Claiborne Avenue Opportunities and Challenges

Reasons for Decline.

HANO mis-management

The primary cause of the economic decline of Claiborne Ave, north and south, is the same primary cause of many of the distressed neighborhoods in the city: Proximity to or being located between large scale, HANO run housing projects. Decades of HANO mismanagement, coupled with the City’s lack of interest in economic development that leads to jobs for its citizens that would move them out of subsidized housing and into the housing market has lead to precipitous decline in neighborhoods adjacent to HANO housing projects. This has played itself out on Jackson Ave, St. Bernard Ave, Orleans Ave, Basin Street and is the primary cause of the decline on both N. Claiborne, flanked as it is by the Lafitte and Iberville projects and S. Claiborne, sandwiched between the Magnolia and Calliope. Simply put, concentrating poverty and putting large communities of people without resources together has a tendency to suck the economic life out of an area.

Failure to incorporate interstate into land use plans.

Another missed opportunity was the failure to incorporate I-10 into longer term land use plans. We should have encouraged larger, private commercial development near the on and off ramps, using those exits as destinations and thereby encouraging much needed commercial development in the city, thereby capturing the jobs and tax revenue we’ve let escape to neighboring parishes.

Ways to enhance N. Claiborne

Markets

One of the ways we can bring economic life into the community adjacent to N. Claiborne is by using the shade and shelter provided by the elevated I-10 as an open air market from Orleans to St. Bernard, along the lines of the Portabello Road Market in London which sits under the freeway. Using the space under the bridge, lighting it attractively, providing  some soft material overhang to dampen highway traffic noise and setting up a system of market stalls along with a couple of permanent performance stages for local musicians. This area can be a focus of community activity, providing as it does, ample parking and a large swath of land for expansion.

Bus Transfer Station

The area under I-10 at Canal should be used for a Bus Transfer station. Move all of the current bus route termination points from their current locations at Canal & Rampart, Canal & Basin and Tulane & Loyola and centralize them to a Bus transfer station at Canal & Claiborne. Light it attractively, use soft awnings to minimize highway noise, fence the area to provide security, provide security, a driver break room & a small kiosk for the sale of magazines and cold drinks.

Larger commercial development

Rewrite zoning code to provide for opportunities for larger commercial development. Encourage retailers to locate there and make it easier to remove blighted buildings. Also make it easier to combine lots on adjacent streets so that larger parcels can be developed.

Ways to enhance S. Claiborne

Larger commercial development

Rewrite zoning code to provide for opportunities for larger commercial development. Encourage retailers to locate there and make it easier to remove blighted buildings. Also make it easier to combine lots on adjacent streets so that larger parcels can be developed.

Provide turning lanes

One of the major issues with S. Claiborne is traffic flow. Some of this could be mitigated by providing turning lanes, cut from the neutral ground that takes folks making left hand turns out of the flow of traffic. Also, reworking the overpass from the Northeast so that there are ramps to Earhart.

What removal of elevated I-10 means to the City at large.

Endless Gridlock on the Pontchartrain Expressway

The Pontchartrain Expressway to and from the west already carries close to 200,000 cars a day. At peak rush hours traffic will stack up back across the Crescent City Connection. Adding Eastbound I-10 traffic to that will likely increase it to a breaking point. And the Pontchartrain Expressway is prone to flooding at the railroad underpass.

Massive new interchange in Lakeview

As there isn’t currently a way to get from Westbound I-10 off the Pontchartrain Expressway to Eastbound 610 a massive new interchange will have to be built. Any discussion of removal of I-10 over Claiborne should include stakeholders in Lakeview.

Removing access to downtown hospitals.

We are in the process of building two brand new hospitals downtown, one of which will likely house our city’s trauma center. Currently they will sit next to the interstate which will provide speedy access from most parts of the city. Much of the city will be cut off from easy access to the new hospitals if we remove the interstate.

