Who is Tonya Pope's secret partner this time?

Tonya Pope is appealing (well, at least making  a public appeal through the media) the city's decision to exclude her from the list of finalists in the latest Six Flags redevelopment sweepstakes. 

TPC-NOLA Inc., which has long sought to revive the former Jazzland theme park at the Six Flags site, said in a formal protest Friday that the selection committee used "inconsistent, subjective and biased scoring" when judging six proposals for the abandoned property.

"Inconsistent, subjective, biased," maybe! That doesn't necessarily have to mean gender bias, specifically, although Pope does claim that too.  But, again, maybe. There certainly seemed to be some degree of favoritism involved when the finalists were announced.  And, besides, Pope knows more about this process than just about anybody by now.  Her company has been one of the very very many who have put together multiple proposals over the course of very very many attempts by the city to snag a developer for this cursed property.  

In the most recent round prior to this one, her plan involved... some kind of wax museum or something? Maybe that sounds wacky, but it's hardly the craziest thing that's been proposed so far. Nor is it any stranger than what the current front-runners have on the table. What's intriguing, though, about Pope's current bid is that the city says she was docked points in the evaluation process for not disclosing an important financial backer.

TPC-NOLA received 328 points. Committee member Nicole Heyman criticized that group for failing to identify its partner company, while committee member Jeff Schwartz rapped it for failing to prove it had obtained financing to build its proposal.  

Pope, the company president, said Friday that while her group did not want to out its partner at the public selection meeting, it is willing to provide that information to committee members privately.

Well who wouldn't be reassured by that?   It's not like Pope's partners in previous bids could have raised any questions.  The wax museum project was supposed to involve former Governor Edwin Edwards.  And in 2014, her proposal was backed by a certain financial outfit of note. 

Paidia's bid calls for a $50 million initial phase that would reconstruct the heart of the Jazzland park by next spring. Much of the money would come from a $25 million construction loan financed by First NBC Bank and federal tax credits for revitalization projects in impoverished neighborhoods. Paidia is also counting on another $10 million in private financing for equipment, $8 million in state tax incentives and $2 million in corporate sponsorships, according to its proposal.

 Really, in hindsight, it's remarkable that one didn't get done.  

Anyway, let's hope the committee takes Pope's complaint seriously enough to giver her another chance. If only so we can find out who the heck she's got on the team this time. 

Well that's what we've got What do y'all got?

Step five ga-jillion and seventy two in a never-ending series of steps toward the time when we inevitably just dynamite the old Six Flags back into the swamp is, yep, more public input.

Come September, residents can sound off about the latest plan to transform the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East, officials said this week.

City officials are considering a plan to turn the site into a place where people can ride ziplines or hike and learn about the shrinking Louisiana coast.

Those kinds of attractions, which have been considered part of the ecotourism or adventure tourism industries, have grown in popularity in the U.S. and globally in recent years.

That's after the latest consultant to plug the site into a random land use generator came back with ZIPLINES OF RESILIENCE. 

Prior to that it was Cyndi Nguyen's Indoor Water Park For Families Presented By Cyndi Nguyen.

Prior to that it was Tonya Pope and Edwin Edwards's Wax Museum

Prior to that it was Frank Scurlock's Zipline and Katrina Museum featuring John Young and a monorail, maybe?

Prior to that it was Scurlock with a different configuration of ziplines

Prior to that it was Pope with "dining and retail"

umm... here is a different consultant being called in

Prior to that Scurlock wanted to do one of those Noah's Ark amusement thingies.

Box retail!

This is sneakily my favorite episode. These guys went to jail after claiming to investors they had a contract to demolish the park for scrap metal.

More consultants!

We can go further back (all the way to Ed Blakely times, in fact) to find other proposals for movie studios, "advanced manufacturing" outlet malls, etc. Most of these presented by Scurlock, Pope, or Danny Rogers over and over again. But somehow we keep landing somewhere in the monorail/zipline zone. 

So, yeah, maybe everybody really is out of ideas. What have y'all got? 

Okay whose idea is this?

Somebody is talking to Cyndi Nguyen about doing something with Six Flags.  She didn't just suddenly get up one day and think, "Hey and indoor water park sounds neato," to herself.

Still, her own ideas for some of the district's most notorious boondoggles and persistent areas of blight can seem a touch outlandish.

Nguyen wants to turn the old Six Flags site, which has been abandoned since just before Katrina, into an indoor water park. The closest outdoor water parks are in Baton Rouge and Gulfport, Mississippi. An indoor park, she said, could be a moneymaker year-round.

Again, no, that's not "her own idea." Somebody brought that to her. The article says she is working with the mayor to "tap a consultant" for advice on Six Flags (which, I mean, good lord, right?) and she's certainly gotten some input. I think I've seen Tonya Pope's organization tweet at the mayor a few times. (How is that wax museum coming along, by the way?) Toward the end of this article we see one of the several previously rejected bidders for the property, Danny Rodgers, showed up at the IDB meeting where they agreed to let Cantrell take over the process. Rodgers, at the time, was still talking about a water park. Maybe he's talking to Nguyen now. 

I hope someone talks to her about this, though.  The people of this city... and the Lower Ninth Ward, in particular... have had just about enough nonsense about how we're going to solve our problems with branding.

She’s also dropping little hints that District E, which comprises New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward, needs a new attitude. She calls her district “The E,” while the Lower 9th Ward has become “The L9,” nicknames she hopes will subtly shift public perceptions.

But what about the wax museum?

Good news! The Cantrell Administration is not ready to give up on redeveloping the Six Flags site.  They just need another year maybe.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell wants her shot at finding a developer for the abandoned Six Flags property in New Orleans East, and the Industrial Development Board has agreed to give her a year to try.

