Fairly detailed plans starting to emerge for reconstruction. Smaller footprint, elevated light rail, buyouts of condemned housing and modified pumping system (where the main pumping stations are moved to the lakefront to allow closure of canal inlets during times of storm. Sounds good, but will it be politically acceptable? Time will tell.....
nola.com
4 MONTHS TO DECIDE
Nagin panel says hardest hit areas must prove viability city's footprint may shrink; full buyouts proposed for those forced to move. New housing to be developed in vast swaths of New Orleans' higher ground
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
By Frank Donze and Gordon Russell
Staff writers
Residents of New Orleans areas hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters would have four months to prove they can bring their neighborhoods back to life or face the prospect of having to sell out to a new and powerful redevelopment authority under a plan to be released today by a key panel of Mayor Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission.
In perhaps its boldest recommendation, the panel says Nagin should impose a moratorium on building permits in shattered areas covering most of the city, while residents there meet to craft plans to revive their neighborhoods. The proposals are spelled out in the final report of the land-use committee of Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back commission, which was obtained by The Times-Picayune.
Addressing the debate about whether planners and politicians should declare areas off limits or allow market forces to determine the city's future, Nagin's panel clearly sought a compromise by instead proposing a process to gauge residents' intentions to return to their neighborhoods. But ultimately, commissioners say, not every neighborhood will be sustainable and there will be a need to use eminent domain to seize some property. The panel proposes the creation of a new public agency, tentatively called the Crescent City Redevelopment Corp., to use that power, but only as a "last resort."
While debate has focused heavily on the hot-button footprint issue, the report also proposes a number of lofty ideas that could change the cityscape, including a light-rail system, large mixed-income neighborhoods and new parks that double as additional flood protection.
The panel's recommendations -- along with those of six other subcommittees advising the mayor on various subjects ranging from education to culture to infrastructure -- are not binding; it will be up to Nagin to endorse them, modify them or ignore them. Nagin has been receiving regular briefings from the group and commissioners say he is on board with most of the major concepts in its report.
Ultimately, the rebuild blueprint, the product of three months of work by hundreds of participants, also must pass muster with the White House and the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state agency empowered with disbursing billions of dollars in federal aid.
Practically since the day the storm passed through New Orleans, the question of whether all of the city's neighborhoods can or should be resettled has been the most contentious issue in play. The idea of "shrinking the footprint" has been particularly unpopular among African-American leaders and residents, who made up nearly 70 percent of the city's pre-Katrina population and who were much more likely than white residents to live in areas devastated by flooding.
Commissioners on Nagin's panel expect that the mere mention of expropriating the homes of people who want to rebuild will ignite a firestorm of protest. In hopes of lowering the temperature of the debate, their report calls for a much more generous buyout option than the most visible program to gain traction thus far, the bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge. The Baker bill, which stalled in Congress' last session but is expected to be heard again in the upcoming weeks, would pay homeowners no less than 60 percent of the equity they have in their homes, while the banks holding those mortgages also would settle for no more than 60 percent of the balance.
The Nagin panel, acting on the assumption that something akin to the Baker legislation will pass, is proposing to make homeowners in buyout areas whole by tapping federal Community Development Block Grants to cover the remaining 40 percent, so that those forced to sell would wind up getting all of their equity back. Buyout prices should be figured on a home's pre-Katrina market value, minus insurance settlements, the report says.
Homeowners in areas that are not slated for buyouts would have the option of voluntarily selling to the newly chartered redevelopment authority. However, they would receive 100 percent of their equity only if they purchased another home in the city, according to a commission member familiar with the plan. Otherwise, they would receive only the 60 percent provided in the Baker plan.
The report estimates the rebuilding effort will cost more than $17 billion, with the largest portion -- $12 billion -- devoted to buyouts. The second most expensive line item is for new light-rail lines that would crisscross the city, at a cost of $3.3 billion.
While the price tag is certainly eye-popping, members of the commission don't believe their wish list is unrealistic. They have been in constant contact with Donald Powell, the federal czar named by President Bush to oversee Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts. Moreover, Joe Canizaro, the banker and developer who chairs the land-use panel, is a leading Bush fund-raiser with enviable access to the White House.
