Taylor Circle

Last week we moved a step closer to removing symbols of the city's legacy of white supremacy from its streets and public spaces. The committee charged with coming up with new things to call all of this stuff published its list of suggestions.  There are still a lot of things that need to happen before any of this becomes official, but the results so far are pretty good compared to what we expected. This could have ended up as a slapdash of bland cliches thrown together by tourism marketers. And maybe some of that is still evident but, mostly, this list has real depth. Rather than focus solely on entertainers, it highlights figures who fought for civil rights and escaped or defied slavery. Remember the purpose of this exercise in the first place was to counter a century's worth of damage inflicted by Jim Crow era propaganda. This list does fit that aim.  Heck, Mama D is on there. Who woulda thought?

Of course, it would fit that aim even better if the commissioners had taken our advice and renamed the traffic roundabout formerly known as Lee Circle for Dorothy Mae Taylor.  According to this, they did at least try. 

Commissioners initially considered naming Lee Circle for Dorothy Mae Taylor, the City Council member who was instrumental in desegregating Mardi Gras parades. But that plan failed to get enough votes from the commission. A proposal for Jazz Circle or Music Circle also was rejected.

“I definitely respect us trying to get a win for everyone by going with something generic but the whole purpose of forming this commission was to right wrongs and to acknowledge harm,” Commissioner Gia Hamilton said. “ I personally feel like it would be against my own personal beliefs to vote on something that’s generic.”

Before settling on (Leah) Chase, some commissioners sought to include Taylor as well and name the circle after both women jointly. That effort didn’t gain traction, either.

Nothing wrong with Leah Chase, to be clear. She belongs on this list somewhere. But it would make more sense to honor her in the Sixth or Seventh Ward neighborhoods her memory is best associated with.  Uptown was Dorothy Mae's territory. There really should be a statue of her scowling down at Rex as he passes around the circle every year (well... in the years to follow 2021, that is.) 

Anyway, despite our best efforts, and until  the"Chase Circle" designation is approved, it seems for now that the more appropriate Taylor to name it after is Phyllis.  After all she does own, or control, most of the property there. 

When Circle Bar co-owner Dave Clements arrived for an Oct. 8 meeting at the office of the bar’s landlord, prominent philanthropist and energy company executive Phyllis M. Taylor, he didn’t expect the dramatic good news/bad news dynamic that was about to play out.

The good news: Taylor would cancel the Circle Bar’s rent for the remainder of the year, and not seek back rent dating to March, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the storied Lee Circle bar/music venue to close. That gesture saved the Circle Bar, already cash-strapped before the pandemic, nearly $70,000.

The bad news: The bar would be required to start paying rent again in January, and its lease would not be extended past December 2021.

Taylor, whose fortune derives from a company responsible for one of the largest - and longest running - oil spills in US history, owns, through various companies and LLCs, the Circle Bar, the parking lot next door, and the office building across the way. She also purchased the property for and funded construction of the Greater New Orleans Foundation's massive "Center For Philanthropy" building that sits diametrically across the Circle from the bar.  

Given this information plus the fact that the "philanthropic" non-profit industrial complex completely dominates not only our economy but our entire system of government in 21st Century New Orleans,  it only makes sense that this be reflected in the nomenclature.

As for the New Orleans of the 20th Century, well, that is mostly gone now. Its old landmarks are dying away one after the other this year.  Oh well, goodbye to all that. Can't wait to find out all the exciting entrepreneurial ventures Gayle Benson is going to fund during the post-COVID phase of late capitalism. So much free real estate out there all of a sudden.

The fall of Jaegertown

Once there was a big beautiful gentrifying  and profiteering dream.  But now look.

Five years ago, Jaeger was involved in talks to develop the entire area through a partnership with Darryl Berger and the Howard Hughes Corp. And while talks never resulted in a deal, last year a new plan began gaining momentum.

After successful negotiations with Mayor LaToya Cantrell over tourism tax dollars, Convention Center officials began moving forward on a 1,200-room Omni hotel as well as a vast multi-acre development filled with restaurants, shops, residences and other amenities.

