Plaza tower, Plaza Duncan

This is a bit from a recent Richard Campanella article about the history of Duncan Plaza. Supposedly everything is in line to build the new City Hall there. I'm still not clear on how much, if any, of the public green space will be preserved in the process.  An acute hostility toward the homeless has local leadership exhibiting a nasty tendency to close off as much public space as possible these days. But we'll see.

Campanella's article focuses on Duncan Plaza but it is really about the surrounding neighborhood too. The "backatown" area of interest in this case extends, roughly,  from S Rampart to Claiborne and from Tulane Ave to where the Superdome is now. Prior to the 20th Century, this was barely a neighborhood at all. It was only after the development of the modern drainage system that it began to take shape. Campanella tells a little bit of that story here.

Yet as the city grew, the area became densely populated, mostly on account of its proximity to the urban core, and also because mechanized drainage had partially drawn down swampwaters, allowing development to extend further inland.

By the mid-to-late 1800s, the area became part of the 3rd Ward, though locals continued to call it the back-of-town, among them Louis Armstrong, who grew up here. Later in life, Armstrong recollected how “the neighborhood was consisted of Negroes, Jewish people and lots of Chinese, (who) moved into a little section of their own and called it China Town,” now 1100 Tulane Avenue. Others dubbed the area “the Battleground,” though it would later become appreciated for its key role in the development of jazz and other cultural contributions.

Wary of the neighborhood, the city in the early 1890s selected the block adjacent to today’s Duncan Plaza for a new criminal courthouse, police station, parish prison and morgue. In 1893, workers completed construction of the fortresslike compound on South Saratoga Street, marking an early attempt to use this area to centralize governmental functions.

Throughout the early 1900s, this area ranked among the most diverse and spirited parts of the city, with such landmarks as the Knights of Pythias Temple, said to be the largest Black-owned building in the nation, and the South Rampart corridor, known as “the Harlem of New Orleans” for its rich cultural life.

Anyway as many people know, the historical character of the neighborhood is greatly diminished now. Its few remaining exemplars, the jazz  history landmarks on Rampart are falling apart. Much of it is surface parking. Some of that was turned into the "South Market" condos where nobody lives. And, of course, the Plaza Tower is there. Nobody lives there either. Or if they do, they'd better look out. 

The city is currently in litigation with the building's owner. Earlier this month, Jaeger's company sued the city after an administrative law judge agreed to assess $180,000 in allegedly lost parking revenue due to street closures near the skyscraper. Anthony Davis, who recently became the city's new director of Code Enforcement, said the city is moving ahead with securing a demolition contract now, "so we’re not waiting around to see what the result of the litigation is going to be — we’re ready to go."

Jaeger has received the heftiest fine levied by code enforcement so far since its new crackdown began — $220,000 for 11 violations, on top of the fine for lost parking revenue. In September, Jaeger attorney Mike Sherman said that the building had been under contract to an undisclosed investor since early August.

In an email, Jaeger said that the city's comments about demolition create an additional challenge for the sale of the property and "send the wrong message."

Jaeger said the buyer is still hoping to move forward with the purchase but is facing financing challenges.   

"If demolished, I believe the sites will become a surface parking lot and it is highly unlikely that those sites will ever be developed," he wrote, referring to Plaza Tower and another property he owns on the dirty dozen list, the Canal Street Hotel. He said that the Plaza Tower has been secured with netting at a cost of $1.5 million.

Anyway, as we've noted many times now, the Twentieth Century is over.  And there's a feeling that the little world we made out of the swamps is returning there soon.

Are they definitely building it ON the park, though?

This is a good quick summary of the history of Duncan Plaza and its environs. But I'm still not clear on whether the plans for the new City Hall will maintain the park as a park or will the new building go on top of it? 

Duncan Plaza has always been more than just a green space in a concrete jungle. 

For decades, the park has served as the backdrop for protests and gatherings. Now, city and state leaders have struck a tentative deal to construct a new City Hall on its grounds.

On Tuesday, the New Orleans City Planning Commission okayed the plan for a land swap so that the city can reacquire the portion of the park owned by the state of Louisiana.