Endymion Saturday, Crescent City Classic, Rock And Roll Marathon.

I-10 provides a flyover of Canal Street and joins Uptown with Downtown when Endymion rolls on Saturday or any time Canal or Esplanade is blocked by a special event, such as parade or race.

Increased ground level traffic on Claiborne, Broad & Elysian Fields

With the I-10 handling over 100,000 cars a day, if a significant number of those are folks from points east looking to access downtown they will likely take Claiborne, Broad (Hwy 90) and Elysian Fields. Broad is currently very congested. Elysian Fields also is very busy at rush hours. And any extra traffic on surface level N. Claiborne is likely to make that street difficult to cross without a street light.

Increased congestion on Rampart and Canal and the CCC approaches.

As more traffic would be shifted to ground level more congestion would likely accumulate on Canal and Rampart. Also more congestion and traffic would be seen on Loyola, Carondelet and Tchoupitoulas exits of the CCC approach (Hwy 90) and these are exits that currently back up on to bridge approach most mornings.

Our transportation legacy and capacity

Given that a major part of our legacy, and hopefully our future, is with the transportation sector it seems hostile to our capacity and legacy and future to look to reduce our transportation links. We should look for ways to increase our capacity so that we can promote growth in the transportation sector, a key sector of our economy.

The future I-49

Hopefully, when I-49 is completed and can meet up with I-10 at the Superdome, it will provide a signature crossroads that we can all be proud of.

Unbuilding New Orleans East

Considering that the main effect of removal of I-10 would be to cut off New Orleans East from convenient downtown access, any and all discussions should involve New Orleans East. Actually, given that this road is used by the entire city, this discussion should be brought to the entire city.

Removal of roadway above flooding in a city where street flooding is an issue

Having gone through a host of planning where “storm-proofing” infrastructure was a major topic, it seems particularly foolish to consider removing a roadway always above base flood elevation and that provides a “dry” way out of a city that frequently floods from rain storms. The I-10 to the CCC (Hwy 90 ) provided a way out for many in downtown neighborhoods during Katrina. And this is particularly important as both I-10 West is prone to flooding at the railroad underpass, 610 isn’t raised along its entire length and I-10 East is prone to flooding by offshore winds from the East pushing water in the Bayou Sauvage area.

A personal tale

On May 8^th 1995, I was living in the Bayou St. John area, but when the skies opened up I was downtown rehearsing a production of Richard III. As the water rose in the Warehouse district and flooded the arts space, I had moved my truck to the sidewalk. After considering all routes I eventually found my way to the interstate. As I knew many of the low lying areas that stood in my path to home and receiving reports about flooding on Canal, Broad, parts of the French Quarter and other surface streets, and knowing that Esplanade was a ridge, I made my way up the elevated expressway and exited at Esplanade, encountering water at the bottom of the ramp but dry street once I got to the intersection with Esplanade. I drove up Esplanade to the Bayou, turned left, drove along the bayou until I got near my street. I waded home the block and a half, which was a lot closer than the miles I would have had to wade if the elevated I-10 hadn’t been there. It seems foolish to remove an elevated expressway that could be a conduit for first responders and a lifeline to the residents in a city that is prone to flooding during a strong spring rainstorm.

Suspicious Minds

Folks who have followed the “planning” attempts and processes have watched as certain ideas seem to gain currency, regardless of how unpopular they are, things like the “green dots” and other ideas for reducing our city’s capacity and population, while common sense ideas about growth have been ignored,  have made most folks suspicious of “planning” and “planners”

“New Urbanist” fashion.

Given that much of this mania to tear down the elevated expressway seems to be part and parcel of the “New Urbanist” fashion that is au currant in city planning it seems inadvisable to take a major step in reducing the capacity of our road system just because it falls in line with these “new urbanist” ideas that consistently ignore the actual urban reality of the city.

The Chief proponent.

