Moving the loot around

The Convention Center has done some re-jiggering of the financing that will go into building its new publicly financed for private profit hotel project. There is a lot of money being moved around here. It's a bit of a shell game, though. A more cynical person than I might even think the entire purpose of it is to cause the Advocate to write this.

Michael Sawaya, the center's president and general manager, told the Finance Committee of the facility's governing board that he and his team had negotiated a reduction in the upfront cash contribution to the hotel project that will come from public funds to $7 million, down from a previously proposed $41 million.

A casual observer might read that and think, "oh so they're not taking quite as much public money."  But that's not what this is.  It just means they're taking less public money in the form of a large lump sum payment from the Convention Center.  Instead they are just spreading that money around.  For example, they are subsidizing a parking garage. 

The Morial Center also has agreed to fund construction of the hotel's $27 million parking garage, which the center will own and lease back to the hotel for a base rent of $300,000 a year plus 2% of parking revenue.

"What we’re doing is taking our contribution and investing it in the parking garage, which is a more positive impact for us and the public," Sawaya told the committee.

Why that is a "more positive impact" for the public is anybody's guess.  It probably works out well for lead developer Darryl Berger. We already know he understands the parking business.  Anyway they're also taking steps to hide their subsidy in other ways. In most cases a PILOT, is basically a property tax break. Meanwhile I'd love to hear more about this hotel and sales tax "rebate."

The other main terms of the revised agreement include: a PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, to the city of between $3 million and $5 million a year, depending on a formula related to revenue from nearby hotels; a ground lease payment by the hotel developers to the center of $250,000 a year, rising by 2% a year; and hotel tax and non-room sales tax rebates to the hotel of 8.42% and 4%, respectively.

Maybe a smart person can tell us more. But what this looks like is, the hotel is shaving its property tax liability by making up front payments to the city. The savings there, go toward "rent" it pays to the Convention Center.  Then the Convention Center kicks back to the hotel some of what it had paid in sales/hotel taxes. Remember the Convention Center is all public money one way or another so this appears very much as though it's just serving to skim away tax money the hotel would otherwise be paying to the city. That would be more or less in keeping with the Fair Sham ethic.

Again, maybe a smart person can tell me that's wrong. Will there be any at this meeting?

Convention Center leaders said they plan to hold a public meeting Monday and have invited local business leaders and other interested parties to hear about the latest proposals and express their views.

Also, this Friday is the deadline for bids on developing the 47 acre disneyland the Convention Center wants to go up around the hotel project. So hurry up and get your proposals in.  Try to keep the prison labor to a minimum if you can.

Also should mention, Citadel frequently does business with the Convention Center.  Is it too soon for them right now?

You are not New Orleans

Sorry, guys. I know you went down to the Convention Center board meeting and got very mad online in person at them for trying to take all of your money and give it to Joe Jaeger. But Dottie Belletto regrets to inform you that you are fake news.

Gavrielle Gemma, representing the People's Assembly of New Orleans, called the tax arrangement a bad deal, saying that when it was passed, "They didn't realize it would be robbing the city budget of extremely important things."

"You all think you can take the money levied -- take it to actually build a hotel which will not pay any taxes back to the city?" Gemma said. "You do this because you think the people of this city are asleep. ... Maybe it's not today and it's not tomorrow but there's going to be an eruption in the city. One that you're going to regret."

Commissioners appeared unmoved by the activists, however, and Commissioner Dottie Belletto claimed the activists were not representative of the rest of the city.

"I apologize for what you saw in this room today. That's not New Orleans," Belletto said. "I think the community just doesn't understand, so we just need to do a better job to understand these processes."

The board was there that day to listen to a consultant they had hired specifically to tell them about how good the hotel would be for the "business and hospitality leaders" who we all know constitute real New Orleans.

The project has drawn support from many of the city’s business and hospitality leaders, who are eager to add another high-rise hotel to the New Orleans skyline, especially one that’s big enough and with the facilities necessary to serve as the headquarters for major conventions.