The lots they're getting from the state are the flat vacant area where the State Supreme Court building used to stand.  Is that where the new City Hall will go? Or will it take over the rest of the park? Or both? I still don't know. 

In the park? On the park? Next to the park?

There's an update this morning on a plan to finally build a new City Hall. This time they're aiming to put it in what many of us have always believed is the only location that makes any sense; the same location as the current location... basically.   I say basically because they're actually moving across the street.  But exactly where across the street is difficult to pinpoint from the article. 

City and state officials have reached a tentative agreement on a complicated land swap that would allow a new City Hall to be built in Duncan Plaza, said Jay Dardenne, the commissioner of administration for Gov. John Bel Edwards, who negotiated the deal for the state. The swap, which still needs to clear several procedural hurdles, would also allow for a new Civil District Court building that judges have been clamoring for. 

City officials confirmed they've come to an agreement, but cautioned that much needs to happen before committing to the relocation plan, including subdividing Duncan Plaza and getting City Council approval — not to mention figuring out how to pay for a new building.

Back in May, when we first learned this might be in the works, we tried to get clarification as to how much of Duncan Plaza would be needed for the new building and how much would remain a public park. Although we didn't get a straight answer, I came away a little bit encouraged by the implication that the land under discussion was the vacant lot where the State Supreme Court building once stood and the Heal garage behind it.  But today, this looks a bit different. 

Again, this is all open to interpretation but it looks like the vacant lot is slated now for the new Civil District Court while the garage is out of the deal.  

The Civil District Court plan calls for its new building to go on the now-vacant site in Duncan Plaza that once housed the Louisiana Supreme Court before its move to the French Quarter. City Hall would be a separate building. Plans discussed last spring contemplated a 57,000-square-foot City Hall building and 32,000-square-foot court building. 

Is there enough room for all of that on the vacant part of Duncan Plaza? Or do they need the park too?  Seems like a simple enough question. But I still can't answer it.   

I've been around

It was in mid-June that the odds-on candidate for Man of the Year 2023 emerged in New Orleans. 

A popular chef reported missing in New Orleans over the weekend has been found alive after his family told local media he was dead, according to multiple reports.

Family of Demietriek Scott, who goes by "Chef Scott," reported the cook missing on Saturday, New Orleans Police Department confirmed to USA TODAY.

His family later told multiple outlets including WWL his body had been found on the side of a bridge in the city's Ninth Ward on Monday morning.

But on Monday night, New Orleans media reported Scott, 47, had been found alive and well.

“I’ve been around,” Scott told WVUE after he showed up at his family’s home late Monday afternoon. “I essentially just needed some time for myself.”

There's not a man, woman, or non-binary person in the city who couldn't relate to that in some way. We're around. We aren't sure if we want to be around anymore. But what else can we be?  

Despite keeping quiet on this website all summer so far, I am still here, me.  And it's time, once again, for me to try and get some notes in real quick about the things that have been happening before I forget them.  I keep making the joke about wanting to quit tossing everything into the Twitter memory hole. But each time the world's dumbest man gets a step closer to erasing everything I've tossed there forever, it gets less funny. 

It's worrisome to see what's happening to social media. But it's only one manifestation of a larger crisis in media and the internet that has been developing for a very long time. We see aspects of it reflected in the SAG-AFTRA strike over the question of who owns the right to profit from creative labor, in the proliferation of pyramid schemes like cryptocurrency and NFTs, and in the ongoing effort to impose stricter and more invasive censorship and surveillance on the population at large. S uffice to say, it's been a long time coming. We here at the Yellow Blog have been following the "kicking you off the internet" beat for many years. Recently, Cory Doctorow has coined a term that captures well the thing we've all been feeling. 

The pathology that I think that Musk is enacting in high speed is something I call “enshitification.” Enshitification is a specific form of monopoly decay that is endemic to digital platforms. And the platform is the canonical form of the digital firm. It’s like a pure rentier intermediary business where the firm has a set of users or buyers and it has a set of business customers or sellers, and it intermediates between them. And it does so in a low competition environment where antitrust law or competition laws are not vigorously enforced.