Anyone who has followed the history of building roads in New Orleans, or almost any new project in New Orleans, finds that the chief opponent of moving the city towards a modern, robust, repopulated city is the chief proponent of removing the elevated I-10.

The preservationist mythology.

Much of the discussion surrounding this project has centered around the notion that if we make it difficult to access downtown then people will want to move downtown. This ignores the fact that much of the housing stock that makes up the area surrounding N. Claiborne and the elevated roadway is antiquated and of the type that modern New Orleans families have rejected for decades. Many of the preservationist proponents are dismissive of the needs of middle class families and hold out hope that those families are miraculously going to give up suburban living and bedroom doors that close to return to shotgun house living if we can just keep them from getting to their jobs. This attitude and the plans to remove the expressway impact significantly the middle class families of New Orleans East, families we should be working diligently to keep and whose lives we should be making more convenient.

Dave Dixon’s appearance does nothing to quell unease that “fix is in” on this study.

Since removal of the expressway ended up remaining in the city’s “Master Plan” despite vigourous protest, and given that Dave Dixon, who worked on the “master plan” for GoodyClancy seems to be involved in this effort, it give the appearance that “the fix is in” and that anything that comes out of this process is going to recommend removal regardless of what the real findings and concerns are. Many of us are remaining engaged despite this because these plans that continuously reduce our city’s capacity and undercut its ability to grow to the future are disturbing to those of us who feel that we need a strong city with increased capacity and focused primarily on growth.

And finally….

There are no magic oak trees. If oak trees made a street magic, Louisiana Ave would be a showplace, Washington Ave wouldn’t be depressed. We can’t make decisions about the future of New Orleans and whether it can be strong and grow based upon nostalgia for long-gone oak trees.

We could have used this whole experience to fundamentally remake the city into one that provides opportunity for its citizens and perhaps create a new prosperous city. We could have used this to create a new New Orleans based upon economic opportunity but instead we are continuing to pursue the same methods that have led to our stagnation and decline.

Economic development sections put low wage tourism first and follows it with the dubious concept of the “cultural economy”. The rest of the chapter seems to be focused almost exclusively on the ‘public private” partnership. It almost ignores our place in the global economy and the benefits that has brought us over the course of our existence.

And all of this is premised upon a dubious new theory that contradicts millennia of observation on the growth and prosperity of cities. The planners brought to the table the idea that a diverse and cosmopolitan population will drive economic development instead of what has actually been the case since the dawn of civilization, that economic development will bring a diverse and cosmopolitan population. We didn’t get built on this swamp because our forefathers came for the culture, they were the culture, they came for the economic opportunity and that’s how real, vibrant cities maintain themselves.  We can’t pretend we can pay people to BE the culture, we have to recognize that we have a culture because people got paid doing other, more productive things.

The one thing this master plan desperately needed to do was to sweep away the 70s CZO that zoned our neighborhood businesses out of existence. The empty storefronts that dot our city are the legacy of a previous plan, more suited to Slidell, that painted on zoning with a paint roller rather than recognizing the diverse land-use mosaic that is our streetscape. This plan pays lip service to opening up these locations to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of the city but it should be boldly declaring that these storefronts can be a force in our economic renaissance.

But of course they are being cautious, lest they upset the forces of NO, that are holding this city back economically because it may, possibly, make their lives the slightest bit less comfortable or not cater exclusively to their needs. Well, we have a whole passel of city ordinances to deal with any disturbances and better we use them than foreswearing commercial uses and leaving our city filled with vacant buildings.

In a city that is going broke, the Planning Commission gave themselves another 14 or so district planners. Instead of eliminating the need to “kiss rings”, the so-called Citizen Participation Plan adds another layer of rings to kiss as they empower the most obstructionist elements of our city to stand in the way of new development or request kickbacks from projects.

