A Spotlight on Site Selection

Recently, I talked about the 2007 MOU between the City of New Orleans and the VA, the one that focused in great detail on the current VAMC site between S. Galvez and S. Rocheblave.  It was signed on November 19, 2007, and it very clearly envisions a VA site that has already "jumped Galvez" into the neighborhood centered on Outer Banks Bar:

The City was already proffering this "targeted developable and usable area of land" - also known as a dense, recovering, historic neighborhood - to the wolves as of August 2007 per the letter.  And it had signed an earlier April 2007 CEA specifying the site.

But all sorts of official documentation in the summer of 2008 kept up the myth that all sorts of alternative sites besides this "RPC" selected site were still being considered.

Here's a letter from VA to the State Historic Preservation Officer in August 2008 sustaining the illusion of three alternative sites:

Did VA ever have any intent of actually selecting one of the alternatives...given the MOU legal agreement with the City that was signed nearly a year earlier?

A letter from VA to SHPO in November 2008 further sustained the mirage:

....the key language being...

For more on this series of events, see this classic Gambit piece from December 2008.  It's important to keep a clear timeline in mind.

'an area "suffering disinvestment"'

There was no mention of the PA-mandated Charity Hospital adaptive reuse process in the Friday Times-Picayune story on a new downtown development plan.

The quote about the historic medical district suffering disinvestment is heavy with irony, even if the administrations have changed since the decision to support the abandonment of the core made during the Nagin administration (aided and abetted by the full City Council).

The vacancies and disinvestment in the area around City Hall and Charity Hospital are the direct, causal result of government actions post-Katrina - city, state, and federal.

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.

Mid-City Mitigation Grant Program unveiled last night

Last evening, with two security guards outside the doors of the First Pentecostal Church's meeting hall on Canal Street (brought in by VA contractor Clark/McCarthy), the VA held its monthly neighborhood meeting with residents affected by the project.

Representatives of the State Historic Preservation Office were on hand, based on a request at the last meeting, and they shared the outlines of a rehabilitation grant program for historic buildings in the Mid-City National Register Historic District here in New Orleans (here's a map that gives some rough idea of the district, LSU/VA site is shown in red).  The program is being implemented in compliance with the Progammatic Agreement that governs the LSU/VA site preparation.

While the official unveiling of the grant program will take place at the August 8, 2011 meeting of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, here are the basic, tentative details of the grant program as laid out last evening:

- The total pot of funding equals $1.4 million, made up of contributions from the VA, City of New Orleans, and State of Louisiana
- The total amount of funding that will comprise grant awards is approximately $1 million; some of the funding is for administrative overhead, some has gone to help with funding rehab of moved VA houses in the Mid-City district
- The cap on individual grants to property owners will be $20,000 - the amount awarded can be any amount equal to or lower than that
- The grants will be available to any property owners with contributing historic properties in the Mid-City National Register District, but the district will be tiered into three areas: the area below Broad nearest to the hospitals site, the area between Broad and Carrollton, and the area above Carrollton farthest from the hospitals site.
- A panel of reviewers, seemingly SHPO staff, will review applications and give preference based on a variety of factors including which tier the applicant's property is located in (preference to those closest to and most affected by the LSU/VA hospital project).  It is not clear whether the panel's deliberations will be open to the public or open for public comment.
- Owners will need to provide a scope of work with an application
- Applications will be due on October 14, 2011
- Awards will start to trickle out in about December 2011
- Owners of historic properties that are not contributing due to a building's disrepair will likely be able to apply for funding for repairs that would result in the building become contributing once again
- It sounds like the "first zone" below Broad Street will receive flyers about the grant via a door-to-door walk around, which is good to hear
- The grant will not be a matching grant; owners are welcome to match the grant amount, but they are in no way required to put up funding to get funding
- SHPO staff will hold a grant workshop for residents on August 23 and may host another at some point in September

Here are the provisions in the PA regarding the mitigation fund and grant program (which outline the amount contributed by the various parties):

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.

Panning In on the Pan-Am Building in the VA Footprint

In recent weeks, crews have been taking the "sun shade" panels off the perimeter of the former Pan-Am Insurance building in the VA Footprint.  The Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill building is being incorporated into the VA Hospital complex.