To the extent that it has access to things like capital, it can leverage its resources to buy potential competitors or use predatory pricing to remove potential competitors from the market. Think about Uber losing forty cents on the dollar for thirteen years to just eliminate yellow cabs and starve public transit investment by making it seem like there’s a viable alternative in rideshare vehicles. And we see predatory pricing and predatory acquisition in many, many, many domains.

This is the basic template for how everyone in charge of everything behaves now. Enshittification is what happens when everything in life comes down to someone with massively more amounts of power and money than you have actively making choices that put you in danger and/or rip you off.  And it's pretty much how we live now.

 

Anyway, all of this is to say that I need to post more things here in short form so I can look them up when I need them. Because tweeting them into space seems like a really weak bet for that. But I also need to get caught up a little bit. So, what follows is a small selection unrelated items I bookmarked over the past few months. It's not everything I need to save from the void. It's probably not even the most important stuff. It's just what I need to clear out in order to fire this thing up again. So bear with me a bit. 

The Ultimate Move for City Hall: From Duncan Plaza to... Duncan Plaza

I don't know if this is a function of the diminished capacity of local news reporting (support your local indie outlets while you still have them!) But it does seem kind of amazing that the state and city can hold months of negotiations over critical parcels of land downtown and the public doesn't hear about it until the day before the legislature takes up a bill to move it forward.  

Under the mayor’s plan, the state would give the city its share of Duncan Plaza and the Heal parking garage at the back end of the plaza.

In exchange, the state would receive the land under the courthouse at the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue, as well as two city streets that run alongside the Caesars Superdome and the green space along West Stadium Drive.

There are a ton of tricky points of contention between the city and state that threatened to (and still could) undermine the deal. But they did manage to get by the first legislative hurdle (mostly by just removing the points of disagreement from the law they had to pass.) So there's still a long way to go and we'll see what happens. 

One thing to keep an eye on will be the fate of the public space in the plaza itself. Recall in 2017 the city announced big plans to turn the park over to the DDD for a major renovation. But the goal seemed to lean toward limiting public space in favor of monetization.  Which would be a shame for reasons that then-DDD director Kurt Weigle acknowledged. 

Hundreds of homeless people took up residence in Duncan Plaza for a couple of years after Hurricane Katrina. Since then, given its proximity to City Hall, it has been a popular site for protests and rallies. That’s been particularly true in recent months, and the park has become a popular starting or end point for marches protesting various policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Weigle said the DDD will not try to curtail that part of the park’s use.

“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.

“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”

It's anybody's guess at how sincere Weigle was about any of that. It's a moot question since he's long gone now. Also city officials have been especially hostile toward the homeless as of late which could inform the park design as well.

Gordan Plaza residents suffer one more indignity

It almost seems intentional. 

One of the first buyouts of a home in Gordon Plaza, a largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump, netted a $250,000 profit for the owner, who purchased it in late 2021 as a mass buyout and relocation of the subdivision’s residents was being discussed at City Hall.

The Dorsey family had lived at the ranch house on Gordon Plaza Drive since it was built in 1982. They’ve lost multiple family members to cancers they believe can be linked to living on what is now a Superfund site.

But the Dorseys sold the property 18 months ago for $55,000 to Treme daycare operator Lizzell Brooks-Williams, who owns several other New Orleans properties.

It really seems like this is something that could have been avoided in the process of designing the eligibility requirements of the buyout program. Unless, of course, they didn't want to avoid this scenario. Because it just really really seems like they didn't. 

A New Orleans truck driver who wanted to get into the real-estate business by starting with something cheap.

An air conditioning and heating company owner who lives in Atlanta.

A retired police officer who paid fire-sale prices for three deteriorating homes, which remain blighted but are now valued at $475,000.

All are among those now benefiting from the city of New Orleans’ $35 million plan to buy out owners of Gordon Plaza, the largely Black neighborhood built four decades ago atop a toxic dump.

