[StBernard] Town Planners Holding Input Meeting Friday

[Westley Annis]

Town Planners Holding Input Meeting Friday

March 9 , 2006

By: Steve Cannizaro


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Town planners holding input meeting Friday, March 10, at 6 p.m. at Chalmette
Courthouse; blood drive to be held Saturday, March 11, to help St. Bernard
Parish man being treated for leukemia. 
 
 
St. Bernard Parish residents are being urged to attend what is being called
a "pin-up and review community input'' meeting Friday at 6 p.m. at the
Chalmette Courthouse because a team of town planners financed by the
Louisiana Recovery Authority will present several options for rebuilding
Arabi and other parts of the parish and want feedback to map out a final
plan to be presented Wednesday, March 15, at the courthouse. 
 
Town planner Andres Duany and about 20 architects and planners have been in
St. Bernard Parish this week studying neighborhoods and asking for citizens'
input to design a rebuilding plan for the parish. 
 
An initial meeting Tuesday night at the Courthouse drew an estimated crowd
of 700, packing the large courtroom and forcing some arrival to stay in the
outside hallway. 
Many residents spoke of rebuilding the parish and several said they liked
the idea of urban development. 
 
"He made a lot of sense,'' Anthony Calabresi said of afterward Duany " after
the presentation. Calabresi, a former sheriff's deputy who lives in Arabi,
said he is committed to rebuilding. "I don't care what the risk is,'' he
said. 
 
The planners' work is being financed by the Louisiana Recovery Authority,
which has sponsored two other planning sessions, called charrettes, in New
Iberia and Lake Charles. 
 
Duany, of Duany Plater-Zyberk Architects and Town Planners, led a series of
meetings with local officials and community leaders Wednesday. He plans to
use the information from residents and officials to draw a workable plan to
improve the community as it rebuilds from Hurricane Katrina. Nearly every
parish home and business was flooded. 
 
Duany, who also led charrettes in 11 Mississippi coastal towns in October,
told St. Bernard residents the parish must get better as it recovers. 
 
But Duany told them the parish needs to improve as it recovers. "We're
trying to come up with (different) solutions,'' he said. One solution will
be to consider raising homes, although not everyone would want to raise
their house as high as the water rose, he said. 
 
"Your population has been stagnant for some time. If you are as good as you
say you are, then something is holding you back as a community," Duany said.

 
"I believe you have a dysfunctional zoning code that allows anything to be
built along Judge Perez," Duany said. The street, one of two main east-west
thoroughfares, has become a hodgepodge of haphazardly developed commercial
and residential properties on what should be the main commercial roadway in
the parish. 
 
Duany said he will offer to assist in rewriting the local zoning laws to
provide more uniform and practical development. 
 
Tom Low, one of the project directors, met Wednesday with officials from
Jackson Barracks, where plans are under way to restore the Louisiana
National Guard's headquarters, which stretches from the Mississippi River to
the 40-Arpent Canal. 
 
Although Duany initially was to focus on the historic neighborhood of Old
Arabi near the river, the effort now is focusing on the whole parish. 
 
"It is a parish of neighborhoods," Duany said at a meeting Wednesday. "Each
is technically different, and we are trying to assess the worth" of the
neighborhoods to determine which are areas with homes that are financially
worth saving and which are areas that should be built with elevated homes or
with different types of building materials.