The New Orleans “Master Plan” http://nolamasterplan.com/ was passed by a slim margin of voters to much ballyhoo by its supporters and a good deal of suspicion and skepticism by those of us who questioned the wisdom of giving a plan the force of law prior to any plan being drafted. When proponents trumpeted its ability to ensure “neighborhood input” in stopping development many of us just saw it has a way to empower the perpetual opposition that crops up with EVERY proposal. The bone they threw to people who want much needed development to come to New Orleans is that, for a project that met all the myriad of criteria, it would add more “certainty” to being able to develop.
That was a lie.
We were told it was going to bring a set of rules “unaffected by politics”. What we got was the empowerment of NIMBYs to stop everything anybody wants to build.
The latest case is Tulane’s new proposed stadium. You can read about it here.
The optimism about the new Tulane Stadium meets destructive force of NIMBY empowerment.
The short story is: Tulane wants to build a stadium they can build under the current zoning rules. A dozen NIMBYs get up in arms. They appeal to a councilwoman, who made her ‘bona fides’ as a NIMBY, who is convinced that issues that can be handled simply with municipal code enforcement need to be handled with land use regulation. The councilwoman proposes an “interim Zoning District”(IZD) to throw sand in the works of Tulane developing a stadium despite overwhelming support for the stadium, protesting all the time that she doesn’t want to “impede progress”. Three other pandering councilwomen join in and the IZD passes.
And they use the “master plan”, which they tell us is supposed to add “certainty” to the land use process, to justify it.
What is clear is that the only way the “master plan” will be used is to guarantee the “certainty” that nothing can ever be built without either kissing the rings of self appointed neighborhood poo-bahs or paying off council people to ignore the perpetual opposition to change.
The post “master plan” world is one in which a project that wasn’t envisioned by the people putting together the plan, who made no secret they were under the influence of preservationists and other anti-development groups, will require a year of meetings, hearings and thousands of dollars in fees. But a handful of NIMBYs can stop a project that is ALLOWED by the plan just by whining to a sympathetic pandering councilwoman. A post “master plan” New Orleans is one in which NOTHING ever gets built again unless there is NO ONE who objects. This is an impossible standard in a city where a debate on an issue between 3 people can bring 5 different opinions.
What we have now is a system where the opposition, the forces of NO, are always given deference and that will lead to a New Orleans where nothing can ever grow again.
