Landscaping of the entire Napoleon Avenue neutral ground is then scheduled for the fall planting season in 2017, officials have said.

That's fine, though. It's actually an improvement on the last update, in a way.  In October, they said the sodding wouldn't be finished until after Mardi Gras. Now they're saying it will be. On the other hand, we only learned that much because we noticed they had moved the project completion date from November 2016 to July 2017. The response at that point, promised construction would finish up in December.

@skooks Spoke with the Corps. There's no (major) change in the completion date. Construction will be done in December. 1/2

— Jeff Adelson (@jadelson) October 12, 2016

Well, it's December now and the new update via this "celebratory post on Facebook" is that they are actually planning to finish "in time for Mardi Gras."  That's good news. But it's still pretty much an announcement that they've missed their target again.  Hope they get this new deadline right.