These "hospitality leaders" will spend all day and then some touting their value to the community if you let them. Often it sounds like they just enjoy flattering themselves but there's actually a purpose.  They need to produce enough bullshit copy to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public subsidies and tax credits that go into financing their pet projects.

To help cover the project’s cost, the developers are seeking $41 million in up-front cash from the Convention Center, which is funded by a variety of taxes. They also want a complete rebate to the hotel of a 10 percent hotel occupancy tax and a 4 percent sales tax on all hotel revenue from sources other than room rentals, which would last for roughly 40 years.

The developers further have requested a free 50-year land lease from the Convention Center with four optional 10-year extensions, which BGR values at $28.9 million, and a 40-year break on property taxes, which the group pegs at $43.7 million.

Altogether, BGR estimates that the requested tax breaks and incentives are worth roughly $329.5 million in today’s dollars.

In this case they are proposing to manage that generous package through a brand new "non-profit" entity created to operate the hotel... at least until the public money pays off all of its debts. This is an unusual arrangement, according to the consultant, although not entirely unique. Unfortunately whatever information about how it works elsewhere is classified.

HVR says there are very few other hotels being proposed using this 'non-profit' method--though a couple are 'confidential and he can't talk about them'

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) August 22, 2018

Okay, well, whatever is going on in the black box there, Joe Jaeger told us a few months ago that it all ends well in 40 years when ownership of the hotel reverts to the Convention Center (and therefore, theoretically, to the public although there are all sorts of caveats attached to that we won't get into.) "In reality, this is a Convention Center hotel that will ultimately be owned by the Convention Center,” said Jaeger at the time.  Last week, though, the reality looked a little less certain.

HVR admits that there is a chance there is chance that the hotel could under perform and ownership would never revert to ownership to public (Convention Center) ownership

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) August 22, 2018

In the long run we're all going to be under the ocean anyway so maybe nobody cares who owns that particular plot of submarine real estate in 2060.  But in the meantime the NOLA non-profit industrial complex are used to stealing money for one another via a specific type of organizational format and so here we are. For example, this is exactly how the Convention Center handed Ti Martin and  John Besh several million dollars so they could build a "non-profit" restaurant school (tuition and fees $14,775) to train their subsistence wage workforce.   Many will recall also the $40 million they gave Mitch Landrieu so he could put a bunch of surveillance cameras and bollards all over the French Quarter.

The Convention Center is sitting on piles and piles of money it has no idea what to do with. And since the city itself is broke, this strikes some people as unfair. Like the mayor, for one.

In the opening salvo in what could become a lengthy negotiation over whether the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center moves forward with its plans to build a high-rise hotel, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has expressed “grave concerns” about the large public subsidies being sought by the developers.

In a letter last week, Cantrell said she had “grave concerns about the amount of subsidy this project will receive and the future implications of this project on tax revenue in New Orleans.”

Which is why the "hospitality leaders" are never shy about telling you this is all their money in the first place.

Much of the opposition is rooted in a long-standing structure that Cantrell herself has criticized. The city and school system receive only about one-quarter of hotel taxes generated in the city; the Convention Center and the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District keep the majority of the revenue.

That arrangement has long been sold as a good deal for the city because the Convention Center doesn't depend on taxes paid by residents. But Cantrell has been critical of the arrangement, saying that more tourism dollars should be supporting the city's general fund.

The city, the school system, RTA, the Sewerage and Water Board, the levee boards, the libraries, etc. all of them are expected to be grateful for what little dollars the hospitality leaders allow them to keep.  They're all broke but they're getting a "good deal."  Not nearly as good a deal as what Ti Martin and Melvin Rodigue and their friends get, of course. But as Belletto explained, they're what constitutes the real New Orleans so they're entitled.

