It's just Dracula's castle now

It's been a while since we did a round-up of our city's most "iconic" doomed redevelopment projects.  In what's now a twenty year race to see who gets "back into commerce" only one of these has made it all the way there... for better or worse. The Trade Mart building is now the Four Seasons hotel.  Boysie Bollinger will sell you his penthouse there for $19.5 million if you are interested.  As for our other favs, well let's take a look.

Plaza Tower: Please enjoy this recent NOLA.com slideshow on the history of the tower. Last month, the city put out an RFP on possible demolition.  That didn't make Joe Jaeger, the building's current owner, very happy. Both Jager and the city have made vague references to possible sale in the works.  But nobody knows who the buyer might be.

Six Flags: As of this past October, Troy Henry has a lease on the property and, apparently, the green light to begin demolition.  He does not, however, have any partners lined up to operate any of the attractions and amenities his pitches for the property have promised.  Nor does he have any financing outside of the potential public subsidy should anything materialize.

Municipal Auditorium: Thankfully this will not become the next City Hall. What it will become remains anyone's guess. There is finally a plan in place to spend the $37 million in FEMA funding to "stabilize" the structure. The years of arguing over what to do with the building almost allowed that to expire. But, even now, there's still no agreed upon vision for the building. An RFP could come soon though.

Charity Hospital: There is news today! Not very encouraging news, of course.  Remember that years-long and very pained public process of getting various entities private and public (LSU, Tulane, the state and city governments, a developer partnership called "1532 Partners") to agree on a development plan? Well that's all scrapped. Instead they're doing this new thing. 

The Domain Companies, a New York firm known in New Orleans for developing the South Market district on Loyola Avenue, has finalized a deal to take over redevelopment of the old Charity Hospital, a project that is more than three years behind schedule and has at least doubled in cost.

What will they build now?  Unclear. But as a placeholder, please enjoy a bunch of gobbledygook.

Domain CEO Matt Schwartz said he isn’t ready to unveil updated plans for the building, but he said the project’s most important component — Tulane’s presence as anchor tenant — will remain the same. Other elements, such as the specific number and configuration of apartments, labs and offices, will be adjusted to make the project more financially feasible.

“Some of it will have to be retooled to make sure the different components are speaking to each other,” Schwartz said in an interview Tuesday. “We are looking at rightsizing the different components for viability, finance ability and making sure we’re targeting the right market and right demographics for what will work.”

The project was originally estimated to cost $250 million, and was later revised to $300 million. After the pandemic, interest rate increases and inflation drove up construction costs. Sources familiar with the project said it could cost as much as $600 million now.

Thumbing back through our notes we are reminded that in 2019 the LSU board gave its final approval to the plan while meeting in Shreveport in order to get as far away as possible from any objections from the New Orleans public. Even at that moment, the emphasis was already moving away from "innovation hubs" and affordable housing and toward condos and STRs. 

Plans for the project also include renting about 150 residential units to Sonder, a short-term rental company that already has significant operations in New Orleans. That would be about 50% more units than would be allowed for the property under short-term rental rules the City Council passed earlier this year, which bar renting more than 25% of the units in commercial buildings to tourists.

And, now, what with all the "right sizing" and "market targeting" Domain is going to do, who knows what they'll end up with. 

Danger! Exploding real estate

It looks like the on again, off again, proposal to move City Hall over to the Municpal Auditorium site is trying to be on again.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell is taking the first steps toward perhaps converting Municipal Auditorium into New Orleans’ next City Hall.

Several previous mayors have talked about moving city government out of the building on Perdido Street that it has occupied since the late 1950s. The possibility of a move was given new support last fall, when a study commissioned by the Cantrell administration found the current building was in serious disrepair and not well configured for the current and future needs of the city’s government.

And with $41 million in FEMA funds on the table for renovating Municipal Auditorium, administration officials are homing in on it as their future home.

