The Lens (https://thelensnola.org/tag/va-hospital/)
A second house moved to make way for a massive new hospital complex in Lower Mid-City is being considered for demolition after standing open to the elements for months. The city spent $35,450 to move the house, an effort to preserve part of the city’s historic housing stock.
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.
A $3.2 million effort to preserve houses that once stood at the site of the planned Veterans Affairs hospital has left them open to the elements and shorn of the detail that made them worth saving.
Consultants who helped former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin secure $75 million in federal Katrina recovery grants for the construction of a new Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Lower Mid-City initially questioned the legality of using federal disaster recovery grants for a project that would not be complete until seven to 10 years after the storm, newly obtained e-mails between project planners show. The e-mail dialogue (pdf) spans the month leading up to the March 2009 approval of the largest single-project appropriation of Katrina recovery dollars to date.