Eventually it all works out. The New New Orleans these guys have built continues under its own momentum to spawn new growth in timeshares and short term rentals and other tourist facing uses for real estate that becomes more and more expensive even as it becomes less and less insurable.  The trick is nobody needs well funded schools, roads, buses and flood protection if nobody actually lives here.

I met with Melon at his shotgun home right around the corner from where he grew up. His house is next to a busy seafood spot and one block from one of the most central locations for second lines. The highway overpass there at Claiborne and St. Bernard avenues acts as a concrete echo chamber. It's where brass bands make sure to play their best songs.

When I told Melon he lived in a prime location for his work, he said, “Yeah, but I won’t be here for too long. This isn’t a neighborhood anymore. This is a goddamn hotel district.” Melon said his landlord is kicking him out to turn his apartment into an Airbnb. His neighborhood is one of the black neighborhoods most threatened by short term rentals. Most of that money goes to speculators instead of entrepreneurial home owners.

In a city that's already becoming just a bunch of "goddamn hotel districts," what's one more hotel, right? Complain all you want, but the fact of the matter is what you want doesn't really matter anymore. You aren't New Orleans. It's been a very long time since you could say you were.

Spirit of Charity District

This public input process for redeveloping Charity is curious. Tonight's public forum hasn't been publicized very well. Also, it's not really even about the building itself.  We don't know what the proposals are for that yet. 

A meeting being organized by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, which is leading the public engagement effort for the "Spirit of Charity Innovation District," will hold a community workshop to help residents envision what the district will look like. Design Jones LLC is assisting GNOF with a strategic plan for the district, and is helping gather public input for what it will look like.

But there will be a big piece missing from Wednesday's meeting, which will be held at the Delgado Charity School of Nursing's seventh-floor gymnasium starting at 6 p.m. at 450 S. Claiborne Ave. Although planning for the district surrounding the 1.2 million-square-foot hospital has largely been kept in public view, the plans for the building are still under development and are being overseen by the LSU Foundation (the school owns the building, a legacy of the hospital's status as a teaching institution).

The three developers -- HRI Properties, Matthews Southwest and a partnership between El Ad US Holdings and CCNO Development -- were supposed to turn in proposals five days after Wednesday's meeting, but LSU officials said on Tuesday that the date had been pushed back to Aug. 20.

A month or so ago, when we noticed the finalists had been selected, we tried to guess a little bit about what they might be up to by looking at what was on the table  during a previous round of bids that ended up being scuttled. Note that HRI was a finalist then as now. Also Matthews Southwest is in the mix. They're also a partner in the Berger/Jaeger Convention Center hotel project.  BGR put out a report this week criticizing the use of public subsidies in that endeavor. It is worth paying attention to how they are used at Charity as well.

As the T-P article linked above says, the meeting tonight is really about this "Spirit of Charity Innovation District" thingy. Here's more about that from earlier this month.

With the Spirit of Charity district, Kopplin said that city officials will be able to use a key incentive to ensure the eventual developer complies with goals set for disadvantaged business enterprise participation, as well as pursuing a mix of training and job opportunities. The tool is known as tax-increment financing, or TIFs, which is typically used for building infrastructure, using the projected future tax growth from the investments.

"There's no reason a TIF couldn't support all of those things including potentially spur economic activity around biomedical research," Kopplin said. It will require coordination between officials at the state and city levels to create a path to governance within the TIF district.

"The state and city partnership is vitally important," Kopplin said. "The city administration and the state administration seem to share a view of creating a district around (Charity Hospital) as critically important."

That is some extremely vague language explaining what the TIF would be used for but it is "critically important" that the money be put into a pile for some purpose. Partially because that's what the team of "experts" who spent five days in New Orleans  back in November said. One of them also said New Orleans is a state capital, though, so maybe not the most reliable information there.  It's also what this consultant the Landrieu people hired told them to do more of so, it must be worth something.  Look here they're trying to make one happen to help Barry Kern pay for turning the Times Picayune building into some kind of indoor golf playground. That seems legit. Anyway, TIF first and ask questions later is the order of the day.