In December, Convention Center General Manager Michael Sawaya announced the selection of three development teams to submit "master plan" proposals for the entire property. With development under way, Jaeger's bet on what is still one of the largest tracts of undeveloped land near downtown New Orleans looked set to finally pay off.

Since then, the shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus have sent the Convention Center into a tailspin. With events canceled for the foreseeable future, officials have said they will have to dip into reserves to cover tens of millions of dollars of expenses and upgrades to its existing buildings. In April, board members put plans to choose a master developer on hold.  

Sure COVID 19 is bad and all but consider also that Market St. power plant might just be cursed.

The old coal-fired plant, with its Victorian-era twin smokestacks, was built in 1902 by the predecessor to Entergy Corp. and supplied electricity to the city's residents for more than six decades. It has remained a feature of the New Orleans skyline even since its furnaces ceased operating when the building was sold in 1973, and there has been speculation about what its next iteration would be ever since.

Will that be enough to keep the speculators away, though?

Siegel said that the Market Street plant will likely attract the kind of long-term buyer who can wait for a possible return of plans for the entertainment district when travel and business resume.

"I would be surprised if we didn't see substantial interest from potential national and international buyers...[but] it will be someone who takes a generational view," Siegel said.

Of course, the only outcome anyone can imagine for some of the most valuable land on high ground near downtown New Orleans right now is for it to become a site for parked money from "international buyers" with a "generational view."  Things are going great, aren't they. 

Anyway, RIP Jaegertown... or at least this particular vision for it.  I wonder what the NOligarchs map will end up looking like at the end of the depression.

 

 

Free milk and a Brown's cow

A full two years after the announcement of its closure, the Brown's Dairy complex is going up for sale.  Does there go the neighborhood?

For decades Central City has been an affordable neighborhood for African-American residents. The NAACP has historic roots there. Dryades Street (now Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard) was a major shopping thoroughfare with dozens of bustling stores and an open-air market. The Brown’s Dairy redevelopment will create further gentrification and change the traditional residential mix. It could also drive out some long-time renters. The Muses, a mixed-income apartment complex, currently provides the highest concentration of affordable living units in the area.

Listing agents formulated two prospectuses for the site – one that highlights mixed-use redevelopment and a second prepared for hotel investors. Without a zoning waiver, the site could accommodate a 550-room hotel. There is already a successful Quality Inn less than one block from the site. Hospitality industry real estate broker Lenny Wormser believes the site is not appropriate for a major hotel chain such as the Marriott, whose development costs are in the range of $450 per square foot including land. More affordable hotel chains such as the Comfort Inn could build out the site for $150 per square foot or even less, Wormser said. Even at $150 per square foot, development costs could reach $30 million, a previously unheard of budget for any Central City construction project. The city could approve a height variance perhaps in exchange for new affordable housing offsite.

Why go "offsite"?  Is that even a thing being talked about or is Columbus just helpfully suggesting it?  These kinds of set aside deals are insufficient tokenism in the first place even when they're applied directly to the development in question.  Moving them "offsite" just cedes the question of protecting the neighborhood altogether.

And Central City is in need of protection.  According the most recent Data Center neighborhood profile, 67.6% of renters there are "cost burdened" (defined as households that spend over 30 percent of their income on rent.) The Brown's lots are also important in that they are on relatively high ground. Every land use decision that deliberately excludes poor and working class New Orleanians from the limited range of sustainable real estate is yet another missed opportunity to create an equitable housing policy.  When Brown's closed two years ago, it meant a loss of 185 working class jobs. It looks like the plan is to replace those with more nice things for rich people and more upward pressure on rents.

On the other hand, you could probably put like five Top Golfs on that property so, you know, best highest use, right?

