A Site to Keep an Eye On

NolaMedZone

As some observers have noted, and as the entire LSU/VA Hospitals experience has shown me, it's truly difficult for the average citizen to get a handle of what his or her government is doing.  It's even more difficult to stop the various government entities from doing what you don't want them to do.

Throw enough money, bureaucracies, levels of government, expropriation petitions, and shifting, euphemistic acronyms at a historic neighborhood, and you will ultimately get your way.  That seems to be the lesson.

You'll even get the rather ironic and gung ho support of the Downtown Development District as you abandon downtown New Orleans, leave the massive Charity Hospital complex and the existing VA Hospital complex vacant, and push out beyond the CBD to build sprawling suburban-style medical facilities where they do not belong.

The sad thing in all of this is that I really don't have a problem with the overarching purpose of many of the development organizations involved.  I do have a problem with the wanton way in which they have decided that some people in the community and some parts of the city itself simply don't matter.  If medical and biomedical development was targeted intelligently, as it should be, at the many, many existing vacancies in the CBD, there would be far less opposition.