Karen Gadbois co-founded The Lens. She now covers New Orleans government issues and writes about land use for Squandered Heritage. For her work with television reporter Lee Zurik exposing widespread misuse of city recovery funds — which led to guilty pleas in federal court — Gadbois won some of the highest honors in journalism, including a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a gold medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors. She can be reached at (504) 606-6013.
Volunteers envision their work as “an opportunity for children to participate in the process of improving their own communities and receive art instruction in the process.”
Neighbors say squatters have pulled planks from the collapsing house and built themselves a shack in the rear. City officials are negotiating a hold-harmless agreement to allow demolition of the house.
Barring further appeal, the ruling presumably sends the Newcomb Boulevard Association back to where the court says they should have begun: City Council.
Unsightliness is one problem. The other is that a flood-prone city like New Orleans needs to be able to absorb as much rainwater as possible, something concrete is not good at.
A developer has proposed two 13-story, 135-foot high apartment buildings, significantly higher than the 75-foot maximum desired by the neighborhood association.