Speaking of Top Golf, it looks like Joe Jaeger and Melvin Rodrigue have completely broken up now. Jaeger had been on board to develop the now green-lighted Convention Center hotel. But that changed after Rodrigue appeared to cut a separate deal to build a Top Golf on vacant riverfront land controlled by the Convention Center. Jaeger was already involved in a venture to open a competing golf arcade franchise on the old Times-Picayune property. The Top Golf plot prompted him to leave the hotel deal in a huff.

Jaeger told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune he has no intention of returning to hotel project. He said he has deep concerns about Convention Center leadership. He declined to mention any leaders by name.

Jaeger said those concerns remain after seeing the lease terms revealed in the now-quashed Topgolf deal. The situation is baffling given the millions the authority spent on consultants to develop a master plan for the acreage it owns, he added.

The Convention Center leadership includes Michael Sawaya president and general manager of Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and Melvin Rodrigue, president of the New Orleans Exhibition Authority. The 12-member authority board has a mix of business and civic leaders.

If the leadership remains the same, “I don’t want anything to do with anything on that property,” Jaeger said. “It just doesn’t work for me.”

Now, even though the hotel has been authorized and the Top Golf deal mothballed, neither side is interested in making up. Instead they are moving ahead to develop their adjacent properties independently of one another.  Thanks to LaToya Cantrell's embarrassing "grand bargain" with the tourism oligarchs, Rodrigue now has legal authority to treat the Convention Center pretty much like his own private development company. 

House Bill 617, passed by the Senate on a 33-0 vote on Sunday, authorizes the Convention Center to build and own the $550 million, 1,200-room hotel proposed for the upriver end of the giant exhibition hall. The bill also clears the way for the Convention Center to develop other vacant land it owns next to the site

He hasn't decided what to do with it yet. But whatever it ends up being, the hard part was making sure the taxpayers would back it. That's all done now, thank you very much, Mayor Cantrell.

In his email, Rodrigue admitted the vision is still being formed, though he expects convention center leadership to turn more of its attention to the future of those lands now that plans for a headquarters hotel are progressing.

“We know the type of programming elements needed to make it a successful mixed use development and have lots of ideas of what those look like,” he said.

"Mixed use," meaning some riverfront condos and retail, maybe.  There might have to be a little "affordable" set aside somewhere in there. Or maybe that can go "offsite" too. 

Jaeger is making plans for the Market Street power plant.  Or at least he would like to.  This makes it look like there aren't many solid ideas at the moment. But there are plenty of public subsidies available should any ideas emerge.

Jaeger intends to push Market Street forward starting this summer. His team attended the International Council of Shopping Centers conference in Las Vegas in mid-May. Market Street was among the projects they looked to chat up among investors. Jaeger said he and his team plan to revisit previous redevelopment ideas, including the possibility of an entertainment use for the space.

Redeveloping the century-old property will be costly. The work will likely involve environmental remediation. But developers would be able to leverage historic tax credits, Jaeger noted. The plant also sits in an Opportunity Zone, a federal tax break program that is spurring frenzied investment in real estate. That could attract investors, he said.

“It’s difficult, but it’s got some reasons why it could happen,” Jaeger said.

So here we are again with all this public money available to throw at all this vacant land on high ground.  Nobody really cares what gets built there, specifically.  Meanwhile, this city has a serious housing crisis.  Somehow, despite all the recent rhetoric about what constitutes a "fair share," nobody can figure out how to connect these two facts.  Maybe nobody wants to.

Bensonville

The king is dead. Long live the queen. 

New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is purchasing the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, adding another piece of marquee downtown real estate to the growing portfolio of Benson-controlled buildings in the area.

The deal, which is set to close Friday, puts the Hyatt in local hands for the first time in its 43-year history and follows a multimillion-dollar renovation of the hotel that began in 2010. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but comparable recent hotel sales suggest the purchase price could be around $300 million.

Benson is buying the hotel along with two partners, longtime local developer Darryl Berger, whose interests via the Berger Co. include the Windsor Court, Omni Royal and Omni Riverfront hotels, and New Jersey-based hotel asset management firm Fulcrum Hospitality.