We have already seen this play out as a neighborhood association already requested a cut of the operating funds of the ill-conceived “Re-inventing the crescent”. Not only unhappy with getting a park that will further erode New Orleans’ raison d’etre they wanted to be paid. And this is a public project. How many developers looking to bring jobs and sales tax revenue will be similarly held up?

The plan is overly protective of the housing for 650,000 plus people that we don’t need and hostile towards the commercial property that we desperately need for the jobs and the sales tax revenue they produce. It has removed most commercial zoning west of the industrial canal unless it is adjacent to a housing project.

There seems to be notion in this town that we can complain about section 8 housing and property taxes and in the same breath stop the businesses that bring jobs and sales tax revenue as if these two aren’t linked. That we can call for more police and better schools without understanding how more and better employment opportunities help both these situations.

At a time when we are struggling to maintain and grow our population we should be making it EASIER for people to rebuild and businesses to open. But instead of a growth plan, this thing focuses on a preservation plan.  But here is the bottom line, without a robust economy there are no resources to preserve anything and without a prosperous population there is no reason to preserve anything.

Throughout the process there have been calls for “input” but when it comes to the actual plan it seems to stick pretty closely to the desire of special interest groups with their obstructionist agenda. So much so, that the Fairgrounds Racetrack isn’t mapped to be commercial, like it should be, but is mapped for doubles, like we need

yet more housing without jobs.

Additionally, have we told the people of Lakeview that a new massive interstate interchange is coming to their

neighborhood or the people of New Orleans East that we don’t really care if they can get to work downtown or the people of the Treme that Claiborne is probably going to be 8 lanes of traffic at highway speeds, if we keep the destruction of I-10 in the plan. The only thing that works in the plan is the new hospitals, which it gives rather tepid support to.

My wish? Send it back to the City Planning Commission with the notation to make the entire plan advisory only. Take the destruction of the I-10 out of the plan. Open up the “Citizens Participation” Groups to all comers and not just members of unelected neighborhood associations. Short of going back to the drawing board to build a plan that embraces progress and puts economic development first, without the fantasy that either preservation or culture is economic development, a plan that opens up the city for development and redevelopment rather than giving into the forces of NO and their desire to hold the city back. We needed to start with the idea that everything not explicitly forbidden is allowed,

rather than the other way around. We need to find ways to say YES. It is the only way for New Orleans to survive and thrive.  Thank you.

Use the area under the overpass at Canal and Claiborne to build a bus
transfer station.

Currently: The vast majority of RTA bus routes terminate at the corner
of Canal and Basin/Rampart/Loyola. There are no amenities for riders
to keep them from having to wait for buses in the sun and rain. Other
buses that serve riders in the city terminate on the corner of Loyola
and Tulane. The area of the bus stops is run down.

Proposal- Use the area under the overpass at Canal and Claiborne to
consolidate the bus stops into a bus transfer station.

Elements:

-         Fence the area for security with limited access points on
the ends of the station.

-         Provide Security for the area with both cameras and guards.

-         Install two small kiosks, about the size of a news stand to
sell cold drinks, newspapers and magazines. Use the rents from these
kiosks to defray the costs of security. On special event days local
merchants can be brought in, market style, to provide goods for the
bus passengers.

-         Install a Public Address system to announce the arrival and
departure of the buses.

-         Create a driver’s breakroom with a functioning restroom.

-         Provide ample trash receptacles.

-         Install adequate lighting for security.

-         Install a light colored fabric cover under the overpass to
keep debris off of the passengers and provide a canvas for a series of
decorative color changing LED light fixtures that can be programmed to
respond to special events. (Purple, Green and Gold for Mardi gras, Red
and green for Christmas, Team colors for a superbowl, etc.

Benefits

-         Would get public transit customers out of the elements while
waiting for their bus.

-         Would encourage reinvestment in both the corners of Canal
and Basin/Rampart and the corner of Canal and Claiborne.

-         Would consolidate the bus waiting areas to facilitate transfers.