Bush is scheduled to visit New Orleans on Thursday, where he is expected to meet privately with Nagin and Mel Lagarde, the health care executive who co-chairs the commission.
On Friday, the panel will present its plan to the state authority, which will disburse federal aid as it flows to the state. Ultimately, the plan's success is contingent at least in part on the reception it receives from the LRA and the White House.
In an effort to impress upon federal officials the unprecedented scope of the storm's destruction, the panel has included an image in its PowerPoint presentation that superimposes the city's flooded area onto Washington, D.C. In the slide, the White House and the Capitol sit in the middle of a 22-mile-wide swath of flooded area.
The report is peppered with other factoids intended to drive home the impact of the storm. One frame shows that 108,731 households -- about half the homes in the city -- in New Orleans took on more than 4 feet of floodwater. Another slide shows a map of the diaspora caused by Katrina, with New Orleanians scattered across all 50 states.
Meetings planned
The land-use report euphemistically designates parts of town that will have to prove their viability to rebuild as "neighborhood planning areas." Essentially, the depth of post-Katrina floodwater was the determining factor in creating the map of those areas, which includes parts of Lakeview, Mid-City, Gentilly, Broadmoor, the 7th Ward, the Lower 9th Ward and much of eastern New Orleans.
The report recommends that residents of all city neighborhoods -- whether they flooded or not -- participate in a process to help sketch out a vision for their future. The boundaries of 13 districts established by the City Planning Commission, which cover the entire city, would be used as the basis for gathering neighborhood input.
Ten of the 13 districts -- all but one of the districts on the east bank -- contain sections that flooded extensively. The planning process would have a far greater impact in those inundated areas than in dry ones that are now up and running.
In lightly damaged sections, mostly clustered along the Mississippi River and a few natural ridges, residents may convene to discuss ways to enhance their already functioning neighborhoods -- lobbying for a new park or library, for instance.
The purpose of the meetings in hard-hit areas, by contrast, would be to determine whether they have a future at all.
First and foremost, the question facing such areas would be whether they would be able to reattract "sufficient population" to warrant investment in city services and facilities, the report says. The report does not specify what the threshold will be to satisfy that requirement, though some commission members have indicated they'd favor a requirement that well over half of residents signal a plan to return.
In hopes of helping people make their decisions, the panel is urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release within a month the advisory floodplain maps the agency is now creating. The maps, used to calculate required home elevations as well as flood-insurance rates, could have a dramatic impact on homeowners' decisions. If the new maps require homes to be built much higher in certain areas, for instance, the cost to residents could be prohibitive, discouraging resettlement.
In areas where it appears that interest in returning is spotty, residents will be nudged toward coming up with a plan that consolidates their neighborhood into a smaller, more sustainable footprint. In all cases, the goal of the panel is to create mixed-income and mixed-use areas that are easily accessed by public transportation and close to amenities like parks, schools, libraries, grocery stores and cultural attractions.
The report says that neighborhood-by-neighborhood analyses should be overseen and assembled by teams of professional planners, who commissioners say already have committed to work on the project. In addition to urban designers and architects, the report recommends that each team include local leaders, a planning commission representative and experts in finance and public health.
Along with the key data about how many displaced residents are planning to come back, the neighborhood plans are supposed to include recommendations about what types of public facilities are needed, where they would be located and the type of private development residents would like to see.
The report is silent on the mechanics of how planners would seek input from displaced residents. Commissioners say they're likely to hold most meetings in New Orleans, on the assumption that people who truly feel they have a stake in the city's future would make an effort to be heard. However, they left open the possibility that the charettes would be taken on the road.
The commission is advocating an ambitious timeline. For example, if Nagin signs off on the recommendations on Jan. 20, the day the last of the seven committee reports is due to be presented, the four-month clock would start ticking -- meaning May 20 would be the day of reckoning for moribund neighborhoods. Property acquisition in buyout areas could start by August, the report says.
Adding a wrinkle to what is sure to be a volatile process, the planning exercises would take place against the backdrop of mayoral and City Council elections, tentatively scheduled for late April, with runoffs a month later.
Opportunity for change
The land-use panel's report is titled "Action Plan for New Orleans: The New American City" -- an indication that the commission views the disaster as an opportunity to correct some of the flaws that characterized pre-Katrina New Orleans.