"My late husband Tom believed in reinvesting in our community, and that philosophy has made our city a better place," Benson said in a statement announcing the transaction. "Our investment in the Hyatt will continue that legacy."

She's got a point.  What better way to honor Tom's legacy than to buy something that.. for a brief time after Katrina, at least... had a big sign at the top of its tower that said, "YAT" 



Okay so technically it said, "Yatt." Don't spoil it.

Meanwhile, this must mean it's time to update the old NOligarchs map of downtown New Orleans. Let's see, Bensonville just needs to add a little notch there to acquire the Hyatt.  There we go. All better.



Actually the map needs a bit more work than that. These territories are far more overlapping than we can hope to represent in this crude rendering.  It doesn't consider figures like Darryl Berger who, in addition to partnering with Gayle on the Hyatt also is in on Jaeger's proposed convention center hotel as well as numerous properties all over the landscape.   Jaeger, meanwhile, is an investor, along with Barry Kern, in the project to demolish the vacant Times-Picayune building and replace it with a golf arcade. This venture is the cornerstone of what we have labeled Kernworld.

All of which is to say this map isn't a true tool for examining the way the major developers have carved up the city's most valuable real estate so much as it is a piece of conceptual art.  It could be more than that but I think we need to apply for a grant first.  The least we can do for now is extend Torreszonia to reflect Sidney's recent Frenchmen Street acquisitions. The rest of it will have to live as an unfinished project for now.

Anyway congratulations to Gayle. So, hey, as a person with a major interest in the Superdome and now also with the hotel/motel taxes that fund its upkeep, does she just write the check directly to herself now?

Oh look we have a border clash

I know the old NOLigarchs map is due for some updates.  For a while there I thought I might have to extend Kabacoff's territory to Tulane Avenue. But that's now been occupied by the Israelis so we can forget about that.  Also there are other minor fiefdoms we can add when we get the time. But this is all our cartography budget can handle for now so this is what we have to go with.



We do need to point out also that the regions loosely defined on this map are not very strong on border security.  One Noligarch may in fact hold substantial amounts of valuable territory within the titular boundaries of another's domain. For example, look at all this stuff Joe Jaeger runs even though it isn't in what we've marked on our map as "Jaegerton"

As one might expect, in the world of international capital, borders are not always what they may seem.  Anyway, our map is not very nuanced.  One thing it does get right, however is the overlap and "disputed" designation of areas claimed by Motwani and by Torres.  Tensions there do continue to flare up, it seems.

Developer Sidney Torres IV has become embroiled in a legal battle with French Quarter real estate owners Kishore “Mike” and Aaron Motwani over Torres' purchase of 500 Frenchmen St., a key location in the Marigny’s busy nightclub district. In court filings, Torres claims a tenant of the building, the nightclub Vaso, is being used as a proxy through a lawsuit to win the Motwanis control of the building.

Now that Frenchmen is pretty firmly established as the new Bourbon Street as opposed to the sort of hipster anti-Bourbon Street it had been for a while, all of a sudden there is a land rush. Just a few weeks ago we learned that the Motwanis have taken ownership of the Praline Connection Restaurant which they have moved off of Frenchmen saying "“Locals couldn’t really get down here anymore." They are moving it to... get this... upper Decatur Street in the Quarter because... that would be.. less touristy?  Who knows. It's not clear to me who owns that building now so we need more information. But the Motwanis have a claim on what happens in multiple Frenchmen Street locations right now. That's interesting.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this story, in fact.  To begin with we have what Torres wants us to believe is a threat, although his word is hardly to be taken at face value. Here's what he says happened anyway, which is pretty funny to think about. Note that Motwani doesn't deny he's being quoted pretty accurately whatever he may have meant.

Torres cited a voicemail he said was left on his agent’s phone, as well as a phone call that, according to a court filing by Torres, had Aaron Motwani saying that if Torres didn’t comply with demands, “It will get bloody.” Torres' attorneys, in the court filing, cited what they described as a call log Torres' agent wrote shortly after the call, as well as a recording of the voicemail.