One SWB scandal just flows right into the next

A 2021 WWLTV investigation exposed a wide range of irregularities and self dealing at the Sewerage and Water Board. The facet of that story that drew the most attention from law enforcement turned out to be permits officers with side gigs as contractors. The facet that most interested us was that the records of all of this were kept by, well, not the most modern of systems. 

A lot of this has been kept under wraps by the Sewerage and Water Board’s antiquated plumbing permitting system. The board told WWL-TV that no computerized database of plumbing permits and inspections exists, not even an index. The station has fought for over a year just to be able to see the room where permits are kept and maintained by Arnold and his staff during work hours.

The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors sent a scathing letter to the Sewerage and Water Board in January, blasting it for being “obstructionist” to the licensing board’s efforts to root out contractor and permitting fraud.

Arnold’s permitting office “operates on what can only be described as index cards, file cabinets and such, (and) it makes it almost impossible to for state investigators, or the public, to find information on projects,” the letter said.

Those filing cabinets and index cards were confiscated by the FBI shortly after the story aired. Jay Arnold, the main target of the investigation, pleaded guilty last month. But the problems were more systemic than just one guy's actions. As of May, McBride was skeptical that any of that had been fixed. 

Other problems going un-fixed this summer: 

New Orleans entered its fourth week of sending untreated sewage into the Mississippi River on Saturday as the Sewerage & Water Board struggles to fix a 60-year-old underground pipe in the St. Roch area.

The agency had expected to complete the job this week but said Friday that workers found an additional leak at the bottom of the force main, at the pumping station at 2800 Florida Ave. They'll keep digging to repair it.

In a tweet last week (that I cannot embed because of stupid Elon) McBride noted that the amount of raw sewage being dumped into the river is "basically all of the sewage from north of I-610," or 97 million gallons per day.

On the other hand, SWB did manage to shut some things down.  For example, it appears that the employee lounge is losing some of its frills.  

Sewerage & Water Board employees have complained to management about a host of other issues in the division in recent years, including allegations of favoritism, retaliation, unsafe working conditions and unchecked harassment. 

In 2022, a filter gallery employee filed a public whistleblower complaint that accused managers of using taxpayer dollars to build a “secret room” inside the Carrollton plant where a select number of employees would bring people to sleep with both on and off their shift.

Verite interviewed two current employees and one former worker from the Carrollton Plant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In their interviews with Verite, they confirmed the existence of what one employee described as a “secret sex room.” One employee provided a video of it, showing couches, a refrigerator, a microwave, a TV and a shelf full of framed photos of nude women.

Naturally, the "secret sex room" got everyone's imaginations going.  We'll likely see the unfortunate results of that next Carnival season.  It may not be as salacious as what "one employee" implies, though.  I mean it's not too hard to believe that a critical piece of infrastructure requiring a 24 hour labor force and which may also require workers to make themselves available during emergencies, might induce those workers to improvise a makeshift sleeping quarters on site. Now, such a space *might* be used inappropriately. But outside of one person's vague statements, we don't actually know that it was. In any case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that such a room exists.. or did anyway until this story (which is actually about many more credible allegations of payroll fraud) showed up.  Besides, from the looks of the video shared on TwiXter, the now shuttered "sex room" has nothing on the $60,000 office Cedric Grant installed when he was there.

Anyway congratulations to SWB are in order on one point. It's been a mostly street flooding free summer thus far. Who would have guessed that the one trick to getting that to happen would be record drought conditions.

Various other things are broken

In addition to the big leaky sewer pipe this summer, residents should also be wary of malfunctioning air conditioners threatening to shut down various city offices at random times, including NOPD headquarters.  

The city's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, Joe Threat, said Tuesday that the Department of Property Management has struggled to develop new contracts after an Inspector General report in 2021 found that the Department of Property Management had improperly utilized an expedited contractor approval process for non-emergency situations. 

Mohan said that attempts at emergency measures were also hamstrung by city payment issues. He had deployed 45 temporary AC units within the last month, he said.

When he tried to order another 45, he said that the supplier put a credit hold on the city because of outstanding invoices from other city departments.

Councilmembers expressed dismay, but not surprise.

