[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish Council to introduce new multifamily ordinances, discuss proposed microbrewery and new official journal regulations

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish Council to introduce new multifamily ordinances, discuss
proposed microbrewery and new official journal regulations

Published: Tuesday, March 20, 2012, 11:15 AM     Updated: Tuesday, March 20,
2012, 11:26 AM

 By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune 

The St. Bernard Parish Council this afternoon will vote on introducing an
amended code of ordinances that would allow multifamily dwellings in many
more parish zoning districts. It is scheduled to hold a public hearing on a
zoning change for a proposed microbrewery in Chalmette.

The council also will hear about the value of a local ethics board, and will
vote on a resolution that would support a house bill to allow the parish to
have an official journal that has only been in operation for more than six
months.

And the council will vote on whether to solicit proposals to create a
strategic plan for the parish's economic development.

The reinstated code of ordinances would reintroduce them with U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development mandates now seemingly added
after the parish was strong-armed into repealing its previously restrictive
ordinance on April 5, 2011.

HUD fair housing enforcement officials had said they would block federal
money coming into the parish -- and possibly to Louisiana as a whole -- if
the parish did not rescind the ordinances that HUD officials said
discriminated against African-Americans who were disproportionately in need
of multifamily and rental housing in the New Orleans metropolitan area.


>From that time until the repeal of the ordinance last year, multifamily

zoning was only permitted in R-3 zoning areas, and through types of Planned
Unit Developments that required special approval. The R-3 zoning areas were
only specks amid the parish's dominant single-family zoning, representing
less than 1 percent of landscape, according to a review of parish zoning
maps.

The amended ordinances would allow single-family, mobile home, two-family
and multifamily dwellings additionally in rural, commercial and light
industrial zoning areas.

The council also will hear from the public on the proposed zoning change of
the proposed microbrewery on Sterling J. Cardon Jr.'s property that sits
between Gallo and Volpe drives, behind the Chalona Apartments in the Ohio
Street Neighborhood near Chalmette High School and First Pentecostal Church.
Cardon bought the property in April for $350,000.

There are two apartment complexes in the front and a large warehouse-type
structure behind the apartment complex. Cardon is asking to go from C-1,
neighborhood commercial and R-1, single-family residential, to all C-2,
general commercial. The rear apartment sits on both zoning classifications.

Cardon would rent it to Michael Naquin, who would own and operate the
microbrewery that he's anticipated labeling "40 Arpent, " after the 40
Arpent Canal.

While the agenda states the council is scheduled to also vote on that zoning
change, it appears the council will table that vote until the parish
Planning and Zoning Commission provides its recommendation at its meeting
next Tuesday.

In terms of the official journal changes, present law requires newspapers to
have been in business for at least five years before they can hold the
official journal contract for a city or parish. The bill proposed by State
Rep. Ray Garofalo, R-Meraux, would shorten that to "also mean a paper
operating for more than six months."

The change would only affect parishes whose population was between 35,7000
and 39,000 people according to the latest federal decennial census. The 2010
Census listed St. Bernard's population at 35,897.

The St. Bernard Voice currently is the official journal for the parish but
after Hurricane Katrina it was sold to the owners of the Plaquemines Gazette
and so no longer is based in St. Bernard.

Garofalo and several of the parish councilmen are interested in instead
making the relatively new St. Bernard Post the official journal because it
is located in the parish.

Garofalo owns the property where The Post rents office space at 1310 E.
Judge Perez Drive and he says he is renting to the post's owner, Kenny
Zulli, at half cost because "I believe we need a local paper."

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