So even though tonight's meeting won't give us any information about the plans for Charity, we can assume there are opportunities to ask them what they want to do with this TIF. Attendees could ask what exactly does it fund? They can't just say "infrastructure improvements" or "incentives" without saying specifically who benefits from them. Who gets the money? Who manages it? Who pays the taxes that fund it? What would that revenue would otherwise fund?

Most importantly, what's in it for us, if anything? Spirit? Innovation? The kids these days seem to be interested in affordable housing. Maybe someone should explain how this is supposed to help with that.

Maybe they should just give us our money

The Convention Center board sits on a bit pile of public money while the city scrambles each year to fund services. Recently they've used that money to bail out Ti Martin's con-profit and to help the mayor install security gates and surveillance cameras in the theme park formerly known as Bourbon Street.

They're happy to have finished with this business because it means now they can get back down to the much more serious job of handing even more money over to hotel developers. Just something to remember later in the year when we're arguing over the city budget again.

Who is getting lifted up?

These are some of the comments tweeted out of yesterday's City Council budget hearings by NOLA.com reporter Greg LaRose. They are from Mark Romig's presentation concerning the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp.'s budget and goals. None of this showed up in either paper's account of the hearing each of which focused on the "spirited seniors" in the audience there to comment on the Council on Aging portion of the meeting.  If you want, you can always go watch the whole six hour meeting for yourself but it's nicer when the reporters report for you.

Anyway here's what you would have learned had you happened to be following along on Twitter.  The city's Tricentennial is coming. To help you celebrate, plans are already underway to launch the next marketing slogan and hashtag everyone is sure to love.

Romig previews “Tricentennial Toast” which will use social media starting New Year’s Eve 2017.

— Greg LaRose (@GregLaRose) November 4, 2016

Get ready to be toast, everybody.  In the meantime, try not to get too over-fested.

Romig: Fried Chicken Festival was the 136th permitted event of its type in New Orleans this year.

— Greg LaRose (@GregLaRose) November 4, 2016

The plague of festivals and mini-festivals arises from the unrelenting pressure to grow the number of annual visitors regardless of the costs. Other "destination cities" are beginning to grow wary of this practice.

But can tourism be too much of a good thing? When all the undoubted benefits are outweighed by the sheer aggravation, when numbers and money, the measurable things, are eclipsed by less quantifiable downsides, such as congestion, jobs that remain low-paid and insecure, and a deterioration in life quality for permanent residents?

One European city thinks so, and is daring to challenge the conventional wisdom that tourism is the bright white hope of a modern economy. The new Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, was elected with a mandate to clip the mighty tourist industry’s wings. The last straw for residents, it seems, was the large number of young visitors fuelling a night-time economy deemed ever more antisocial. That, and the magnet that favourite areas of the city offered to petty criminals who saw tourists as easy prey.

The mayor has now declared a moratorium on new hotel licences and moved to clamp down on unregistered and illegal apartment-lets. The night-time economy will be subject to tougher policing. Business is already blaming her for killing the goose that laid the golden egg. But is she? Or is it rather a matter of the residents’ reclaiming the city as their own?

Unfortunately none of the decision-makers among our city's leadership is asking these sorts of questions. Instead we press on with schemes to jam as many visitors in as we possibly can going so far, even, as to open up the process by which our very neighborhoods are converted to de-facto hotels.  Nevermind the burdens this places on neighbors or on housing costs. We need to grow this tourism biz even more.

2017 goals of #NOLA tourism: 3% visitor growth, $7.5B in visitor spending, 75% hotel occupancy

— Greg LaRose (@GregLaRose) November 4, 2016

We keep doing this because we continue to labor under the notion that somehow we're going to figure a way everyone can "reap the benefits."

LaToya Cantrell and Nadine Ramsey have discussed wage disparities in the tourism sector. Cantrell: Let’s lift our people with tourism

— Greg LaRose (@GregLaRose) November 4, 2016

Cantrell: Locals who are culture bearers "should reap the benefit” of the increase in visitor numbers.

