architecture

Dew Drop Inn set to reopen before year’s end

By |

The Dew Drop Inn is set to reopen in winter 2023, the developers announced Thursday (Oct. 19) in a press release. The distinctly New Orleans landmark in Central City has been restored to its former glory as one of the country’s most culturally significant music venues. 

Once known as “the South’s swankiest spot,” the Dew Drop Inn’s current revival is led by real estate developer and New Orleans native Curtis Doucette Jr., whose passion for historical Black culture and music led him to acquire the Dew Drop in 2021 and spend three years restoring the beloved site, reimagining it as a destination that blends a legendary music venue, 17-room boutique hotel, restaurant and pool club. 

From the late 1930s until the late 1960s, the Dew Drop Inn hosted some of the most iconic musicians of our time, including legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Tina Turner and Etta James, as well as local legends like Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas, among many others. The venue served as an incubator for the birth of rhythm & blues and rock ’n’ roll. More than just a music venue, the Dew Drop Inn was a place where artists not only played but hung out, recorded and sometimes lived.

architecture

After 50 years, Dew Drop Inn gets ready to open its doors

By |

Beginning this fall,  the legendary Dew Drop Inn in Central City is set to host live music for the first time in more than half a century. The city’s leading Black music venue for three mid-century decades, the club billed as “the swankiest spot in the South” holds a hallowed place in New Orleans cultural history and in rock ’n’ roll and rhythm-and-blues history. Lead developer Curtis Doucette Jr. told Uptown Messenger they are planning a mid-October opening for the music club. No word yet on the opening act, but he said he wants to bring back as many of the original Dew Drop musicians as he can. Of course, the Dew Drop community of musicians dates from the 1940s to 1970, so few remain on the scene.

Featured

Neutral Ground Coffee House planning move to Carrollton area

By |

Neutral Ground Coffee House owners Caroline “Phant” Williams and James Naylor were driving through the Carrollton neighborhood recently in their quest to find a new home for the city’s oldest coffeehouse and entertainment venue. They had decided Carrollton would good fit for the Neutral Ground, exiled since it lost its lease on its longtime Danneel Street space in April. At the corner of Oak and Adams, the partners noticed an empty, dilapidated commercial building. “There’s just something very attractive about this building,” Williams said. “So we stopped and were like, ‘Wow, wouldn’t this be a great spot!’”

After a Google search failed to turn up any information on the building, they dropped the idea.

blight and demolition

Viewpoint: It’s time to tear down Plaza Tower

By |

Like many downtown residents, whenever I open my front door I catch a glimpse of the decaying Plaza Tower, once the grande dame of Loyola Avenue.  I see the blown-out windows, black netting and colorful graffiti that makes the building an ongoing eyesore. I’ve been in New Orleans long enough to remember when the Plaza Tower was the home or workspace to creatives types like urban planner and artist Bob Tannen and his wife Jeanne Nathan, who appreciated the building’s unique aesthetics. Current owner Joe Jaeger is trying to unload the asbestos-laden structure and the avoid hefty unpaid fines that have caught the attention of Inspector General Ed Michel. 

A 45-story 531-foot skyscraper, the Plaza Tower was the third tallest building in New Orleans when it debuted in 1968 but lost that distinction when the taller One Shell Square opened four years later. The Plaza Tower was designed in the modern style as an office building with a few residential spaces on the upper floors. By 2001, the building was suffering from leaks and deferred maintenance, which created a welcoming environment for toxic mold.

community meetings

Children’s Hospital seeks input on changes to its Master Plan

By |

Uptown residents living near Children’s Hospital can provide input tonight on potential changes to the hospital’s Institutional Master Plan. The Master Plan describes existing and future development on the hospital campus. Updates to this plan reflect the hospital’s recently completed campus transformation, completed renovations to our State Street campus buildings, updated traffic patterns throughout the hospital campus, and immediate future planning, which includes minimal new construction over the next several years. Neighbors can join the meeting anytime between 6 and 8 p.m. on Wednesday (July 19) at Worley Hall, 210 State St. The neighborhood meeting will be structured as a collaborative charette, with team members from Children’s Hospital, their architects, and consultants sharing components of our plans and seeking feedback.

