MEDIA ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2010
Contact:
Ryan Berni
504-658-4992 (office)
504-417-1933 (cell)
MAYOR LANDRIEU TO MARK THE MOVING OF HISTORIC HOMES IN VA FOOTPRINT
New Orleans, LA— On Friday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and city officials will mark the moving of approximately 100 historic homes currently in the VA hospital footprint in Mid City. The homes were initially slated for demolition, but Mayor Landrieu reprogrammed $3.2 million in CDBG funds to have the homes moved in conjunction with Builders of Hope and local non-profit organizations.
WHO: Mayor Mitch Landrieu
New Orleans City Council
Builders of Hope
Neighborhood and non-profit leaders
WHAT: Press conference on the moving of historic homes in the VA footprint
WHEN: Friday, September 10, 2010
10:30 AM CST
WHERE: 2426 Palmyra Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
*I've been told that the press conference will take place at the intersection of S. Tonti and Palmyra...with 2426 Palmyra "rolling past" at some point (it's one of the houses set to move tomorrow).
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2 comments:
The City may wish the parade of departing homes to be feel-good photo-opportunity but the Mid-City land grab within the Regional Planning Commission's preferred footprint is a human rights disgrace of mammoth proportions.
How very sad that the VA is building on land taken by such means. Veterans who risked their lives and those who lost their lives defending human rights and liberty throughout the world will be treated in a facility standing on land where a viable neighborhood was obliterated and citizens were singled out as expendible and voiceless non-entities whose own elected officials forbid them to rebuild after Katrina.
Never forget what happened here.
I certainly won't forget.
I left the sidelines on this issue almost one year ago because I went down to Lower Mid-City to investigate what was continuously referred to in the debate at that time as simply a "blighted area" - an area I soon found to be something far more complex.
I was drawn into this fight by my sense that people in power were simply making bullheaded, arrogant, and very wrong decisions that did not seem to recognize the distinctiveness and importance of New Orleans and its people.
That said, I do think that moving the houses is a marginally better outcome than some other options - they could have all gone straight to the landfill. I know who's responsible, at root, for the houses getting moved. I know who really sweated and agonized and cared. But I'm concerned first and foremost about the marginally better outcome, so I take the politicians' claims for responsibility with a grain of salt.
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