"Dismay, but not surprise," is, by all rights, the city motto at this point. 

Also, watch out for falling trees. 

Cantrell's revelation that a tree inspection was conducted shortly before the accident came a day after attorney Morris Bart, who is representing the injured teen and his family, said the city was "grossly negligent" for not roping off the area after the limb fell in June.

In a text message Wednesday, Bart, who is preparing a lawsuit against the city, said that photos of the tree after the first limb failure showed obvious warning signs.

“The hole left after the limb fell clearly shows rot and damage to the tree,” said Bart, who noted Tuesday that he had hired a forensic arborist for the case.

Who knew you could even hire a "forensic arborist"? I guess that's why Morris Bart gets the big bucks. 

I'm sorry. That's Special Assistant To the District Attorney, Morris Bart now.  Gotta remember that. 

Oh and speaking of District Attorneys.. or DAs that could have been

Keva Landrum, who lost to Jason Williams in 2020, has been in sitting in limbo awaiting an appointment to the post of US Attorney for the Eastern District in Louisiana. But that expected call hadn't yet come as of this July. So she's removed herself from consideration. 

“I just made the decision on my own, based on the length of time it has taken, and no real timeframe,” she said. “I decided that for me it’s best to pursue other opportunities.”

Landrum, 50, declined to say what those opportunities might be. She has been out of public office since 2020, when she left the bench after a dozen years to run for district attorney, a race she lost to then-City Councilman Jason Williams.

She said she was unaware of who might replace her as the nominee in waiting.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, the lone Democrat in Louisiana’s congressional delegation, said Friday that he understood Landrum “has withdrawn from consideration because of the inordinate time that the process has taken.”

It’s unclear what sank her chances, but the sources familiar with the process said that Landrum had drawn fierce opposition from some progressive groups.

Wait a minute. Look "progressive groups" could certainly find numerous reasons to rightfully oppose this nomination. And maybe they did that. But I thought it was pretty clear the matter holding things up was Landrum's ties to a political corruption scandal that would fall under the office's jurisdiction. 

Peterson was an early endorser of Landrum during her 2020 run for Orleans Parish district attorney.

Landrum, in turn, hired Peterson’s husband, Dana, to help run her campaign. She paid the Petersons’ consultancy, College Hill Strategy Group LLC, $130,590 over three months. It is not clear how much of that was profit: Landrum's campaign expense reports say that much of the money went to cover the cost of mailers, postage and other items. Karen Carter Peterson reported income of $513,772 for 2020 on a federal disclosure form when she ran for Congress last year.

Landrum lost the district attorney race to Jason Williams.

See? It was in the paper. Sometimes I wonder if the paper reads the stuff in the paper.  Which, again, is why I need to get back to keeping notes. 

Various other scoundrels on the loose

The freaking "Night Mayor" has been making friends on the streets and online recently. Actually, I'll save this for later but suffice to say the city's selective enforcement regime continues to nickel and dime struggling residents while cutting favors for landlords and bosses.  In the meantime, read this. 

There are other potential ethical concerns behind Kaplan’s appointment as well. In October 2021, Kaplan formed a political action committee (PAC) called the “New Orleans Cultural Economy & Nightlife PAC,” which donated $5,000—the maximum allowable amount under campaign finance laws—to Cantrell’s reelection campaign. After Cantrell won, she created the Office of Nighttime Economy and appointed Kaplan as its director.

Irvin Mayfield was convicted for a fraud in which he diverted non-profit funds intended to support the library toward his own recording studio project. He is making restitution for that now by... overseeing the use of public and non-profit funds intended to support NORD toward his own recording studio project. 

Ron Forman is about to get (maybe? The mayor won't say for sure) $15 million in (additional.. he already has about $11 million) public funds to build yet more limited-access tourist forward privatized public space on the riverfront. The plan also involves a scheme to build a big parking garage that Ron can split the revenue from with the other thieves at the French Market Corp. 

