Heating up

It was surprising to learn from real estate professional Stacy Head that the Dew Drop Inn is "hot" now.

Through strategic, persistent and well-organized advocacy, long-standing neighborhood issues like blighted housing can be resolved. Just as Freret Street blossomed after Hurricane Katrina, Head considers LaSalle Street around the Dew Drop Inn as the next “hot” area for redevelopment.

It was just last month, however, that we learned that the latest attempt to develop the venue has failed.  Maybe Stacy means that makes it "hot" now for an opportunistic and well capitalized investor to swoop in now.  I don't actually think it would be Sidney in this case. But I did mention in that post that there is a "cultural overlay" district on LaSalle Street there. This is probably what Stacy is thinking about.  More importantly, though, the "opportunity zone" rules look like a tax shelter scam for parked money. 

So it's possible that we could see "investment" in the area that drives up land values without actually creating anything.  That's "hot" as hell.

Maybe Sidney can buy it

Probably we shouldn't speak such things into being but Sidney has been running around scooping up iconic New Orleans properties as well as bars/music venues lately.  And, well, now it looks like the Dew Drop Inn is available.

Plans to redevelop the historic, dilapidated Dew Drop Inn building on Lasalle Street in Central City into a modern hotel, restaurant and music venue have officially been scrapped.

A deal had been in place late last year that would have seen the 80-year-old, predominantly Jim Crow-era music venue sold to a developer with plans to renovate the two-story, 10,000-square-foot space to include 15 hotel rooms, along with a restaurant, music venue and a museum dedicated to New Orleans music.


But that deal — to sell the space to Ryan Thomas and his company Peregrine Interests — fell through at the end of the year. In late April, the effort officially ended.

Back in 2015 then councilwoman LaToya Cantrell helped create a cultural overlay district intended to spur development along that stretch of LaSalle Street. 

The LaSalle Street overlay is designed to promote businesses catering to the cultural arts and live entertainment as well as hotels, similar to what was done on Freret Street. Adult-themed businesses and karaoke bars would not be permitted.

The main benefit of the proposal would be to pave the way for the redevelopment of the historic Dew Drop Inn into a boutique hotel and live music venue, Cantrell said.

No idea why karaoke is prohibited.  Maybe that's what killed the Dew Drop plans. In any case, the zoning overlay is still in place. So if somebody wants to invest in a live music club in that spot, the opportunity exists, theoretically.

BUT, speaking of opportunity, last week we mentioned this quirk in the way the Trump Administration is handling so-called "opportunity zones" now that makes them even more open to exploitation as scam tax shelters than they already were.  Is the Dew Drop in one of those? The way this is drawn it looks like it might be just the wrong side of the street. But I don't know how that boundary works, exactly. If so, it might make the land more valuable to "investors" as a vacant lot than anything else. 

 Not that this would deter Sidney from buying it one way or the other.