If you are interested in small to mid-size developments in New Orleans or other historic core neighborhoods, this blog series includes valuable lessons of the past, present and future development challenges and opportunities!
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Why should this excite New Orleanians? All we have is a big ol' historic super-grid with an immense array and variety of lot sizes plugged into a series of big ol' amenity centers pumping value into areas blanketed with some of the most amenable urban zoning in the country. Your Sharpie will run out of ink checking all the boxes.
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We based parking requirements on absolute peak demand - so that even on Black Friday, everyone, by law, gets a parking space. Developers were forced to buy more land, and provide worst-case scenario parking, for free, in order to build. With more than ample parking everywhere, more people choose to drive for trips. Traffic engineers note the roads are getting congested, and design larger, wider roads to provide capacity.
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There are a lot of problems with our current approach to residential development. For something in such perpetual demand, it's amazing that the market has not been able to figure out a good way to supply it. We need quality housing in large quantities. Note, that adjective: quality. As we saw in 2006, housing built with no attention to quality or sustainability of place is not truly in demand; it created a valueless bubble that then collapsed.
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This project is a great example of how a few simple customizations to any structure can add value, and that value is amplified when we avoid using the bulldozer as an 'easy' out to our housing needs. The most sustainable solutions for new buildings are far and away those that involve repurposing and upcycling our existing stock of housing, and even our stock-plan builder home neighborhoods could become more interesting places if housing was allowed to evolve and grow in as unique a way as its inhabitants.
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The grind of construction can make it easy to lose sight of the drama of the transformation taking place when renovating a historic building. Documenting the progress made at the end of a project is really a special feeling, and reminds us why we do what we do, and validates the potential that everyone saw in a previously neglected piece of New Orleans' history.
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