In particular, the plan calls for major improvements to the transit and parks systems, each of which would serve a secondary purpose of providing backup flood control. For instance, new rail lines would be slightly elevated, creating "internal levees" to isolate flooding. Parks would include retention ponds to help control storm runoff.
While nothing is written in stone, the plan envisions massive buyouts of damaged residential property, which would allow for the possibility of greatly expanding the city's open space. The report recommends linking the various parks with neutral grounds and covered canals, some of which could feature bike paths.
The report suggests six residential areas that could accommodate large parks, depending on whether those areas fail to recover fully: Broadmoor, Gentilly, the 7th Ward, the Lower 9th Ward and two sections of eastern New Orleans between Chef Menteur Highway and Interstate 10.
A state-of-the-art transit system, modeled after those in Denver and Portland, Ore., is a key element of the plan. It calls for a small expansion of streetcar service, augmented by light rail lines extending to the lakefront along Elysian Fields Avenue and Canal Boulevard, upriver along South Claiborne Avenue and downriver along St. Claude Avenue and Chef Menteur Highway. Another line would cross the Crescent City Connection, which is designed to accommodate trains.
The report also envisions commuter trains linking the city to Louis Armstrong International Airport and Baton Rouge in the west, and to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the east. Commission members have said, however, that those are longer-term and more expensive projects, and for that reason, they did not request money for them in their budget for the plan.
Because light-rail lines have fewer stops and travel more quickly than streetcar lines, the panel will recommend that stops along those lines be targeted as hubs for larger developments.
The report also recommends that a number of large tracts be demolished and repackaged as "infill development areas" for commercial or industrial projects with housing for workers nearby. The dozen sites identified in the report include a number of public-housing developments, including one in Central City in the vicinity of the C.J. Peete and Guste complexes; a huge parcel in the area of the Florida and Desire complexes; and another around the St. Bernard complex.
Other areas are identified as "infill" sites as well, including the portion of the Lower 9th Ward on the lake side of North Claiborne Avenue. While no mention is made in the report of any specific plans, commissioners say they have been approached by private developers -- whom they have declined to identify -- interested in pitching large-scale projects.
Though maintenance of the flood-protection infrastructure is largely outside the local government's purview, the report recommends that the federal government launch a program of wetlands restoration to provide a buffer against hurricanes. It asks for the closure of the controversial Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MRGO, blamed for much of the flooding in eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
Pumping stations should be built at the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, the report says, so they can continue to operate while gates at the mouths of drainage canals are closed. And the panel urges the governor and Legislature to move quickly to create a single agency supervising levees in southeast Louisiana, rather than the multiple levee boards that exist now.
Down to the wire
Some of the important details contained in the commission's final report offer evidence that panelists' thinking has continually evolved over the past few months, and even the past few days.
For instance, the footprint question emerged in November, when the Urban Land Institute advised the commission to focus rebuilding efforts in areas that sustained little damage and to delay redevelopment of the hardest-hit areas.
When that notion drew public fire, panelists instead floated the idea of a three-year period during which neighborhoods on the bubble would have a chance to prove themselves. That timeframe was quickly whittled down to a year, before the panel settled on the proposed four-month window.
Likewise, panelists had serious discussion about prohibiting rebuilding in certain parts of town, at least in the near term, along the lines of the ULI report. But the decision was ultimately made to pursue the neighborhood planning process rather than having the panel dictate where to foster development and where to block it.
Commissioners also said the decision to recommend closing the MRGO came only after weeks of contentious debate. And population estimates, which in earlier iterations of the report were far rosier, have been revised to a less optimistic estimate of 247,000 by September 2008 -- around half the city's pre-Katrina population.
The suggestion to temporarily ban building permits in heavily flooded areas also was a last-minute addition, commissioners said. The rationale, they said, was that it would be unfair to allow homeowners in those areas to pour sweat and money into their homes, only to condemn them months later.
It could not be determined Tuesday how many homeowners have already received building permits in devastated areas. But city officials have said they are issuing more than 100 permits a day.
It's also unclear whether the buyout program will include provisions to cover the renovation costs of homeowners who already have rebuilt in neighborhoods that wind up being bought out. |