“I want to ask nicely for you to call us back," Motwani says on the voicemail cited in court. "But if you want to handle it the other way, we can handle it the other way, too.”

Aaron Motwani said his voicemail was taken out of context and did not reference a threat of physical harm. He declined to be interviewed but sent a text message in response to questions about the calls.

So keep an eye on this. It could change the face of the map which, as we said, needs some revision anyway. Technically all of this is taking place in "Cummingsville"  according to our drawings.  Let's hope no other belligerents get drawn into the dispute.

Wall off the carrot patch

This story about the riverfront overlay has been fleshed out a bit since we posted it yesterday. I just wanted to point out a few interesting quotes. First we have LaToya Cantrell seems to think the problem is we aren't giving quite enough away to developers. 

Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, who supported the Riverfront Overlay plan during her successful mayoral campaign last year, said the city needs to re-examine its entire incentive structure for affordable housing, while calling the units that would have been created by the bonus “minimal.”

She also said a more comprehensive approach could be provided by a study currently underway looking at how to incentivize affordable housing.

“What’s needed is a re-examination of our incentive structure," Cantrell said. "A carrot has to be created.”

The overlay allowance isn't enough. We also need to give them carrots. The carrots would be in addition to the land we've already granted to the lords so that they may purpose it toward their own profit.  For example, Sean Cummings here. 

Developer Sean Cummings said the removal of the affordability bonus was needed to “see these properties actually develop over the next 10 years or so.”

Cummings has been the driving force behind several complexes in recent years that tower over the riverfront and over Crescent Park, an amenity he spearheaded for former Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration after Hurricane Katrina.

They let Cummings build an amenity for his condos that we pretended was a public park.  So now they have to let him build all the condos without guilting him over the whole gentrification thing. It's only fair. At least until they can find more carrots.  Anyway, here's another look at our map of the feudal territories. It needs some updating in some areas but Cummingsville is still very much intact.



If its ramparts ever need defending, it looks like Cummings can call on James Gray.  

Councilman James Gray, saying he was generally in favor of taller and denser developments, said the problem was not whether affordable housing was included in the Riverfront Overlay but whether poorer neighborhoods were getting the amenities that richer and more desirable neighborhoods were. But, he argued, low-income residents would likely not want to live in a development along the river anyway.

“I’m not sure I would want to be one of the few poor people in an upscale development," he said. "I’m not sure that’s a favor to me or my children who would be raised as the poorest children in a development.”

Poor people shouldn't be allowed into rich neighborhoods. It's too embarrassing.  Maybe we should look into building some walls or something. It's certainly one way of keeping the carrots in place.

Kern World Amusement District

So now we know that, in addition to the bouncy house, they also want to put in a golf ride of some sort. 

NEW ORLEANS – A few months after a group of local investors bought the former Times-Picayune building, neighbors are learning what is planned for the site.

According to a letter mailed to nearby businesses and residences, Dallas-based Topgolf has plans to build its latest location on the property at 3800 Howard Ave., along Interstate 10.

Topgolf if a driving range that caters to families.

But instead of just sending balls soaring, Topgolf is a game in which players aim for 11 giant dartboard-like targets on a 215-yard-long field. Microchipped balls provide instant feedback to players who tee off from climate-controlled hitting bays.

A restaurant and bar would be included on the site, according to the letter sent to neighbors.

Where your newspaper once lived, let's build an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. Sure, why not? At this point, that makes more sense than anything.  At least we're getting a clearer idea of what the vision for Kern World was.

Kern World news

Lots of Noligarchs in the news today.  There's some from the con-profit sector which we'll get to later. This one is from the speculative land use sector, though.  The dream of Kernworld (a dependency of Jaegerton) grew one step closer to reality today at the CPC meeting.

The new owners of the former Times-Picayune building got City Planning Commission approval Tuesday (Feb. 7) for a zoning change that opens the nine-acre industrial site to entertainment, residential and other mixed-use developments.

