Mid-City Neighborhood Organization

Neighborhoods Partnership Network is featuring an article on Mid-City’s reaction to the current draft of the city’s Master Plan. Read it here.
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WE NEED YOUR INPUT!!!

The official District 4 Planning Meeting is Wednesday, April 22, from 6-9pm at Jesuit High School.

On Friday, March 20, planning firm Goody Clancy posted the Draft Master Plan. The proposed land use map for District 4, which includes Mid-City, is here.

The Draft Master Plan is a goldmine of information on the city and its historic and current physical environment. However, MCNO needs your input to determine whether the proposed land uses are appropriate for our neighborhood. They do not match up completely with the land uses proposed by the citizen-guided Lambert Plan.

Specifically, Goody Clancy proposes “low-density multi-family” for all the residential areas of Mid-City other than a small area on the City Park side of Bienville and Carrollton. “Urban Mixed-Use” is proposed for the Tulane Corridor and the Lindy Boggs site. For Canal, “Neighborhood Mixed-Use” is proposed.

After speaking with planners from Goody Clancy at length on Friday, March 27th, and examining the Land Use document posted with the Draft Plan, we have determined the following:

1. “Low-density multi-family” allows up to 36 residential units per acre;

2. Neighborhood mixed-use allows a mix of uses (e.g. residential and commercial), with a FAR (floor to area ratio) of 2.0. FAR is a measurement of the number of floors allowed compared to the amount of space the building takes up on the lot. For example, a two-story property that takes up half of a lot would have a FAR of 1.0. A FAR of 2.0 allows a two-story building that occupies the entire lot, or a four-story building that occupies half of the lot.

3. Urban mixed-use allows a mix of residential and commercial, with a FAR of up to 8.0. That allows a building of up to 8 stories if it consumes the entire lot, or 16 stories if it consumes half the lot.

If we do not provide sufficient input to Goody Clancy, the final land use and zoning will not reflect our desires!!!

Please attend the Neighborhood Meeting on April 6 and provide your input, then plan to attend the District 4 meeting on April 22!!!!!

Jennifer Farwell
Vice President
MCNO

MCNO recently became aware that there is a Temporary Alcohol Beverage Outlet (ABO) Moratorium and Special Event permit moratorium proposed for the portion of Mid-City bounded by Cleveland Avenue, Bienville Avenue, Saint Patrick Street and City Park Avenue. Apparently, the ordinance was read in at the December 18th council meeting and was planned to go for Final Passage (which includes public discussion) at Thursday’s meeting.

The text of the ordinance in its entirety is below.

Once MCNO became aware of the Ordinance, we requested that Councilmember Midura defer it to the next Council meeting (January 22) and she agreed. The purpose of the deferral is so that the MCNO Board can understand the scope and impact of the proposed ordinance and take a position on the issue. With less than 48 hours notice, it would be impossible for the Board to make an educated decision that includes the input of affected residents, businesses and property owners.

MCNO will host a public meeting for Mid-City residents, business owners and property owners affected by this proposal. The meeting will be Wednesday January 14th at 6:30pm at Grace Episcopal Church (3700 Canal Street).

Between now and then, MCNO will try to compile some more information about the current zoning & use of the parcels in question and post it here. We are also working to communicate with Neighborhood organizations in other areas of the city where such moratorium’s are already in place to determine pros & cons from their viewpoint.

The key question that the MCNO board must consider is whether the benefits of the proposed ABO/Special Event permit moratorium outweigh costs/risks, and if justified, what is the appropriate boundaries for such a moratorium.

I regret that we didn’t have this information sooner, as we could have readily discussed it immediately following the main topic at Monday night’s Mid-City meeting, and avoided the time and effort required to set up a special meeting.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Weishaupt
President, MCNO
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Two Mid-City stalwarts are featured in Gambit’s annual 40 Under 40.
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A story in today’s Times-Picayune gives some useful information about another school opening in Mid-City.
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Be sure to tune in to WDSU TV Channel 6 tonight (Friday, April 20) at 5:00 PM.

Roop Raj will be interviewing Natalie Lafont about the Heart of the City newsletter.

Wednesday, April 4th’s edition of the Times-Picayune had the latest news and information on the proposed community center at Comiskey.

The community center was also featured on 99.5 FM, as DNA Media CEO Damon Harmon was interviewed. You can download the audio [mp3, 7MB].

Here’s the text of the article in the TP:
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Thanks to everybody who attended last night’s Mid-City Recovery Action Meeting. We had a very productive discussion about Victory Real Estate Investments plans for Mid-City. The comments made at this meeting will guide MCNO going forward. MCNO will also be conducting a survey to collect further input from the community.

For those who couldn’t make it, we will be posting minutes soon, and we hope to have video of the meeting online as well. Check back for updates.

• We have about 30 minutes of video thanks to Joe Laura and family
• Slideshow presentation in PDF format [300KB]
• Meeting minutes in Microsoft Word format and PDF format
• Victory Real Estate Investments’ website: vrei.net
• Article about meeting on Blogging New Orleans
• Article about meeting on WWLTV.com
• Article about meeting in Times-Picayune

(Regarding that article: What Jennifer Weishaupt really said was “If we can get it in Metairie or the West Bank, we don’t need it here” and the context of the discussion was chain restaurants, not shopping.)

Here is the article outlining the 17 target projects announced today by Dr. Edward Blakely, Executive Director of Recovery Management for the City of New Orleans:

blog.nola.com/updates/2007/03/city_announces_first_17_target.html

Here are the 3 specifics that pertain to Mid-City or immediately adjoining areas:

Redevelop

1. Carrollton Avenue at Interstate 10
5. Broad Street at Lafitte Greenway/Treme

Renew

3. Tulane Avenue at Jeff Davis (Comiskey Park)

According to the Times-Picayune:

Because of a break in a Sewerage & Water Board pipe at Gayoso and Canal streets, the Regional Transit Authority suspended operation of streetcars on the Canal line Tuesday afternoon.