Under the Programmatic Agreement for the site preparation, the developing parties have a number of obligations with respect to treatment of the building:

Has the City posted summary reports of stabilization measures for the Pan-Am building to the dedicated Website?  If my understanding is correct, VA already has control of the actual property - and has had control for many months as actual holder of title (we've heard from City and VA officials since the fall that the Pan-Am building was the only parcel owned by VA thus far), since the early or mid fall of 2010 at least.  Indeed, the sign out in front of the building, put up by Clark/McCarthy, the construction - not demolition - contractor for the VA itself, noted today that there have been no lost time accidents on the site for 130 days:

More importantly, was the required recordation conducted prior to the present renovation work getting underway?  Work on the building was already underway in the fall.  Here's what I wrote, in green, in response to items in VA's November 24, 2010 "Interim Progress Report on the Programmatic Agreement dated 11/21/2008":

• VA will commence documentation of the Pan-American Life Insurance Company Building and
Dixie Brewery when provided access to these structures. (Stipulations V.B.2.(c).iii., and
V.B.4.(b).ii). It is anticipated that documentation of these structures will take three months to
complete.

VA has already had access to and control of the Pan-Am building for several months. It has also commenced a significant amount of work on the property, such as repainting the uppermost portion of the building. Why hasn't the documentation already been completed?

"in need of purging": State issues RFP for Charity Hospital Building

Once again, I don't believe the Section 106 consulting parties were specifically notified about this particular endeavor that makes up part of the effort to find an adaptive reuse for Charity Hospital.  The Programmatic Agreement in place requires notice to the consulting parties.

Here's the Request for Proposals:

This Request for Proposals (RFP) is issued by Interim LSU Public Hospital (herein referred to as the State or ILH) for the purpose of selecting a contractor to plan, manage and oversee the removal and disposal of all furniture, furnishings, supplies, equipment, records and rubbish from the Charity Hospital Building at 1532 Tulane Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana and the Lapeyre & Miltenberg (L&M) Building at 1550 Tulane Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana. These buildings, destroyed as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, have not been used in their previous capacity since then and are in need of purging for any determined future state use.

I'm also curious as to when the State of Louisiana will hold the second Charity adaptive reuse public meeting mandated by the Programmatic Agreement.  The last one was held in mid-October 2010.

Very Interesting - A New Step in the Charity Adaptive Reuse Process

Did you see this?

Did you know about the January 12, 2011 meeting?  Did you attend?

CHARITY HOSPITAL ADAPTIVE REUSE

MEETING NOTIFICATION :

Jacobs Engineering has been contracted by the State of Louisiana to develop an RFP for the Adaptive Reuse of the former Charity Hospital Building. Jacobs and the State are seeking input from industry professionals at a meeting to be held on January 12th, 2011 at the Regional Planning Commission, 10 Veterans Memorial Boulevard, New Orleans, LA 70124 at 9:00 a.m.

* The goal of the meeting to raise awareness of the project in the development / design / land use / construction community, while soliciting input for improvements.

* The format will be a brief presentation of the process to date, progress on the RFP; and process moving forward.

* At the conclusion of the presentation, Jacobs Engineering will answer questions from the attendees and take input on the RFP.

Ultimately, Jacobs will be looking to solicit proposals from developers who will pull together teams to compete to present the State with the best proposal. Services represented could likely include development, leasing, project management, architecture, civil and structural engineering, M.E.P. engineering, communications, banking/finance, sustainability, etc.

Additionally, if you are a consulting party in the Section 106 process regarding the disposition of Charity Hospital, did you get notice of this particular meeting, an endeavor to promote adaptive reuse?

Here's the programmatic agreement (PA) speaking to the notice requirements for the adaptive reuse process for Charity Hospital:

"FP&C will endeavor to promote adaptive reuse for those nine

historically significant buildings that neither it nor other state

agencies use. During this process, FP&C will give notice to the

SHPO and to those groups and individuals who participated in this

Section 106 process as Consulting Parties. Additionally, public

meetings and/or forums will be held at no less..."