The building at 3800 Howard Ave. in a mostly industrial area along Interstate 10 has been vacant for about one year. An ownership group that includes local developers Joe Jaeger, Arnold Kirschman, Barry Kern and Michael White wants to revive the property beyond its newspaper industry legacy, although specific plans for the property haven't been submitted to the city.

Peter Aamodt, representing Jaeger's company MCC Real Estate, said the property is one of the last swaths of underutilized land in the heart of the city, in an area with the potential to become a lively, mixed-use corridor. "A lot of people do see it as the next potential Warehouse District," Aamodt said after the vote.

If "a lot of people" turn out to be right about that, this would mean Jaeger has a substantial interest in both the old Warehouse District and the new one... as you can see on the map above.  Anyway it's nice to be able to make these kinds of investments in the full knowledge that friends and admirers on the CPC and City Council will be helpful when you need them.  Privilege has its privileges.

Also... 

Aamodt said after purchasing the property, the owners got dozens of calls for interest in the property, none of which involved industrial uses.

A residential use isn't currently being considered, he said. The new zoning would allow for about 486 residential units, he said, which would be about half the number of people the Times-Picayune once employed at the site.

Zing!

Also too. Odds have to be good that it will, in fact, be residential. 

Does anybody remember the Ho-Zone?

They've been slowly bringing the same concept back piece by piece. The latest effort is centered in what we've dubbed "Jaegerton" on our Oligarch's Map of Downtown. The way things are going lately, they'll probably get their way this time.  But here, at least, is a negative review from BGR.

One fact of note here I wasn't aware of. The mayor isn't supporting this plan. (At least not openly.)

Although the mayor's office opposes the plan, the BGR report notes the project and the infrastructure work would exceed the convention center's $222 million in reserves. "If that is not enough, they said they would use the HB 1056 taxing authority."

BGR was also critical of using tax increment financing to pay for Trade District work, which the bill would permit. The authority has not said it intends to pursue a TIF deal, which typically relies on a sales tax to subsidize private development.

In the report, BGR said it is not taking a stance on the merits of the Trade District or on whether the convention center board should invest public resources in the project. But in repeating a call made in its November 2015 review of New Orleans' tax structure, "The $1 Billion Question," the bureau suggests an assessment and prioritization of the city's various levies is needed.

Anyway, even though they're in the right this time, BGR's stance is predictable. They're pretty much going to come out against any new taxing plan until we start talking about comprehensive municipal finance reform.. or at least until they get bored with the notion. I'm not opposed to looking at a big reform package, but in the meantime we still have to do stuff. Just not this particular thing. 

Trouble in Motwanivania

A big building burned down on Canal Street Wednesday.  You might have noticed since it's been all over the place all day so I won't rehash it. Here is something worth paying attention to, though.

The four-story building in which the fire originated is owned by New Orleans developer and retailer Mike Motwani through his real estate company Quarter Holdings LLC. Motwani could not be reached for comment at his Magnolia Enterprises office, which operates T-shirt and souvenir shops. Quarter Holdings owns a total of 16 properties in the French Quarter and Central Business District, including seven on Canal Street.

"The key to not having a fire turn into a tragic fire like this is to have an alarm system, commercial buildings particularly," McConnell said. "Having an alarm system that would have reported something like this in its incipient phase would have made a huge difference for these buildings. Unfortunately, we know it burned for an hour and a half before we were called to the scene.

"I think every building should have a fire alarm in it. Whether you can pass legislation to do that or not, I don't know. But, to me, if you're a business owner and you're not putting an alarm in that's going to report that fire and get it to us early, you're putting your livelihood at risk."

In other words.. and at the very least.. Gee what a swell landlord Mike Motwani is! But also what a great neighbor he has been. 

Over the years, Motwani has often tangled with city officials. A 2008 Times-Picayune story described him as “the man whom local preservationists, city regulators and even economic development gurus love to hate.”

Among other reasons, the article cited Motwani’s “repeated flouting of government regulations, his failure to maintain some of his buildings and his gobbling up of Canal Street properties to open cut-rate stores that impede efforts to upgrade Canal as a shopping destination.”