— Greg LaRose (@GregLaRose) November 4, 2016

But that's not going to happen anytime soon.  Not without major reforms.  The following is from a NOLA.com article about tourism and its impact published back in August. It's a helpful reference when we're talking about the return on our "investment" in the industry.

The web of local subsidies has grown so complex that few know the full extent to which tourism in New Orleans benefits from tax support. 

Hotel stays, the single largest source of the subsidies, are subject to a dozen taxes, each established under a different state statute or city ordinance to benefit one of eight different entities. Some of the taxes are further broken down and redistributed among the recipients, obfuscating the true scale of the dedications and who benefits from them.

The BGR study estimated that the hotel taxes generated $165.9 million in 2015. After accounting for all the pass-throughs and levels of distributions, the watchdog group estimated that about $126.8 million -- 76 percent -- went to tourism-related entities. The remaining 24 percent went to public services such as city government, transportation and education.

No other major American destination city devotes a smaller share of its hotel taxes to local government than New Orleans, according to a recent study by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. On average, the 17 cities in the study dedicated 65 percent of hotel taxes to basic services. New York dedicates 100 percent to its city government.

In addition to the hotel taxes, there are other special taxes and local sales tax exemptions that benefit tourism that were not included in BGR's examination. When they are included, the total dollar value of tourism subsidies was an estimated $154 million in 2015.

At present there is no plan to disentangle this web of revenue streams in a way that will allow us to "lift our people with tourism," according to LaToya's invocation.  But we're going to keep on growing the business in the meantime.  Because reasons.

So who is getting lifted up?  It sure isn't municipal government. As all those angry seniors can attest, the mayor's budget has cut most agencies receiving general fund dollars by five percent in order to shift more money to so called "public safety" priorities such as hiring another 400 police officers.  In addition the mayor is seeking to raise money directly off the backs of residents through a regressive tax on alcohol and an even more controversial proposal to double the number of traffic cameras in town.  The mayor says the budget this year is "balanced on a knife's edge."  And wherever we look, we find the poorest and most vulnerable among us are stuck with the pointiest ends of that knife.

Meanwhile, the Convention Center has all sorts of money it can't figure out how to spend.

While business has remained flat, the taxes received by the convention center have steadily risen. A decade ago, it collected $25 million annually. It's now up to $59 million, mostly from dedicated hotel/motel taxes.

Records show the center has amassed a reserve of $222 million. The reserve accumulation comes from an annual budget surplus, $25 million in 2015 - the Morial Convention Center doesn't spend all the money it takes in, even as the city itself pinches pennies to pave streets and pay police.

So while we're shaking down motorists and asking seniors to sacrifice, all of this public money under the Convention Center's purview is going where?  Right back into the tourism industry, of course. Which is to say it's going into the hands of the city's wealthiest oligarchs.  

Now the Convention Center wants to grow again. It plans to spend $175 million on a new project that includes creating a headquarters hotel.

“There will be entertainment, housing - we want the people who work there to live nearby - restaurants, attractions that are uniquely New Orleans-kind of attractions,” Johnson says. He envisions "a real 'Mardi Gras World' that the guy from Peoria that's down here in July, he can really experience Mardi Gras in a real, professionally done, multimedia interactive experience.”

Nevermind that "Mardi Gras in July" monstrosity for a sec.  Here's what the hotel project is all about. 

Things seemed to be falling into place when the Convention Center's board in early 2015 began negotiating with a group led by the Dallas-based Howard Hughes Corp. and local developers Joe Jaeger and Darryl Berger.

Hughes is an experienced national retail developer and owns the nearby Outlet Collection at the Riverwalk. Jaeger and Berger are both successful local hotel developers.

Johnson anticipated that the negotiators would reach an accord last summer and the Convention Center board would vote on whether to award the development team exclusive leasing rights, perhaps by the end of last year.

