Please read the latest on New Orleans demolitions and donate if you can. At the link just given is information on how you can write to Governor Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Secretary of Health, and other relevant officials. A friend gives important background information, which I reproduce below. Please direct post election energy to saving Mid City, it is really important. I hope Barack Obama’s transition team sees this post.
♦As most of you know, I have been involved for almost the past year with an increasingly difficult struggle to prevent the demolition and wholesale destruction of the historic Lower Mid City neighborhood in New Orleans. Only part of the neighborhood is to be expropriated, but the whole neighborhood will be destroyed if this plan succeeds.
♦This neighborhood (Lower Mid City) took 6-9 feet of Katrina flood water. The neighborhood has over 250 buildings…169 of which are considered to be “contributing” to the historic character of the City of New Orleans…mostly 19th century, cypress shotgun and camelback homes and small businesses. This neighborhood is populated by hard-working, tax-paying citizens of New Orleans…postal workers, retired Zulu members, school teachers, nurses, barbers, students…who have fought hard to get back into their homes.This is a living, viable neighborhood, with people and families who look out for each other, walk their dogs together, and share food. The population is very diverse, predominantly African American with a sizable white and growing Hispanic population, and a number of retirees and young people.
♦Without our knowledge or consent, the City and the State, post-Katrina, shut down Charity hospital, decided to abandon the historic Charity Hospital building and downtown New Orleans and now proposes to build a new LSU hospital and a new VA hospital in Lower Mid City, moving out of the downtown area and taking over a predominantly residential area of 71 acres in Lower Mid City. To do this project, they intend to expropriate homeowners and business owners and demolish the existing homes and businesses, which have been largely gutted and restored by the homeowners with the help of volunteers, post-Katrina. (Some of these homeowners even got historic preservation grants to fix them up, post-K). The city/state say they will “attempt” to save a couple of big buildings (the old City Hall annex…bought by a good friend of the Mayor’s, post-Katrina, and at least part of the Dixie Brewery)…but they won’t even try to save the neighborhood or individual homes or even move any of the 19th century homes to another location.
♦The National Trust for Historic Preservation has identified the Lower Mid City neighborhood and the Charity hospital building as one of the 11 top endangered historic sites in the country. The New Orleans Mid City neighborhoods and the National Trust have identified alternatives to this wholesale destruction, which involve a plan by a nationally recognized architectural firm for completely retrofitting and re-using the Charity hospital building as a 21st century medical center at less cost than building a new one, and locating the new VA hospital at the site of the abandoned Lindy Boggs hospital, which is also in Mid City but which is a larger and better site for veterans’ health care. (The new VA would be a 200 bed hospital, and 60 of those beds would be nursing beds. The Lindy Boggs site is next to Bayou St. John, a more peaceful setting and still within one mile of the Tulane and LSU medical schools and the downtown medical district).
♦The Lindy Boggs site involves one willing seller, as opposed to hundreds of homeowners and small business owners who do not wish to lose their homes or businesses through the process of eminent domain. Choosing the Lindy Boggs site would not involve the destruction of a single home. It would also be much quicker, as would re-building Charity hospital. Under the state’s plan to build an entirely new hospital, it could be as late as 2016 before that new hospital would be open. The ‘proposed plan’ for the new LSU hospital and the new VA hospital at the lower Mid City sites, is the most expensive, most destructive and cause the most delay in providing medical services for veterans and residents than the other alternatives.
♦We are also very concerned about the cost of the LSU project, which was announced, over a year ago, as costing 1.2 billion dollars…(a cost reported to be 2-4 times the national average, per bed). We have not seen any new figures since the collapse of the economy, but we know the cost will be far greater and delays much longer than they are telling us.
♦We are up against very powerful people who have a lot of money riding on this.
♦WE NEED YOUR HELP! We expect the Secretary of the VA to make a decision in the next few days and announce it in two weeks. We have been hearing that the White House is pressuring them to make the decision now so the Bush Administration can claim this as “proof” that they are helping New Orleans.
♦Time is of the essence. Shortly after the VA announces its decision, we expect the expropriation/ demolition process will begin. We believe they are trying to get this going before the new administration has a chance to weigh in on it and it will be presented to the new Secretary of the VA as a fait accompli.
♦If any of you have any contacts with anyone in the Obama transition team…please contact me immediately. We need the VA to hold off on making a decision until the new administration can do a thorough vetting of this entire proposal.
♦If anyone has any other ideas or suggestions or contacts who could help on this, please let me know. Many thanks to you all.
Does anyone have contacts within the Obama transition team? Please let me know and I will put you in touch directly with this friend.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 