Other stuff upcoming

Like I said, this is all just backlog. I felt like I needed to get all this down somewhere before the interesting part of the year got rolling in earnest.  We're right on the cusp.  Soon we'll know if the mayor can pick a police chief. Soon it will be Prime Hurricane Season. Soon it will be Municipal Budget Season. Soon it will be football season.  

Oh and the statewide elections are about to get rolling. Qualifying is next week! 

And this is why I would like to remind everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious car fires. They tend to happen around this time. I have been trying to keep track over the course of many years. I think this is the most recent post to look back at it. 

And now we have another to throw on the pile.

That's one week ago in our neighborhood.We actually heard it go off at about 3am. I don't know the whole story. As far a I can tell, it never made the news, which is weird because often these things do. But maybe in the context of so many things falling down or breaking apart this summer, it's just not surprising anymore. Dismaying, perhaps. But not surprising.

Programmed and managed

The primary story here is that there are apparently new rumors about where the mayor might be thinking about moving City Hall to.  But we can't get much clarity on what those are.  We can know that such plans might involve Duncan Plaza, though, because they are affecting the timeline for renovations there.

Recalling a recent conversation he had with Mayor LaToya Cantrell, (Downtown Development District Director Kurt) Weigle said he was told the city may need Duncan Plaza's land to move or expand City Hall.

"Generally speaking, we understand the mayor is looking at all options to improve or move City Hall and until a final decision is made, there could be some role for Duncan Plaza to play in that," Weigle said. The plan is for Duncan Plaza to be under construction next year, but he added that he's not sure of the timeline the city is on to make a decision on City Hall.

The Duncan Plaza redesign has been in the works for a few years now.  We keep hearing about how "outdated" the current look is but I've never understood what that means.  The article lists ways to improve the drainage and lighting that sound pretty good.  But, fundamentally, a park is still a park. It's an open public space where people are free to come and go and enjoy.  Weigle seems to have different ideas about that, though.

Weigle said the district sees the reimagined Duncan Plaza becoming a highly active space, hosting frequent exercise classes and events.

"Parks that are highly programmed and highly managed become successful," Weigle said.

In other words,  it will be "programmed" in the sense that a lot of things happen for which the city and DDD can collect fees. As for "managed" one can't help but read into that a deliberate attempt to keep the homeless and other undesirables out which has been a major obsession for city government for some time now. 

Actually, I always liked the berms

There are a couple of interesting quotes from Kurt Weigle in this story about the re-make of Duncan Plaza. City Council recently agreed to a lease with the Downtown Development District whose plans for managing the park include a redesign. It appears this is being done so that the park can be a better venue than Lafayette Square for hosting whatever Fried Chicken Festivals of the Future may come along.

“Lafayette Square has really taken a beating in the last 10 years or so because it’s such a wonderful space and a lot of people want to use it for events. But it was never designed to be that type of a park,” Weigle said.

Fine, I guess. But just say that. The sidebar rationalization about perceived safety issues is embarassing.

“A definite problem right now is the berms in the middle that obstruct the views into and out of the park,” Weigle said. “It contributes to a sense that the park is not safe, despite the fact that I can’t remember any incident (of crime) in the park.”

Do the berms make the park unsafe? Well, no, but just say that it feels crimey or whatver. That should get us more space to put the vendors' booths. Anyway, it's fine. They're probably correct. Duncan Plaza does seem like a more suitable and open space to fit the crowds drawn by the 8-10 new random food item festivals we're manufacturing every year now.

As long as they're planning to keep the public space there open to the public, there's no reason to complain. Recall that only a few years ago, the city cleared out a homeless encampment from the park just ahead of preparations to host Super Bowl XLVII. Since then, it's become a prominent gathering space for the increasing number of public protests one sees here in the Time Of Trump.


Inauguration Day "J20" Protest

Weigle says the plan is to maintain the status quo there.  But let's make sure we keep this quote handy as this process moves along just in case.

“It’s fair to say that this agreement would not be in place if we had not made a commitment to continue to support that kind of activity in the park,” Weigle said.

“Being someone who loves that part of what it means to be an American, I’d never look to curtail that in any way,” he added. “It’s something we’re looking to celebrate along with all the other uses in the park.”