That still hasn't happened. "We're still slogging through it," Johnson said last week. "As you can imagine, it's very complicated."

It's unclear precisely what's holding things up.

One stumbling block, Johnson said, is that both sides are trying to get comfortable with the massive level of public and private investment contemplated. Although a deal has not been finalized, the board's vision for what should happen on the tract "is still intact," he said.

Johnson added that the discussions are complex and weighed down by a myriad of factors, including ironing out traffic plans and zoning changes. "We keep attending to those in hopes that we can eventually find a way to be able to accommodate everybody's concerns," he said.

Berger had a similar take, saying the deal has a lot of moving parts. "In a nutshell, it is complicated, to say the least," he said.

But he added that he expects an agreement by the end of the year, with plans being drawn up in 2017 and construction of a hotel beginning the year after that. Berger acknowledged some parties to the discussion are feeling "a bit of frustration" but said he personally is not. 

It's stalled a bit for the time being but Berger doesn't sound too discouraged. The "moving parts" referred to there involve a coordination of complicated zoning changes  and traffic planning in the works to create something the poo-bahs are calling the Trade District. Long time followers of your humble Yellow Blog may recognize this portion of our Noligarchs Map as "Jaegertown."



To this end, the Convention Center has been granted even more power to siphon off public money.

The Louisiana House unanimously approved legislation Tuesday (April 26) granting the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center new taxing authority to expand upriver with a 1,200-room hotel and entertainment district.

The bill state Rep. Walt Leger sponsored would open the way for the Convention Center to use tax increment financing, typically with a special sales tax that pays for infrastructure for a new commercial development.

Berger and Jaeger may be feeling "a bit of frustration" with the pace of things but it looks like their money is on the way. If you're a real estate developer, it certainly helps to have friends in high places willing to bend the rules in order to "incentivize" your business.  Donald Trump knows this. And look how well he's done.   But among those of us worrying whether we're about to be evicted by Airbnb or fined by an unaccountable traffic robot, it's difficult to gin up much sympathy.

Meanwhile, the Convention Center's bounty is being put to use to "lift up" some of the city's "culture bearers" after all. I'm pretty sure Ti Martin considers herself a culture bearer, anyway.

The former Louisiana ArtWorks building at Howard Avenue and Carondelet Street may soon change hands again for the second time in two years.

The likely buyer: the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, whose governing board voted Wednesday to move ahead with plans to purchase the nearly 94,000-square-foot building a block from Lee Circle for $8 million.

The likely tenant: the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute, which bought the building in 2014 but has faced numerous delays in getting its planned project off the ground.

The institute is backed by a group of culinary and hospitality industry leaders, including restaurateur Ti Martin of Commander's Palace and chef John Besh.

It paid $6.2 million for the five-story building with the idea of opening a world-class culinary teaching facility in it, but the onetime furniture store remains vacant.

So this "Institute" of restaurant barons bought a building for $6.2  million which they are about to sell for $8 million in public funds. They propose to parlay that into a public-private "workforce development" scheme to churn out more minimum wage workers to supply their businesses.  That way they'll turn an even more  efficient profit as even more tourist dollars are extruded through the machine during the Tricentennial Toast and beyond.

Meanwhile the bulk of the city's bills will be collected from residents through the most brutally regressive of means until many of us can't afford to actually live here anymore. No problem for the NOligarchs, of course. That just means more room to grow that tourism business that keeps lifting them higher and higher. This is why they have to build their "Mardi Gras In July" thing.  Hope everybody enjoys that.

What's going on in Jaegerton?

Jaegerton. It's the long, riverfront purple section of our Noligarchs map.




This hasn't been decided yet by the consultants and real estate analysts who manufacture our place names for us now, but it may eventually be known as the "Trade District."

The Central Business District. The Warehouse District. The Lower Garden District.
And now, introducing, the Trade District.

