It’s here at last: The final version of the Mid-City Neighborhood Rebuilding Plan by Lambert Advisory, LLC.
You can download it, but be advised that it’s a 16 MB file.
This document is just one of many neighborhood rebuilding plans submitted to the New Orleans City Council yesterday. (We believe MCNO is the only neighborhood group to receive a true final copy of their plan on the same day the council received theirs.) This plan is the result of many months of work by community members and professional planners, especially Clifton James & Associates who were assigned to the Mid-City neighborhood. It draws heavily upon our Mid-City Recovery Plan, which is a living, grassroots, community-authored document which we continue to develop.
What’s next? We’ve been told that this plan is “representative of what MCNO and other residents of Mid-City have requested.” We trust that this is so. But as Ronald Reagan said: “Trust, but verify.” Therefore we are asking all the chairs of the Mid-City Recovery Committees to read the plan closely and critically, and to make notes. We will compile these notes and share them with Lambert Advisory, the City Council and any other relevant parties.
Also, we want to make sure that our immediate priorities get converted to funding requests as soon as possible. This is where the rubber meets the road as far as dollars are concerned. We must examine the report and make sure that the early and mid-term priorities are accurate. The LRA and the mayor’s office seem to be adopting an accelerated timeframe. That could be a good thing; as LRA Director Kopplin has said, money can be released in a matter of weeks.
