"What are they afraid of - that Charity was right all along?"

Sign here.

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.

Treasurer John Kennedy to Speak in NOLA on UMC Financing

[Click to enlarge]

Mayor: Any talk of retrofitting Charity is "bad"

Like an eighth grader getting upset at anyone who disagrees with him, the Mayor, last evening, labeled any talk of going back into Charity Hospital as plain old "bad." Despite a $600,000 study that says it can be done, it's bad because the Mayor says so.  I'm not really seeing any other reasons laid out:

"Anything that slows it down is bad, anything that continues to talk about, you know, a new hospital in the old Charity Hospital building is bad. I would ask people to stay focused on the thing that's in front of us which is building a brand transformative, economic development engine that surrounds medical care and economics," Landrieu said.

Well, I guess the letter from the National Trust that went out to legislators late last week suggesting that the Charity option be looked at anew given the continued uncertainty surrounding the UMC...must've been a really "bad" development.  I guess the 11,000 petitions signed by citizens of New Orleans calling for the adaptive reuse of Charity to create a modern hospital facility are all "bad" too.  So is the continued push for greater legislative oversight over the project to ensure that taxpayers aren't saddled with a boondoggle for decades to come.  Just terribly, horribly bad.

The Mayor's statement also employs the same fallacy that we've seen over and over again during this fight - that somehow the notion of rebuilding in Charity is mutually exclusive with having a 21st Century, state of the art hospital facility.  Just as he does on preservation and public safety, the Mayor creates a false choice and then vilifies anyone who doesn't support his selected approach.  It's a really unhealthy tactic - especially when simply willing the hospital forward, blinders on, ultimately has to be reconciled with the reality of a continued lack of adequate financing and a business plan, as well as the potentially crippling state subsidy rates. As I've noted, it seems the Mayor has his eyes set on the Charity complex for city use.  But it does seem strange for him to be so vocally opposed to the consideration of a less expensive option that would bring healthcare back online more quickly.

If the mayor didn't want the return of healthcare slowed down - his comments show he's likely far more concerned about the development dollars - he would have insisted that the UMC go in Charity back when he took office...before the destruction of the UMC site had begun.

The Mayor's comments also tend to confirm my suspicions - that he was likely dead-set against going into Charity at the Monday meeting with Governor Jindal.

And now Bobby Yarborough from the UMC Board has joined the chorus trying to shut down the idea of going back into Charity..."It is very apparent from the board that the idea of going back to Old Charity is completely off the table. We have moved away from this option," said Yarborough.


But I thought the governor just commanded the UMC Board to look at all possible alternatives and options?

Nothing should be off the table at this point.  And rebuilding in Charity is the one plan that has actually been thoroughly studied.  It could be done now with the funding the state currently has onhand.

Misleading

The latest Times-Picayune article on the Vitter/Kennedy/Tucker UMC proposal mischaracterizes the proposal.

While the article says: ""Instead, they advocated that the state build a smaller new facility on the Mid-City footprint, while purchasing Tulane Medical Center, which consists of downtown and Metairie campuses owned by Tulane University and the for-profit Hospital Corporation of America."

...the proposal from the three GOP figures actually says:

In other words, the T-P article is wrong to suggest that the trio wants the state to build a smaller new facility in the Mid-City footprint.  They only want that IF a 250-bed facility cannot be recreated within the shell of the existing Charity Hospital.  And based on the study conducted by FHL and authorized by the Louisiana Legislature, it could likely be done within the Charity shell.

Why did the Times-Picayune fail to mention that the alternate UMC plan includes a call for re-use of Charity Hospital?