Motwani owns a number of T-shirt and gift shops and is a controversial figure in and around the French Quarter, partly because of his penchant for such types of businesses but also because he often has flouted development restrictions. Some of his buildings are occupied on the ground floors by liquor stores and shops geared toward tourists, while upper floors are vacant or used only for storage.

The tastefulness of Motwani's businesses is a subjective and complicated question, of course. But the neglect of his buildings is a different matter.  The safety hazard alone is pretty well evident.  It's a significant thing, too, since his many holdings constitute Motwanivania, one of the major NOligarchies we keep track of here on our downtown map.



Motwani's territory overlaps with Sidney Torres's French Quarter private policing zone. (Mr. Torres is currently somewhat out of favor in his own realm. But this is only Act II of that particular Shakespearean history.)

Speaking of which, we wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are more plot twists to come in the drama of the Motwanivania fire.  There may, for example, be more to this than meets the eye.

Do over

Governor Edwards wants to shake up the Charity Hospital redevelopment. 

With a new governor set to take office next week, the state is likely to delay any decision on the fate of the former Charity Hospital building in New Orleans in favor of hiring a consultant to take a new look at how to move forward, officials said Thursday.

Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration sought ideas nearly a year ago for what to do with the 1 million-square-foot facility on Tulane Avenue, which was closed in 2005 after it was flooded by Hurricane Katrina.

The state received five responses to its request for “creative and innovative redevelopment ideas,” including one from developers who offered to buy the building and others from groups proposing to renovate it and lease the space.

The proposed uses ranged from a mental health facility to combinations of retail stores, apartments, a hotel and a biomedical facility.

Which only makes sense. It's a pretty big patronage plum in New Orleans and the new Governor has a lot of favors to pay out there.  Back in August, John Kennedy was urging Bobby Jindal to "slow down" the process in order to save some of these goodies for the next Governor, who he obviously assumed would be David Vitter, to hand out.  I wonder how he feels about it now.

Not sure why LaToya Cantrell thinks she's owed anything. 

City Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, whose district includes the hospital, welcomed what she described as a “fresh start” to the process.

“It didn’t feel like an inclusive process,” Cantrell said of the earlier effort, which she said did not include much input from the city. “With the new leadership coming on, New Orleans will be included on a lot of different matters.”

You might remember, though, from LaToya's bizarre, "Why isn't this all about me?" rant when City Council voted to take down the Confederate monuments, that "inclusive process" is kind of her go-to soundbite.

Meanwhile, as you might expect, some of the folks who thought they'd already submitted the necessary bribes paperwork are a little put out about having to start over.  Others seem like they have a brighter attitude about it.

News of the delay drew mixed reactions from interested developers.

Michael Brandner of CHR Partners LLC, a team that includes local developers Joseph Jaeger and Joseph Stebbins, criticized the delay, saying his group was ready to buy Charity for $30 million and spend $245 million renovating it into apartments, a hotel, a biomedical facility and retail stores.

“I don’t think that anybody was expecting a group to come forward to say, ‘Look, we’ll just buy the whole thing,’ ” he said.

But Josh Collen, vice president of development with Historic Restoration Inc., which has proposed spending $194 million to revamp the hospital into an apartment complex, artist lofts, a day care center, retail stores and a medical research facility, said restarting the process makes sense.

“I’m not terribly surprised. It’s a very important building for the state and the city,” he said. “Obviously, they want to get it right and make sure they pick the right partner and find the right project.”

Roughly translated, those comments might indicate that the Lords of Jaegerton felt like they had an inside track whereas now that the process is restarting the Kabacoffians have renewed hope of annexing the territory.  If they can, then that's good news for us. A quick look at the NOligarchs map reminds us we had already drawn the boundaries in Kabacoffia's favor.



This is probably because our cartography department jumped the gun after reading HRI's proposal.  But now we're kind of rooting for them just so we don't have to backtrack.