As far as I can tell that $41 million in FEMA funds has been and continues to be the main motivation for keeping the Auditorium on the list of potential sites. By all accounts, the difficulty of renovating the building, the lack of space, and probable opposition from the surrounding neighborhood all seem to be factors working against it.  The only positive argument for it in my mind is the old line Carnival Krewes who used to stage their balls in the Auditorium still view it as a kind of holy ground. Permanently desecrating their monument with city offices does hold a certain symbolic appeal.

The other thing that's happening is they are running out of options. The long rumored Charity Hospital option favored by Mitch Landrieu came off the board late last year when we handed most of that over to Sonder.  Also I see the VA building mentioned as one alternative in that T-P article. I may be misremembering this but I believe I heard that suggested as one possible desitnation for the soon-to-be-displaced Ozanam Inn.* The defunct Naval Support Station property has also been mentioned in the past but there are multiple problems with that including the fact that it's so out of the way for most people.  Generally one would think that a City Hall should be centrally located and accessible to transit.

I say "would think" that because Jay Banks has other ideas.

Banks said his first choice would be to move City Hall — along with the Sewerage  Water Board offices and Civil District Court — to a campus in New Orleans East, where their employees could provide an economic shot in the arm for the area.

Would it "provide an economic shot in the arm," though?  How? This seems highly doubtful.  Maybe Jay can produce some research.  Or, more likely, he's just making stuff up. Worse than that, he is making stuff up from out of a brain conditioned to make decisions about public services and land use based primarily on speculative ideas about real estate values.

For example,

Then there’s the possibility the city could recoup some of its costs by selling the property that now houses City Hall and Civil District Court, taking advantage of a real estate boom in the Central Business District.

Have we not heard enough about things going "boom" downtown lately? Maybe it's time to back off of that for a while.

* Update: Well now we know where Ozanam Inn is going so that's something.  Still no word on what's supposed to happen to the building they're vacating, though.

Everybody is turning in their homework today

LSU made the proposals from the two remaining bidders for the Charity Hospital redevelopment available to the public today.   There are PDFs of each appended to that NOLA.com article if you really feel like pouring over all that stuff.

The oddest thing to me about the 1532 Tulane Partners group is they have an agreement with the school board to allow one or more charter schools to become tenants. I'm not sure that fits well in practice. Maybe if they're actually committed to affordable housing in the building as well then there's something to that. But it's unusual. At least for New Orleans it is.

As for HRI, they have an even  bigger problem.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell on Tuesday (Sept. 18) said the Municipal Auditorium, vacant and damaged since Hurricane Katrina, is being eyed as a site for a new City Hall, and that she's concluded the current building is past its useful life.

Cantrell's comments came during a breakfast event with the Bureau for Governmental Research during a question-and-answer session that covered topics ranging from the Sewerage & Water Board to budget issues. Her statement has the potential to throw water on plans for the redevelopment of Charity Hospital, which has been viewed by both city planning consultants and the development team at HRI Properties as a new home for City Hall and the Orleans Parish Civil Court.

HRI's proposal is worded in a way to suggest there are contingency plans but it also strongly suggests that City Hall would be their ideal anchor tenant. 

More on all of that City Hall business later, though.  It looks like the City Planning Commission also dropped their much anticipated report on short term rentals this afternoon. I've really only just glanced at that but here it is.   It's expected to be formally presented at the CPC meeting next Tuesday.

Doesn't anybody want this grift?

The city says it is a step nearer to shaking some money out of FEMA to restore the Municipal Auditorium. After that the task will be identifying which developer will be handed the public money in order to put the building "back into commerce" as, probably, some sort of for profit operation. We expect this is what will happen, anyway. Mostly becasue of how defensively insistent they are that it will not.

As a result, Grant said the city will hire a consultant to perform a market analysis that can be used to form a redevelopment plan. The plan is to then hold a competitive bid process with a developer who could use the FEMA money to restore the venue in a way that would make it a viable venue for events.

