As he awaits sentencing in federal court, disgraced former City Councilman Jon Johnson finally is working to rehabilitate a Lower 9th Ward rental property for which he was awarded a taxpayer-financed loan. The Lens and our partners at FOX8-TV reported on the property in May, highlighting the lack of work despite a $166,000 loan from […]
Category: Land Use
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use, Squandered Heritage
Bank-turned-burger joint: decidedly heavy on the dressing
Local bloggers are running an informal contest to see how long it takes before whatever subject that pops up turns into a conversation about food. My bet is that a lot of discussions just as quickly turn into conversations about zoning enforcement. Today’s topic – the old Whitney Bank building on Carrollton at the corner […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Investigations, Land Use
Councilman connected to nine blighted buildings in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood
Scenes of neglect are ubiquitous in the flood-scarred Lower 9th Ward, but nine buildings in particular have caught the attention of neighbors since the fall because of their connection to a City Councilman.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Squandered Heritage
City Council chamber finally gets Wi-Fi network
Back in November 2005, while most of us were still wringing out our houses and trying to figure out how to piece our lives back together, Mayor Ray Nagin announced a plan for free Wi-Fi – citywide! But even before Nagin’s tech guru, Greg Meffert, was convicted of corruption, reality had fallen well short of […]
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Our do-it-yourself approach to driveways: permit optional
Built without benefit of a city permit, the Bienville Street driveway straddles a catch basin. photo: Karen Gadbois Much has been made of our resilience. We New Orleanians are so resilient that we pull up entire sections of curbstone to install a driveway where none existed. And we do it without a permit. The owners […]
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Mary Church Terrell Elementary School in Gert Town set to be demolished
With little fanfare and no opposition, the Recovery School District appeared before the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee on July 2 seeking permission to demolish the Mary Church Terrell Elementary School in Gert Town. Lona Hankins speaking on behalf of the RSD said there were no plans to rebuild at the site and that they would […]
Posted inLand Use
Nonprofit requests demolition for house that city spent $35,000 to save and move
In a blow to housing preservation efforts, the nonprofit owners of a home that was moved from the new Veteran’s Affairs Hospital site to Treme recently asked for permission to demolish the historic house. The city spent $35,000 to move the house and donated it to Providence Community Housing. After The Lens and our reporting […]
Posted inSquandered Heritage
Xavier rankles Gert Town neighbors with demolition plans
At the June 4 public hearing of the Neighborhood Conservation District Committee, often known by the more familiar abbreviation of NCDC (only because it sounds an awful lot like the band AC/DC), at least one committee member expressed concerns about the mission of the committee and about the conservation of one particular neighborhood located next […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use, Squandered Heritage
… and put in a parking lot: Mansion gives way to yet more macadam
With owners claiming Katrina damage, this architecturally eclectic structure on Prytania Street near Touro Hospital was demolished on Thanksgiving Day 2006. While people were basting turkeys or gussying up for a racetrack repast, bulldozers gassed up and tore into a lunch of timbers and cornices, a few blocks uptown of the Garden District. The same […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Squandered Heritage
The news was sometimes buried, but the T-P helped us back on our feet
I saw the headline and thought about the reporters, photographers, editors and staffers at the Times-Picayune and what this means for them. I wondered how they felt reading about their fate in another publication, not their own. Then I began to think about the news we wouldn’t be reading in the refashioned Times-Picayune and what […]