SLST, NOLA: Feb 16

Early Saturday morning, a bunch of us decided that prior to heading to Idea Village we would drive over and see the 9th Ward, the New Orleans neighborhood most affected by Katrina. This was a very sobering trip in that we saw the after effects of all the destruction. It appeared that most of the houses were slated to be demolished due to the homeowner’s not returning to fix their houses and they were all placarded as to that effect. Also, on most homes, spray-painted on the front was a large X with some text sprayed in each quarter of the X. We didn’t know what this stood for until one of our group found something on-line that told us that the text written in each quarter stood for one of the following: the date a search of the property was performed, the organization who searched through the house, the problems associated with the house (we saw TFW written on a lot of houses and this referred to Toxic Flood Water that was characteristic of the aftermath of Katrina), and then, most sobering, the number of bodies found. This realization definitely made us all reflect on this horrible time of NOLA and the US’s recent history. After driving around through the neighborhoods for a while, we came upon a public housing location. I had heard about the public housing issue prior to arriving in NO as I went to a lecture by Prof. John Fernandez from the MIT Dept. of Architecture titled “Rebuilding the City of New Orleans: Working Across Sectors to Achieve a Common Goal.” It was a very interesting lecture discussing Fernandez’s work in helping to rebuild and redevelop New Orleans in a green and sustainable way. The public housing complexes were all condemned immediately after Katrina without any inspections made as to identify if the homes were truly un-livable. Currently, these communities are completely fenced off to their previous residents with no sign of being opened in the near future. These locations made me think of what Chernobyl might have looked like three years after the meltdown. We could see people’s belongings in their homes, but no one had touched any of them in the past three years. With the mass exodus of the NO population, who knows when these buildings will be restored or inhabited.

Following our tour, we headed to Idea Village for a check-in to access our progress and direction of our project. After a meeting with some more Idea Village staff and some of their clients, we felt that our project was well under way but that the finished result was still a ways out. We were able to divide up into small groups of around 3-5 people to flesh out more of each part of our plan such as the competitive marketplace, funding options, profiles of similar projects and fine-tune our recommendations and the phases of growth for the project. Unfortunately I have been asked not to blog about too many specifics to the project so I can’t get too much more detailed other than letting you know that the idea is to create a green development hub in NO. Sorry that I can’t divulge more, but that is how it goes sometimes.

After finishing up on the day, we headed out to a restaurant called Elizabeth’s. Again, really great food even though the floor ended up with two entrées, a couple of glasses of water and our waiter – it wasn’t his fault either…these were all separate incidents that none of us can explain. It was definitely ridiculous though. We hope that our tip made up for all the trouble we inadvertently caused though. I would definitely suggest going there and would suggest trying their Dream Burger – darn good. Also, in my efforts to try random food, a couple of us tried the frog legs. Not too bad. I’d definitely order them again. Following dinner, a large group of us headed out to Frenchman St and went to see a show by Kermit Ruffins at the Blue Nile. Wow is NO music great. Some of our group headed out every night and saw live music every night that had a completely different sound. I can do no justice to the music by trying to explain, you just need to go. So get your tickets and head on down…next month is the Jazz Fest so get on it quick.

More later…