Watching, wondering

 

As of yesterday afternoon, the modernist building - this one - on Banks Street in the LSU Footprint...was gone, yet another piece of New Orleans modernist architectural heritage (it was designed by Colbert - same as the recently demolished Phillis Wheatley School) lost to the wrecking ball.

The property line stake appeared only recently.  It's interesting because the parcel that it's stuck in the middle of - Pershing Place, a small pocket park, is still shown as owned by the City of New Orleans on the Assessor's map, the property being listed as 29348 Tulane Avenue.

Perhaps the stake marks where the highway right of way ends.

But the Assessor's record showing this parcel as still owned by the City is interesting.

1.  Is the park land supposed to be incorporated as part of the UMC project?  Every map and rendering I've seen presented publicly shows the park being subsumed into some sort of plaza at the corner of S. Galvez and Tulane Avenue:

I've inquired about the fate of the statue in the park, and it sounds like VA may incorporate it into the adjacent VA site.

Still the June 2011 report on the site posted at the DOA website...does not appear to show the parcel (or the other tiny little triangular parcel immediately riverside of the park - which has no assessor record) as one of the parcels involved in the project:

One would think that the parcel would be shown below the far left lower corner if it was meant to be a colored parcel on the map.

2.  If the parcel is in fact going to be transferred as some renderings show - or has been transferred - to the LSU Board of Supervisors for the UMC project...will the state have to pay or did it pay?  The property is listed at $389,000.  To my knowledge, the state did not compensate the city for all that land that it gained from the tearing out of the street grid in the LSU Footprint.

New Orleans tax rolls lose $45 million worth of property due to LSU/VA project

From a chilling caption in today's Times-Picayune:

About $45 million worth of real estate fell off the tax roll this year because of the clearing of more than 70 acres in Mid-City to make way for a new state teaching hospital and a new federal hospital for veterans.

Think not only of that figure.  Think of how much room that overall value figure had to grow based on the fact that many of the properties in the Footprint were still revitalizing and coming back online after the storm when they were stopped cold by a 2007 city-imposed building and repair moratorium.

More importantly, think of that figure multiplied by five years of non-collection.  By 10 years.  By 50 years.  The lost revenue to a city that is repeatedly facing budgetary problems and a shrunken population has been exacerbated by the LSU/VA project, and it's a problem that will compound over time.  And this staggering loss will happen despite the fact that the state owns Charity Hospital as we speak, which could have prevented the destruction of a great many of the Lower Mid-City taxable parcels involved.

The Assessor's comments about some compensation from the increased value of properties nearby along Tulane Avenue offer little consolation.  Their ultimate values depend on the project being completed - and the UMC hospital does not have the resources necessary at this time - years after it should have had its ducks in a row.  The values along Tulane Avenue come with built in speculative risks.  And they're built on the backs of people who wrongly had their properties expropriated for projects that took more land than they needed - because sprawling, mid-rise suburban-style designs were insisted upon.

There's also the fact that some of the property owners who had their properties seized still have not been compensated.  I just received an email last night from one former VA property owner who told me "And no I never got paid for my house on Palmyra.... Yet."

Yet another glaring example of how bull-headed, destructive, and short-sighted this project has been from the start...rears its head.

A certain shade of shady

It appears that "NOLA Renewal Group LLC" is trying to acquire a number of larger parcels just outside the VA Hospital Footprint by way of acquisitive prescription (similar to "adverse posession" in common law states.  The lots are the site of a series of warehouse-type buildings, 2537 Tulane Avenue (above) being the largest, that were linked to the Dixie Brewery building below S. Rocheblave by an elevated connector until a few months ago.

I believe this particular LLC, which is not in good standing with the state according to the Secretary of State's website - and which has a different listed address than the one on the sign posted on one building) was also involved in the controversial demolitions of the "Treme" houses on S. Derbigny in Hoffman Triangle.

It appeared back in the spring that the LLC was trying to sell properties on S. Derbigny.  And then the entire demolition spat erupted.  The buildings were demolished, except for one.  A man who appears to be Larry Jackson, listed as a director of the LLC, also showed up at NCDC at one point and sought demolition for the remaining corner building at Washington and S. Derbigny.  The presentation was strange.

Here's the data from the Secretary of State's website - note that it's not in good standing and lists a Harvey address - not the Poydras address that appears on the sign above:

I wonder what's going on.  Acquisitive prescription is spelled out in Louisiana law - and the timelines involved make me think the LLC is not thinking about the "replacement acreage clause" in the MOU (or maybe it is...the sign didn't appear, to my knowledge, until after my post on replacement acreage went up).  But given the circumstances - for one, the total assessed value on 2537 Tulane is over 1 million dollars - this deserves some sunshine. 

This whole thing came to my attention when I noticed that the properties had suddenly been cleaned up a bit - weeds cut, trash picked up, etc. - in recent days.