Asked whether it's possible that a developer could use the building for a non-public use, Grant said the city would do anything it could to avoid a situation like that.

"We'd have to be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt" that the building couldn't be put to public use again, Grant said. He added that people who used the building in the past "are absolutely adamant that it be for the public use."

Ok well we'll check back on this once they have the money. Let's just hope the auditor who wants to take our street repair funding back doesn't get involved.

Someone check on Errol Laborde for me

I missed this week's Informed Sources. Did he have anything to say about this?

The Municipal Auditorium inside Armstrong Park has been shuttered since Hurricane Katrina flooded it in 2005.

City leaders said there isn't enough money in the bank to fix it, and they've reached an impasse with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over funding for repairs.
The auditorium used to host large events and Mardi Gras balls, but now it is boarded up, littered with trash and smells of urine. Squatters break into the building at night, leaving workers to repair the entrances in the morning.

Edward McMillan, who is staying at the Covenant House across the street from Armstrong Park, said one of the first things homeless advocates told him is to stay away from the auditorium.

“I heard there's a lot of stuff going on,” McMillan said. “There's a bad situation… They (are) having sex in here. You know, people sleeping in here when they get put out from their places or they (are) homeless. They don't (have) nowhere to go.”

Errol used to be so worried about what was going to happen to the former site of his beloved Rex ball.  I hope he was sitting down when he read this report.  Not only does it say the former debutante show hall is hosting a different sort of pageant these days, but it also tells us there's not yet enough money to shoo off the vagrants. 

In a statement to WDSU, Erin Burns, press secretary for Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the city of New Orleans, said the city has worked hard over the last 11 years to get enough money to fix the auditorium.

Burns said FEMA offered $7 million in 2010, which has since been increased to $41.7 million, but she said that’s not enough to cover the cost of renovations, which the city estimates at more than $80 million.

“At this time, we have reached an impasse in our negotiations,” Burns wrote. “To resolve this dispute, the city and FEMA will enter into an arbitration process so we may secure the necessary public assistance funding to cover all eligible repairs to damage caused by Katrina.”

 That's odd about the arbitration, though.  They said the same thing back in August.

Eleven years after the Municipal Auditorium in Louis Armstrong Park was flooded during Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans officials say a check from FEMA to pay for repairs could be coming soon.

After years of fighting over the cost of needed repairs, the city and FEMA entered arbitration this month to settle an impasse in the negotiations, said Hayne Rainey, a spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

That process is expected to wrap up in the next 90 days and could pave the way for a private developer to take over management of the site.

Had they decided to put off the arbitration earlier? Because it's been more than 90 days.  Maybe there's just been a delay and there isn't anything new they can announce about the plan.   Weird, though.

In any case it hardly matters if all we're doing is fighting to throw public money into a building that we're just going to purpose toward some privatized profit taking activity like the St. Roch Market. If that's as far as our imagination can take us now, we might as well let the vagrants keep it.

The end of Errol's crusade

In the years following the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, a new Carnival tradition has arisen.  Every Fat Tuesday evening, exhausted revelers settling in to watch (and to mock online) the Rex ball and Meeting of the Courts can witness the ceremonial questioning of the mayor about the status of the Municipal Auditorium. The flood forced the Rex ball out of its traditional venue and ball commentator Errol Laborde is determined to lobby annually for its restoration.

But what happens to this now decade's long tradition if Errol's question is finally answered?

Eleven years after the Municipal Auditorium in Louis Armstrong Park was flooded during Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans officials say a check from FEMA to pay for repairs could be coming soon.

After years of fighting over the cost of needed repairs, the city and FEMA entered arbitration this month to settle an impasse in the negotiations, said Hayne Rainey, a spokesman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu.

That process is expected to wrap up in the next 90 days and could pave the way for a private developer to take over management of the site.

I guess then we can start asking who they're going to sell it to.