"Yet another anniversary — and still no substitute for Charity Hospital"

Here, at The Lens.

Palmyra Street, Six Years After Katrina

To paraphrase Tacitus:

To ravage...to usurp under false titles without funds, they call progress; and where they make a desert, they call it development.

Today, instead of a functioning University Medical Center humming along in the sturdy shell of the former Charity Hospital building, there still isn't even a business plan for the UMC proposed for Lower Mid-City.  Nor is there adequate financing in place to build the first phase of the hospital.

There is, however, a largely destroyed swath of the city standing increasingly vacant between Canal, Tulane, S. Galvez, and Claiborne.

If the State of Louisiana, LSU, UMC, City of New Orleans and various federal agencies had pursued the retrofit of Charity three years ago, we could have had a state-of-the-art hospital in place today - and it would have been less expensive (the state has the money onhand to realize the Charity option at present).

Instead, there are no signs that the UMC Board has even considered the Charity option, and is instead bulling forward with the disastrous Lower Mid-City site out of embarrassment.  

One Year Inside the Footprint

Today marks one year since I began blogging here at Inside the Footprint.

I never saw myself continuing the venture for such a long time.

I will say that while I still feel compelled to report on the happenings in the Footprint, it's difficult to continue the project these days.  Each subsequent visit leaves an increasingly bitter aftertaste.

If nothing else, though, there will be some record at close-range of the project's impact on an historic neighborhood.  And perhaps some future decision-makers will happen upon it and be dissuaded from making a similarly egregious mistake.