A Letter from the Advisory Council

The Lens unearths a letter sent from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) to the City of New Orleans regarding the treatment of the moved VA houses.

As someone who's been both a long-time supporter of the house moving alternative - a majority of the moved houses are secured and re-roofed - and someone's who's concerned about the failure to get the remainder back into some semblance of order...I can say that I have seen the letter and thought about it a bit.

A key problem with the letter is this: the Programmatic Agreement (PA) that the ACHP cites as it chastises the City...doesn't actually address the house moving that the Landrieu administration ultimately pushed for in response to the calls made citizens and preservationists.  That's not meant as an excuse, just a hard look at the text.

The PA only contained stipulations that addressed a much more modest house moving effort that the VA agreed to fund at the outset of the hospital project - and only 3 houses ultimately moved under that program (with owners, with roofs intact).  The 72 additional houses moved as part of the effort that materialized in summer of 2010 (covered extensively on this blog - without owners, without roofs) are not envisioned in the PA.  Thus, for better or for worse, the PA proper, as governing document for effects on historic resources, arguably has nothing to say about the vast bulk of the houses that moved off the site - the City effort that came after demolition had started was and is entirely "extra-PA."

A somewhat better hook - and the one that the ACHP probably should have used in its letter - is a provision in a letter from the State Historic Preservation Office that's constitutes part of an appendix to the PA (below in blue).  In the letter, the SHPO makes it clear that the "Area of Potential Effects" for the project would have to be expanded if any houses moved off site.  In other words, it's likely that more process would have been required to address the potential effects of the moved houses on the historic neighborhoods where many of them landed (and possibly the effects of roof removal, etc. on the moved houses themselves):

To my knowledge, the SHPO understanding  in 3(c) has never been been realized despite the moving of many houses into different locations, as I've mapped here.  I know of no extension or change to the "APE" that would serve to acknowledge that more historic buildings and neighborhoods were being affected by the project.

Finally, the piece in The Lens notes the handful of houses that moved into Historic Treme.  Of all the houses that moved off site, these really are the most incongruent with their new surroundings in terms of historic and architectural context (parts of Hoffman Triangle come close, but the existing neighborhood was not as deeply historic as Treme).  That's why I was fine with the article employing the photo from this blog.

In the end, I remain hopeful that the house moving effort will succeed.  Many of the properties continue to creep forward toward better condition, and I still say that even if only 2/3 of them ultimately come back in commerce with historic character intact, it will be better than the alternative faced in June of 2010 - mass demolition of all 72 houses along with the scores of other structures that were in fact demolished.

How did they get away with this?

So how was the proposed University Medical Center (UMC) project here in New Orleans allowed to devastate a neighborhood so irresponsibly?

Remember this?  It's a provision in the Programmatic Agreement (PA) that was meant to govern site preparation for the LSU/VA hospital project.  And it was meant to ensure proper treatment of the many historic resources in the site of the proposed UMC.

It was designed to ensure that the historic neighborhood inside the LSU Footprint was not destroyed unnecessarily, to make certain that a business plan and full funding was in place for the proposed UMC.

The provision clearly didn't serve its function.  The UMC still has no business plan.  And it still doesn't have adequate financing lined up to complete the full first phase of the hospital as envisioned.  Meanwhile, the LSU Footprint has been largely razed.

On June 24, 2010, the State of Louisiana's Facility Planning and Control department sent a letter to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal entity, claiming that the state had met the requirement.  But you'll see, as you read through the following summary excerpt, that even on that date, the state had in fact not secured a full funding stream.  It only had $800 million on hand out of the $1.2 billion necessary:

Nonetheless, Jerry Jones signed off on the letter - one that claims there is a business plan.

This summer, one year later, even Governor Jindal has admitted publicly that there is still no business plan for the UMC.  His words and actions in response to the Tucker-Kennedy-Vitter alternative plan made that quite clear.

As early as July 26, 2010, Sandra Stokes with the Foundation for Historical Louisiana countered the letter, laying out a list of specific concerns with the state's representations.  The letter closed with this prophetic language:

I've found that historic preservationists often pull double duty as good government watchdogs here in New Orleans - sometimes they're the only ones watching massive, contract-laden projects with a skeptical eye.

On July 19, 2010, however, the Advisory Council had already seemingly signed off on the weak sauce justification by the state:

That second sentence could be relevant - I wonder if the Advisory Council is fully aware of the effects on historic properties like McDonogh No. 11 School and the houses theoretically about to move off the LSU Footprint.

In August of 2010, Mr. Reid Nelson at the Advisory Council subsequently responded to the Stokes letter with language that the Advisory Council should, given the events of the past year, regret deeply:

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation was given a chance to demand a responsible outcome, and it has very clearly failed.  Dozens of historic buildings and a large part of a National Register Historic District were destroyed because of the lack of adequate oversight.

The Advisory Council's position is made even more embarrassing by the fact that a July 25, 2010 Times-Picayune article made it quite clear that the UMC project, per multiple sources, had neither adequate financing nor a completed business plan:

How do things stand today, more than a year later?

There is no business plan - no really, there is no business plan.

177 demolitions have been completed.

The project does not have adequate financing in place - and the UMC Board has decided not to try for HUD mortgage insurance to guarantee bonds....something Fred Cerise effectively said was necessary just about one year ago.

Not only did the federal government proactively participate in the funding and planning that permitted this destructive project, it also failed to protect the city and neighborhood when it had an express opportunity to do so, even as all the warning bells were ringing.

So much for that

In the provision above, you see that the Programmatic Agreement (PA) that governs the LSU/VA site preparation process required the State of Louisiana (Facilities Planning and Control) to notify the head of the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation (a federal entity) that a funding stream for design and construction had been identified and a business plan has been approved for the proposed UMC hospital before demolitions could proceed.

Well, the notice was sent and received, rather perfunctorily...months and months ago.  And yet today we know that there is no business plan in place (as proof, Chairman Yarborough of the UMC Board must get one to the legislature by September of this year, I believe) and over $400 million in necessary financing for the construction of the UMC is not in hand.

This particular PA provision, designed to avoid the needless destruction of an entire neighborhood in a national historic district should the state fail to get all of its ducks in a row, utterly failed in its purpose.  If any house moving does occur in the UMC site, it will be due to efforts entirely outside the PA.

While Charity Hospital sits empty with no concrete plans (the city, at one point a month ago, told BioDistrict New Orleans to back off in its efforts to acquire the complex), the neighborhood in the LSU Footprint has been largely demolished at this point, and the funding and business plan issues still have not been resolved.  That's the sort of thing that leads one to mistrust the state - and just about any federal government agency that's had its hands in the hospitals project.

It may have looked fine on paper.  But we've seen how things have played out.