New Orleans plans jazz district central park

By Peter Henderson

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – New Orleans plans a new $700
million jazz district and central park, aiming to use the
devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to
rebuild the damaged core of the city.

Standing in front of the still-shuttered Superdome stadium,
city and state officials on Tuesday described the 20-acre
(8-hectare) National Jazz Center and Jazz Park, a performance
center, museum complex and park that would provide a new
cultural anchor for the city known as the home of jazz.

“This project will put New Orleans back on the map,” said
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

Nine months after Katrina swept through the city, the area
to be transformed is only partly functional and has little foot
traffic. The Hyatt hotel, which served as a command center for
Mayor Ray Nagin during the storm and will be redeveloped in the
plan, is riddled with broken windows.

Workers still are repairing the roof of the Superdome, the
stadium that served as the shelter of last resort for thousands
in last year’s storm.

Supporters hope their plan will attract more residential
and mixed-use development by better promoting New Orleans’
musical heritage, supporters said. Fewer than half the city’s
pre-storm residents have returned, nearly every main street has
some closed businesses and tourism, the lifeblood of the local
economy, has not fully revived since the hurricane.

The six-block-long park would link the Hyatt and the
Superdome while an extended trolley line would run to the
French Quarter’s historic maze of shops and restaurants about
half a mile away.

TWO TO THREE YEARS OF WORK

Nagin estimated the project would take two or three years
and said it would be a year before construction would begin as
tax breaks and additional funding were lined up.

While billed as a major commercial initiative started by
Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., owner of the New Orleans
Hyatt, most of the estimated $716 million investment would come
from government agencies in the form of donated land, tax
breaks and incentives.

Strategic Hotels plans to invest about $50 million, in
addition to insurance settlements, said Strategic Chief
Executive and Chairman Laurence Geller.

Jazz is part of the cultural life blood of New Orleans but
it has been scattered throughout the Mississippi River city,
found primarily in the streets of the French Quarter and on
small stages crammed into smoky bars.

Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, artistic director of the New
Orleans Jazz Orchestra which will be based in a new performance
hall designed by modernist architect Thom Mayne, described the
park and center as a homecoming for the music.

“I am grateful to be alive at this time to witness such
wonderful cultural triumphs,” said Mayfield, whose father was
killed in the storm.

Planners would demolish some court and city buildings to
make way for the park. It would aim to offer room for picnics,
green space and access to jazz.

The area is deserted at night now but will become a 24-hour
draw and anchor urban residential and other development, if all
goes as planned.

The concept designed by Mayne includes a new civil court
building with a silvery wave emerging from the side. The
performance center appears as a circular mass with a curving
core surrounded by a translucent curtain of glass.

“We should have the first great American city of the 21st
century,” Geller said.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Jones)