Uptown Messenger (https://uptownmessenger.com/tag/lower-garden-district/page/4/)
Sculpture Kim Bernadas, unveils “Birth of a Muse,” in the Terpsichore finger park near Prytania Friday evening. After Hurricane Katrina, the Percent for Art program focused on restoration of public art, and “Birth of a Muse” is the first new work commissioned since then.
On Friday evening, the Lower Garden District wants you to come play in its parks.
Monday morning’s downpour caused street flooding across the New Orleans area, including along Tchoupitoulas and through the Lower Garden District. Officials warned of impassable water at the following Uptown locations:
Tchoupitoulas and Jackson
Calliope and Baronne
Philip and Chestnut
Tchoupitoulas from Louisiana to Napoleon
Magazine from Calliope to Tchoupitoulas
St. Charles and Amelia
“Please think safety first and avoid driving through flooded streets,” urged the city Office of Emergency Preparedness. The flood warning is in place until 9:45 a.m.
Flooding was also heavy on the Westbank, officials reported.
The dilapidated structure at 1026 Melpomene is now scheduled for sheriff’s sale due to the persistence of neighbors in pursuing it with the city, according to an article by Karen Gadbois of The Lens.
Three more armed robberies have been reported in Uptown New Orleans this week, including one in which a man was shot while trying to run away from his assailants, police said. Around 8:30 p.m. Monday, a woman walking home on Chestnut near Washington in the Garden District was approached from behind by two men, one holding a gun while the other snatched her purse away, said Sgt. Sandra Contreras of the NOPD Sixth District persons-crimes unit. About two hours later, a man who walked out to his car in the 1000 block of Thalia in the Lower Garden District was confronted by two men, Contreras said. Again, one held the gun while the other demanded the victim’s property, but the victim refused and tried to run away, Contreras said.
The site proposed for Audubon’s temporary campus has lead contamination in the soil of the playground area exceeding federal standards by 10 times or more, prompting some parents to insist the entire site have the lead removed before their children arrive next fall. Audubon’s Broadway Street campus is slated for a renovation project that will require a temporary campus for students for two years and, unable to find an existing building that would serve the purpose, officials are considering building modular buildings on a vacant lot in the Lower Garden District. The site previously held several houses, and OPSB consultants told parents in late March that their demolition probably left the soil contaminated, prompting the need for lead testing that was already underway. In a March 31 report included in a May 9 update on the project on the Orleans Parish School Board website, investigators said they found lead levels in the soil ranging from 660 to 7,700 parts per million in every tract of the playground area they tested, well in excess of the 440-ppm federal standard for play areas or even the 1200-ppm standard for non-play areas. The investigators’ initial recommendation was for either short-term remediation in the playground through planting fresh sod atop the contaminated soil, or for more permanent solutions such as soil replacement or a concrete covering.
A Freret corner store’s request for permission to sell alcohol and a proposal to allow conversion of a Lower Garden District warehouse into a film studio — two ideas that had drawn wary interest from their respective neighborhood groups — were both approved this week by the City Council. After finding strong opposition from some neighbors at earlier stages in the process, Supermercado Las Acacias on Freret Street appeared before the City Council on Thursday with the news that it had come to terms with the Freret Business and Property Owners Assocation and Neighbors United by way of a good-neighbor agreement. “We are all in consensus with the two neighborhood groups, however, the documents have not been executed,” said Morris Reed, an attorney representing building owner Cai Le. “They will be executed at a later date, probably Monday or Tuesday before the end of business.” Under the terms set by the City Council, Las Acacias will be able to sell alcohol as long as it is packaged for off-premises consumption.
Continuing a recent flurry of business activity around the Lower Garden District, residents Monday night heard a film lot’s request to purchase a partially-closed road and a private school’s plans to demolish and replace one of its buildings.
City oversight of how buildings are designed and maintained could tighten throughout the Lower Garden District and into Central City and Mid-City, based on a proposal working its way through the city council.
A new film studio proposed for an old warehouse complex in the Lower Garden District won an important step in the process of city approval Tuesday, over the concerns of several planning commissioners who worried that the site could one day be home to heavy industry. Sam Farnet, owner of Joey K’s restaurant on Magazine Street, is seeking mixed-use zoning for a warehouse complex at the corner of Constance and Orange streets that he says he hopes to transform into a film-production facility, though he has not yet finalized negotiations with a tenant. The surrounding neighborhood group, the Coliseum Square Association, said in March that they trust Farnet as a developer, but are concerned that if his project falls through, a less-desirable project allowed by the mixed-use zoning may open in its stead, such as, they noted, a chicken slaughterhouse. The planning commission had postponed a decision on the question for a month in order to give Farnet and the neighborhood more time to reach a compromise. Farnet said later that he had met with the association’s president a day before Tuesday’s planning meeting, and that they decided to seek another extension on the decision, but were told the project deadline was looming and had to be handled at Tuesday’s meeting.