An RTA spokeswoman said the agency did not know when repairs to the broken pipe would be completed and streetcar service restarted.

The RTA said it will provide bus service on the line while the pipe is being repaired.

Buses were running on the entire Canal line, from the river to the cemeteries, and also on the City Park spur line from Canal to Beauregard Circle.

Because of the change, passengers were having to board vehicles on the Canal Street sidewalk, rather than the neutral ground.

Service on the Riverfront streetcar line and the St. Charles line’s Lee Circle loop were not affected.

A dozen Mid-City residents attended the City Council meeting yesterday, with beads and signs calling for Endymion to come home to Mid-City. Four people spoke about the economic need, the emotional need, the family nature of the event, the impact on the community, and so forth. The Council has not made the final decision yet, but everybody expressed support for the notion of Endymion returning to its traditional Mid-City route.
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Jennifer Weishaupt was recently interviewed for WTUL’s Community Gumbo about the recovery planning process. The program was broadcast on Saturday, October 21st, but you can still get the audio courtesy of the New Orleans Independent Media Center.

Spumoni Fills a City’s Void, and Its Belly by Adam Nossiter.

In a Times-Picayune story today about neighborhood recovery plans by Coleman Warner, Mid-City looks pretty good:

But most plans feature a dizzying array of ideas. Among those rich in intriguing detail is the plan for Mid-City. In addition to calling for creation of the railway linear park that stretches to Treme, that plan proposes a health/residential complex for the elderly, a dog park, a multiple-use recreation complex, restored public schools and four small community gardens.

Long term, the Mid-City neighborhood plan calls for creation of a high-density commercial and residential district in a largely rundown area near the junction of South Carrollton Avenue and Interstate 10.

Val Dansereau, zoning chairman for the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, said ideas that are filtering into recovery plans are a mix of pre-Katrina and post-storm thinking, hashed out during Monday night meetings that draw 80 to 90 at a time to Grace Episcopal Church on Canal Street. Optimism is running high about the Mid-City plan, in part because businesses are opening and progress is being made in landing a public library branch in the area, he said.

“They’re enthused, otherwise they’d just give up, and we wouldn’t have anyone at the meetings,” Dansereau said. “It’s shoot for the moon.”

Mid-City is featured in an article on the Village Voice website by Anya Kamenetz, a former New Orleanian.

“I’ve lost all sense of what’s normal,” says New Orleans resident Bart Everson. His house, which took on five feet of water, stands at a crossroads in the city’s recovery—one of the points where people staring at destruction must decide whether to stay or go. At the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, he and his wife are back in their Mid-City home, in a neighborhood where fewer than 30 percent of the families own the place they live in and which most visitors might see only on their way to Jazzfest.

Absentee landlords have abandoned more than half the nearby buildings in his district. His neighbors across the street, an elderly African American woman with her three grandchildren, are gone, replaced by someone who seems to be a squatter. Newly arrived Hispanic laborers are paying twice the pre-Katrina rents, yet some have no electricity or gas. Some pile their unbagged garbage in the street. The block around the corner is full of FEMA trailers, and across the street is a grocery store untouched since the storm. Inside, rats scurry over a floor slick with rot.

And yet Everson, who works at Xavier University, and his wife, who teaches school, have no plans to leave. They are renovating their flooded first story. They complained to their City Council member about the garbage and the rats, and used Spanish-language flyers to persuade new neighbors to clean up. And most of all, the Eversons are active in their neighborhood organization, which like dozens around the city is working independently to devise a plan for rebuilding. Their group is proposing to form a community redevelopment corporation to buy blighted houses and provide a path to homeownership for those willing to renovate them.

“We want to give people a reason to move to Mid-City,” Everson says, especially people from more wrecked neighborhoods who can’t afford to buy in the areas that stayed dry. “I really think we are the best of the worst, as far as a flooded neighborhood that’s coming back.”

They also put up a slideshow of photos by yours truly.

Kimberley Marshall offers an extended meditation on what the Bayou Boogaloo means for Mid-City, and other goings-on in our neighborhood.

Kendra Frank recently visited New Orleans and spent a good bit of time in Mid-City. Read her story.

Hat tip: Chris Martel via Metroblogging New Orleans

If you missed the presentation on Mid-City and the Lafitte Corridor last Wednesday, now you can watch it online via Google Video.

UMKC Presentation: Lafitte Corridor & Mid-City

The quality of the video is not great, and the audio is marred by a big ventilation humming noise, but the ideas are worthy of consideration.

[James] Arey only recently moved back into his home in the flooded Mid-City neighborhood.

“Lesbians saved my neighborhood,” he said. “That is absolutely true. I had to evacuate to Atlanta because our WWNO studios were unavailable. We broadcast via a PBS satellite from Atlanta. Lesbians snuck back into my neighborhood after hours and before hours.

“They harassed FEMA representatives, they stopped Red Cross trucks and got food and water for workers, they brought in supplies and gas masks, they stayed on Entergy…. They got into everyone’s house, with permission. They got out on the Web with the first pictures from the neighborhood. Anybody in that area that needed assistance, they were there to provide it.”

Mid-City likely has New Orleans’s highest concentration of lesbians, while gay men are more likely to live in the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, the Bywater and Uptown, none of which flooded.

– From Windy City Times

Ruby Red, Inc., has published a powerful video that depicts the scene at the American Can Company in Mid-City in the days after Katrina. Warning: contains strong language and will probably make you cry.