Advertiser specials

Join Us for Senior Summer Tours 2023, hosted by Chelsey Richard Napoleon, Clerk of Civil District Court (sponsored)

By |

Join Us for Senior Summer Tours 2023, hosted by Chelsey Richard Napoleon, Clerk of Civil District Court! Highlighting “Summer Splash” Pontchartrain Beach and Lincoln Beach. Tours will be offered July 20, August 1, 3, 10. Reach out via email or phone for more information:  civilclerkresearchctr@orleanscdc.com or 504-407-0106

About the Clerk of Civil District Court’s Office for the Parish of Orleans:
The Clerk’s Office consists of two divisions – Land Records and Civil. Our Civil Division is where civil cases — such as personal injury, accidents, successions and foreclosures — are filed.

land use & development

Joshua Bruno buys Washington Place Apartments in his own bankruptcy sale

By |

Controversial landlord Joshua Bruno has bought back Washington Place Apartments in Central City, one of six decrepit Bruno-owned complexes auctioned off in a court-ordered bankruptcy sale. The 25-unit building was purchased for $990,000 in what The Pulse, Elifin Realty’s weekly newsletter, described as “an arm’s length transaction.” The buyer is Central Holding, a limited liability company controlled by Bruno, another LLC with Bruno listed as both agent and officer, and the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund. The real estate development division of Hernandez Consulting & Construction, NORF Companies specializes in tax-advantaged investment strategies, such as historic tax credits and Qualified Opportunity Zone Funds. Opportunity Zone Funds, created in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, provide incentives to invest capital gain proceeds in areas designated as in need of economic expansion.

city government

Planning Commission rejects plan for Bohemia outdoor restaurant on Freret

By |

A proposed open-air restaurant complex on the Freret Street corridor received a thumbs-down from the City Planning Commission on Tuesday (May 23)

The large vacant lot on Freret and Upperline Street is envisioned as Bohemia Gardens, an outdoor recreational space with a bar and three restaurants featuring up-and-coming chefs, the developer told the CPC. In its report, the Planning Commission staff objected to the project’s design, stating it did not fit the character of the neighborhood. “The historical development pattern of the Freret Street mixed-use corridor is what makes Freret a vibrant and walkable neighborhood,” the staff states. “The proposed design strategy drastically departs from the character of Freret Street in that current layout of the structures breaks the rhythm and fabric of the street by not providing building facades to the edge of the sidewalk.”

The CPC asked the developers and their architect to bring the building facades to the sidewalk and combine the small structures into one larger building to anchor the corner of Freret and Upperline. After meetings with the CPC staff, a redesign and three deferrals, the Bohemia group had not brought the plans into compliance.

city government

Tulane University asking city for control over four Uptown blocks

By |

Tulane University is asking the city for control over four city blocks adjacent to its Uptown campus. The proposal requests “long-term leases for site control and access” to the four Uptown blocks and one block near the downtown medical school. The request took University Area neighbors, already rankled by parking and traffic congestion in the area, by surprise. Tulane spokesman Michael Strecker told Uptown Messenger that the university just wants to fix and maintain the Uptown streets. “None of these areas would be closed to the public,” Strecker said in an email.

business

Poydras Home’s Green House Project aims to destigmatize aging

By |

 

By Jeanne D’Arcy, Uptown Messenger

Poydras Home on Magazine Street is set to open the first phase of their Green House Project facility that will change the way care is provided to their elderly residents. The concept, according to The Green House Project, is “humanizing care for all people through the creation of radically non-institutional eldercare environments …” So the living spaces are designed to look more like a home and less like an institution. 

The use of the word “green” in this context does not refer to sustainability, nor to the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification process. 

“Poydras Home will soon become the first certified Green House Project within the state of Louisiana,” Poydras Home CEO Erin Kolb said. “The Green House Project began as a national movement in dignified and destigmatized aging more than 17 years ago. This model of care is centered around increased resident choice within a small home environment.” 

When speaking to the large group of stakeholders who came to tour the new facilities, Kolb called it a “cultural transformation.” She went on to discuss the rigorous training of staff to implement this new approach to caring for the elderly. 

Green House living introduces the concept of the “Universal Worker” to Poydras Home, where a small team of Care Partners supports all the residents within their home. This strategy results in fewer employees, which also limits infection transmission.