A group of developers have presented an ambitious vision for a shiny new neighborhood on the riverfront with an MGM Grand hotel, more than 1,400 residences, blocks of retail and restaurants, and a towering needle-like sculpture for lofty views of the Mississippi River.

The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which owns the vacant land, is in talks with the Howard Hughes Corp., owner of the Outlet Collection at the Riverwalk, and local real estate moguls Darryl Berger and Joe Jaeger on becoming master developer for the site.

Today these visionary Noligarchs are one step nearer to financing their dream.

The Louisiana House unanimously approved legislation Tuesday (April 26) granting the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center new taxing authority to expand upriver with a 1,200-room hotel and entertainment district.

The bill state Rep. Walt Leger sponsored would open the way for the Convention Center to use tax increment financing, typically with a special sales tax that pays for infrastructure for a new commercial development.

The New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority Economic Growth and Development District was created by state lawmakers last year but without any taxing authority.

These developers will now have the authority to collect tax revenue they will use to build hotels and condos which they then will collect tax revenue from in order to.. well.. to continue building things they can profit from.  They're creating their own little fiefdom upon what we may as well consider a riverfront "blank slate."  Hell, they even get to rename it.  Maybe they'll hire their own police at some point. The possibilities are limitless.

Disney theory

Back in March, some of us were a bit surprised to learn that the selection committee in charge of deciding who would redevelop the World Trade Center site had picked the Carpenter & Woodward Four Seasons team rather than Daryl Berger's Conrad proposal which.. according to my sloppy attempt at handicapping.. looked like the best bet.

A different losing team than the one I would have bet on was upset too. They're suing although it doesn't look like their suit has much of a chance. We'll worry about that later.. or not at all as the case may be.

Anyway, a big part of the reason the "Conrad" team seemed like a shoo-in to me was that it was loaded up with insider big-whigs like Berger and several others.

The proposal also contemplates the larger redevelopment of nearby riverfront property, including connecting both the Morial Convention Center and the former WTC building to the Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel, connecting the Outlet Collection at Riverwalk to Convention Center Boulevard and making “significant aesthetic and practical enhancement” to Poydras Street.

The development partnership behind the plan is led by local developers Joe Jaeger, Darryl Berger and Roger Ogden plus Xavier University President Norman Francis.

Many of those names also were involved in the earlier "Tricentennial Consortium" bid to redevelop the WTC and erect an "iconic structure" at the site. That bid was unsuccessful. But, because the city decided to re-open the process this year, it seemed reasonable that they were getting a do-over.

As it turns out, they were. Sort of.  They aren't doing the WTC redevelopment.  Instead they get everything else in the area.

The Central Business District. The Warehouse District. The Lower Garden District.

And now, introducing, the Trade District.

A group of developers have presented an ambitious vision for a shiny new neighborhood on the riverfront with an MGM Grand hotel, more than 1,400 residences, blocks of retail and restaurants, and a towering needle-like sculpture for lofty views of the Mississippi River.

The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which owns the vacant land, is in talks with the Howard Hughes Corp., owner of the Outlet Collection at the Riverwalk, and local real estate moguls Darryl Berger and Joe Jaeger on becoming master developer for the site.

If everything goes according to plan, the "moguls" will begin the massive nice-things-for-rich-people project with $175 million in public money, at least. 

For some reason, there's just not as much momentum in the  building things for not-so-rich people department.

NEW ORLEANS —A high-profile $30 million project to redevelop one of the city's major housing developments has stalled, frustrating people who live there and prompting one member of the New Orleans City Council to demand action.

It can be seen from the Pontchartrain Expressway, driving into downtown New Orleans. Construction at the Guste Homes site in Central City has stopped.

But, hey, priorities, right? As Bob Johnson explained a few years ago, there's a tight investment schedule to stick to if you want to keep up with the Disneys.

“What we want to do with this is make it a new experience in New Orleans,” said convention center general manager Bob Johnson. “It’s the old Disney theory: Every two or three years, Disney opens a new attraction and people that are familiar with Disney will go back.