The board on Tuesday (June 12) voted to enter into a new agreement with Cantrell's administration after the agreement with former Mayor Mitch Landrieu expired on May 31. The agreement essentially allows the city to control the redevelopment process for the 227-acre amusement park that was abandoned after Hurricane Katrina.

Only one disgruntled former bidder shows up near the end of the article this time. (There's at least one in every new episode of this. It's kind of a running trope.) But it doesn't give us an update on Tonya Pope's Edwin Edwards funded wax museum.  I'd like to read more about that.  Will it exist before a plan for the Six Flags site does?

Can we build a monorail out of wax?

During his final year in office Mitch Landrieu learned for himself something that many others had discovered before him.  Nobody knows what to do with Six Flags.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration has not been able to find anyone to redevelop the site of the old Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans East, meaning the property will pass, untouched, from one mayor to another for a second time.

A Landrieu adviser conceded Tuesday that she had no news to share with the public board that manages the site, nearly a year after the same adviser announced Landrieu’s office would take the lead on redeveloping it.

Responsibility for the vacant 140-acre property now falls to the 15-member Industrial Development Board and Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell, who will be sworn in next month.

When Mitch took charge of the proposals last year, it sparked a round of rumors and conspiracy theories about one or another ways a "fix" might be in the works.  Who knows if any of that was true. I suspect none of it was. But whatever he had in mind, it turned out "the timing" just wasn't right for it. Or at least, according to him, in retrospect, this is the reason nothing has happened.

But no such plans have materialized, Conwell said Tuesday, though she said the city still believes the site can be financially successful.

She also hinted that any project that might have come through was complicated by Landrieu’s impending exit from office.

“It is logical that anyone considering such an investment on this site would, given the timing, want to avoid the transition period between administrations,” Conwell said.

So they're saying there's a chance.

But, really, should they even be encouraging anyone at this point? The previous several attempts at this resulted in escalating frustrations at the Industrial Development Board as the same two or three bidders kept coming back with different versions of the same harebrained schemes. It got so bad at one point that the board called the proposals, "an insult to the people of New Orleans." This is also, famously, the process by which we came to know Frank Scurlock. And look how well that worked out.

But it was never only about Scurlock. There were other serial bidders with strange ideas and shoddy financing as well.  Does anybody remember this scrap metal scam, for example?  I think that's the only instance where the foolishness rose to the level of actual criminal activity. But there's always been the potential for that. And, of course, there is still time for more. Which is why it's a good idea to keep an eye out for anything having to do with Six Flags that maybe seems a little off. For example, there is this nugget at the bottom of the above linked Advocate story.

There was at least some positive news Tuesday: Developer Tonya Pope, who has long sought to revive the former Jazzland Theme Park at the site, announced that she will build a $20 million wax museum near the site instead.

That’s a modified version of a plan she and her partner, the now-closed Musee Conti, announced last year to feature the museum’s wax figures as a Jazzland theme park attraction.

Jazzland operated only two seasons before going bankrupt. It was sold in 2002 to Six Flags Entertainment, which had its own financial problems over its three-year tenure and never reopened the site after Katrina.

Pope said her project has received financial backing from former Gov. Edwin Edwards and is expected to be open by late 2018 or 2019.

Pope doesn't have Six Flags but she does have $20 million to build a wax museum near the still rotting site of Six Flags. That seems normal.

Previous to this, Pope has been involved with a company called  TPC-NOLA, a partner in bids on the property going back at least as far as 2011 when it was eliminated in the early rounds.  The next year, the winner of that prestigious contest sank into the swamp after the Riverwalk outlet mall redevelopment basically duplicated what they wanted to do in a better location.

The process didn't begin again until 2014 when IDB had a hard time getting anybody to apply.  Only Pope's group had put together a bid before the application deadline. This time, they claimed to have "spent the last two years maturing the plan and getting a lot more support from the community and business leaders."  What she meant was that they got Ashton Ryan's Money Club to buy in.

Much of the money would come from a $25 million construction loan financed by First NBC Bank and federal tax credits for revitalization projects in impoverished neighborhoods. Paidia is also counting on another $10 million in private financing for equipment, $8 million in state tax incentives and $2 million in corporate sponsorships, according to its proposal.

This is exactly the kind of shaky investment scheme that would go on to cause the spectacular collapse of FNBC. (Please see the Advocate's excellent reporting over the past year and a half.) The IDB seemed to sense a problem at the time. So they extended the deadline.  Only Scurlock showed up to join in the bidding, though. Unsurprisingly, his proposal was even less sound than Pope's and the whole thing was scrapped again.

Throughout this process, the IDB became increasingly uncomfortable with its position as a landlord. It's not really something that board is set up to do. So it was desperate to just sell the property off in 2016 when Pope came calling again.  But it wasn't clear what her plans were for development. Something about "mixed-use" dining and retail or whatever. But evidently not enough to convince anyone of anything.

In 2017, she came back again, along with Scurlock and a surprise last-minute bidder who just jumped up out of the audience.

As the board heard from the two groups making purchase offers as listed on the agenda, Henry Klein, an attorney who said he represents 30/90 Development, said his group wants to offer $5.5 million for the property, while giving no details who's involved in the group or their plans for the Six Flags site. Klein left the meeting while it was still ongoing.

IDB member Justin Augustine said people jumping out of the audience to make an offer is "not a professional process" and urged the board to use a more professional method to receive offers.

It was shortly after this episode that Mitch stepped in saying he was going to find a developer on his own.  Last month, we were not surprised to learn he was unsuccessful.  But, hey, the new mayor is installed now. And maybe we'll see where it goes when she gets back around to dealing with this. In the meantime, Pope will (maybe) be right there in the neighborhood playing around with her wax dolls or whatever.