Whole Foods, the Monkey Hill property and Poydras Home are all headed to City Planning Commission this week.
Three projects planned near Magazine Street’s upper end — the Poydras Home expansion, the Whole Foods operations changes, and the creation of a new restaurant next to Monkey Hill bar — will be heard by the City Planning Commission on Tuesday, according to the meeting’s agenda.
All three projects have been the subject of recent discussions by the Audubon-Riverside Neighborhood Association:
Whole Foods is seeking a number of changes to the operating conditions it agreed to with the city when it first opened, including later hours, more 18-wheeler deliveries, live music and plants for sale outdoors. The requests have drawn mixed reactions — ranging from total opposition by some of those who live closest to basic acceptance by those who view the grocer as a good neighbor — so the neighborhood association endorsed some requests and rejected others.
The request for 18-wheelers more than once a day has been most controversial. Whole Foods says the change would actually reduce truck traffic into the store, but neighbors want the deliveries to be made offsite and carried over in smaller vehicles, to reduce noise in area and wear on the streets.
The owners of the Monkey Hill property are requesting the city’s permission to expand into a restaurant next door. Last month, the neighborhood association expressed concern that the developers had not approached them about the project, and that they were just finding out about it from the city planning commission agenda.
The Poydras Home retirement community plans to add a new, three-story building within its grounds, a project that has drawn no opposition thus far.
The City Planning Commission meets at 1:30 p.m. in the City Council chambers at City Hall.
I am sure ARNA will oppose this small business owner’s plans to expand his successful business, but they certainly will not take a stance against a 9000sqft national chain drugstore that will be completely out of place with the rest of the neighborhood. Unfortunately ARNA has failed to keep up the promise of its own bylaws – preservation of the neighborhood – and has since been deemed irrelevant by the vast majority of residents in the AR neighborhood.