Could it be true? The moment I've waited my entire life for? I hope it's more than revitalized, I've always hoped it was completely demolished and turned into one of 3 things:

1. A 12 block extension of Armstrong Park
2. A redevelopment of midrise commercial/residential buildings
3. A rebuild of Storyville based off historic blueprints and photographs

In any case, I hope the architecture is not exactly like the other redeveloped projects, in order to make the French Quarter stand out further from the rest of the city.

It seems closer to number 2: "In addition to housing, the plan should include commercial space for retail, offices and community facilities, the request states."

This is very exciting; I think a game changer!

The architecture will be historicist I'm sure....especially if HRI gets in the successful bid (I don't think I mind that...I would hate to see something very modern go up in that area that quickly looks dated), but they need to choose their building materials carefully.

Huge...just absolutely f'ing huge. With the new hospitals being built and a new mixed-income neighborhood replacing the Iberville that whole section of Canal St. will be totally different and much improved in a few years.:D

This is the news many have been waiting to hear.Now the FQ has a reason to expand and Rampart can have a real chance for business.With the greenway and the hospital a large chunk of the city will have better chances to prosper.Hope all this is done in time for the superbowl.Any word on the I-10 removal project?

Texaco Bldg.
 

Wish they'd fix up this relic soon. A high rise green monster close to the new Bioinnovation developement. Great news that the Iberville is coming down!

They should just tear the Texaco Building down. I don't know what kind of wind and water damage it has, but there's a real chance it could be structurally unsound. If it's not, though, I'm open to a well-done recladding and repositioning.

The best thing for the Texaco Building would be to snatch it out of the hands of that slumlord Elie Khoury. Why are all the developers in this town such skeezeballs? The only one I can vouch for is Marcel Wisznia, although it seems he has an overly optimistic expectation of how many people want to live in the CBD.

I was looking at the drawing of the the proposed development of the old Entergy plant and had one burning question:

Why the heck are there steps leading down to the river? So you can feed ducks? Fall into the river and drown? Can I launch my boat there?

I do think that the anchor tenant will either be Target or IKEA. Is it large enough to be an IKEA? I know the closest one is in Houston, so I could see this being a logical location (I know several people who will drive to Houston to go to IKEA so it must be a magical place)

Tower being gutted
 

I was driving from the Westbank, through downtown passed the Superdome and noticed a white tower being gutted down. I'm not sure the exact location of it, It might be one of the buildings around South Rampart and Common/Tulane. It looks similar to the old Chevron building. Does anyone know anything about this building? Future plans? Etc?

It'll probably die off for now. Landrieu tended to skirt around the issue saying only that it was "interesting" and that he would look into it, the few residents in the area were against the idea, no engineering study was ever done and the planning study submitted was flawed to say the least. It's also noted that the planning firm who presented the study had certain interests in the LSU project and that of the two miles they wanted to demolish only about a half a mile is actually surrounded by residences (so much for killing the neighborhood).

I fully agree. I would be interested to see if it's feasible to do something creative with the building before tearing it down though.

I would rather see IKEA there than Target. IKEA is overrated IMO, but I would still love to see it in NOLA.

Ullian's work elsewhere is very promising. I'm confident that, if he can line up financing, we'll get a world-class neighborhood out of this.

The "anchor tenant" he discusses is interesting. IKEA is a possibility, but so far they've been unwilling to do challenging re-use projects for any of their American stores. (The Seattle store looks like it's in an existing one-story suburban warehouse, but that's a huge difference from trying to re-use a century-old power plant). This reluctance to re-use older buildings is part of the reason why IKEA has located in the suburbs of most major cities.

Target, however, has the same preference against existing buildings.

I'm not sure it's either of these stores. I guess if Ullian is successful, we'll hear about it soon enough.

First off, the plan I posted is now defunct. A judge has ordered that development team to cease all work on their (competing) project, based on the fact that they don't have valid claims TO the site.

The steps, though, are just an attractive way to create a river edge. Would you rather just have sheet piling? The idea is that the park would be built on fill (or structure) that elevates the wharf about 20 feet, enough to bridge over the New Orleans Belt. The height would gradually transition down on the other side of the tracks. The idea is that people enjoy getting up close and personal with the water, which can't happen when you're 20 feet above it or stuck behind a fence.

How big is 800,000 sq. feet
 

I'm trying to get an idea of size here. The article states that they could develop 6-8 floors at 100,000 sq. feet a piece. How big is this relative to say one of Target's urban stores?

Also, people keep saying that Charity would be hard to develop due to its sheer size, how much bigger is Charity than the Entergy plant?

BTW if you go check out the Entergy plant (the streets are horrible so watch out) please note the largely intact 19th Centruty (American Style Town House?) just slightly upriver. I really hope this project saves that building, when I first saw it I couldn't believe it was wasting away; it looks like it might even have a view of the river.

A Target store is usually in the range of 120000-250000 sq. ft.

Ikea stores vary wildly in size. The European stores are fairly small, but in America they tend to be enormous. The one in Draper, UT (similar market size as New Orleans) is 310000 sq. ft.

I'm assuming that garage parking may be retrofitted into the power plant, which would increase the square footage considerably.

Market Street power plant
 

In the renderings it seems that they intend to preserve the smoke stacks. I don't see the aesthetics of that. Why not lose 'em?


http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/3...entergy1lg.jpg

I disagree the smokestacks must stay. Have you seen the Tate Modern in London?

Been wondering this myself. Its definitely been completely gutted to the skeleton!

Is this the building you're talking about? http://www.emporis.com/application/?...orleans-la-usa
It apparently has a gruesome past: "A fire on November 29, 1972, resulted in 6 fatalities. One was a result of smoke inhalation and five were the result of jumping from the 15th floor to escape the inferno."

I have noticed that there has been some work done (though not much) when I pass by on my way to 1010 Common. There also appears to be some work being done on the row of two-story commercial buildings just across Rampart St. If anyone has any more info on either of these, I would love to hear it.

This is one area of downtown with more than its share of dilapidated structures, so any development would be welcome.

In other news, I can report that the renovations of Dinwiddie and Richardson hall at Tulane are complete along with the street and drainage projects. The construction of the new residential hall is well underway. And construction on the new basketball/volleyball practice facility will soon be underway. I also hear that (for better or for worse) a new football stadium is almost certainly going to be built uptown.

I think that is the building. Thanks for the info.

Question about Jefferson Parish, I apologize if this is the wrong thread, but to me, the entire region is NOLA. I was driving down Airline Hwy from the Airport towards downtown. I noticed a new building being built just before I got to the Saints practice facility and Zephyrs field. Any ideas what it is?

Building on Airline
 

That's the Jefferson Performing Arts Centers.

It's millions over budget so I hope it's nice.

Also, are they actually gutting the Rault building? It might be hard to tell given its current state.

Don't watch the video
 

Don't watch the video; it's poor quality, but still horrifying.