Prize hog

Congratulations! It's... a hotel and some condos.

Gatehouse Capital Corp. could get a shot at transforming the former World Trade Center Building into a W Hotel and residential apartments. The selection committee tasked with finding a new use for the vacant building chose the Gatehouse proposal over two other projects in a meeting Tuesday.

The panel will present its decision as a recommendation to the New Orleans Building Corp., the city agency that would negotiate a lease with the developer. During the negotiation period, Gatehouse will be pushed to make a stronger commitment to using disadvantaged businesses in its development and to pay more than it originally offered for the building.

Gatehouse Capital Corp. has proposed turning the 33-story building at the foot of Canal and Poydras streets into a 245-room W Hotel with rental apartments on the upper floors.

Two major revitalization schemes for the X-shaped structure in the past decade have ended in failure.

So after all the talk of skywheels and monorails and iconic.. whatevers the most interesting thing New Orleanians can look forward to on this property is a "W" shaped like an X. 

But not everyone is left out of the fun.  A few weeks ago it appeared that the Tricentennial group had reached some sort of partnership arrangement with Gatehouse so we expect they'll get to play some part in whatever happens there. 

The consortium’s letter was submitted to the city’s Bureau of Purchasing, the office that issued a request for proposals to redevelop the property. The letter does not directly revise the The Tricentennial Consortium’s original proposal, but it makes clear that the group is hoping to amend and advance its troubled plan, if the city will allow it. The group suggests that it be allowed to work with the city on a new plan that includes the building and a long-term vision for the area surrounding it. Alternatively, the consortium said, it would like the city to consider allowing it to work with one of the competing bidders.

 In fact, this may already be happening.

The noon @WWLTV newscast mentions that some sort of "iconic demand generator" could possibly be tacked onto the Gatehouse WTC proposal.
— uǝןɐʞ (@lunanola) August 20, 2013

And still we have no idea what an Iconic Demand Generator would look like. In fact, the closest approximation to such a thing has been missing for months.