These past months as the drone of process took place many of us knew that the day would come when the decision for the LSU/VA hospital would be made public. We knew the day was coming and we knew the endless processes and procedures that took place would have little to no impact on a decision that was made outside of the realm of public input. We were entertained, we were placated and we were lied to. But in the end those decisions were not ours to make for ourselves. The public realm, the private property and the fate of a neighborhood fell to those who will not show their faces, those who seek to make careers, not communities.
Mark over at Toulouse Street holds the opinion that quite a few in New Orleans share:
the announcement that our Betters have come to a decision on building a new hospital complex downtown. Rather than take the advice of the citizens to rehab the historic Charity complex (and some some loot to boot), or perhaps to take the idle ruin of old Lindy Boggs/Mercy Hospital in my own neighborhood of Mid-City, they will instead demolish an entire neighborhood of hundreds of homes in lower Mid-City to build their bio-science field of dreams.
One ignored side effect of this is that the area where I worked for the last year-and-a-half, the north side of the Central Business District, will remain mostly a ghost town of abandoned commercial buildings. All that is needed to complete the hair-brained scheme to convert downtown into some sort of condominium time-share hell is the other bright idea of our recovery leaders to move the civil district courts into the criminal justice complex down Tulane Avenue (adjacent to the new Hospital World), leaving the city’s commercial center a whistling ghost town.
The decision is wrong. Make your voice count and use the link below to
send a letter to the Governor, the Secretary of Health & Hospitals and the Secretary of Veterans affairs via the National Trust for Historic Places website
From their website
"The National Trust for Historic Preservation views this decision as a serious error, as better alternatives that would save the neighborhood around the hospital are available"
Sign the letter at this website and pass this on. It's important.
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