Green Articles

Pace of work picks up in N.O. recovery
Internet map to shed new light on projects

By Michelle Krupa : Times-Picayune : February 29, 2008

Removal of debris in the Municipal Yacht Harbor, new equipment for the police crime lab, a near-complete gutting of Milne Boys Home and replacement of electrical components at Joe Brown Park baseball fields are among dozens of recovery projects that Mayor Ray Nagin's administration has selected for swift movement through the construction pipeline.

Also on the agenda: rebuilding the Youth Study Center in Gentilly, which was more than 50 percent damaged by flooding, and replacing parts of the mechanical and electrical systems, along with roof sections, at Rosa Keller Branch Library in Broadmoor and Algiers Regional Library on Holiday Drive.

Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans officials say they finally have enough cash in hand to jump-start 119 priority projects, most of them focused on reopening facilities critical to public safety and recreation. In the past week, Recovery Director Ed Blakely has unveiled 61 of the projects, though with limited detail about their scope, as design work is unfinished in many cases.

Against that fuzzy informational backdrop, city officials today are expected to unveil a tool designed to help residents better understand City Hall's efforts to restore public assets. An Internet-based map will be posted through a link at the city's Web site, www.cityofno.com, that will lay out all recovery projects that are under way -- or on the near-term docket -- in every neighborhood in New Orleans.

Information online

Though initially expected to include only the most cursory details of each top-tier project -- address, description, public-bid status and construction progress -- the map is expected in time also to show more than 100 minor projects, such as replacing lights at stadiums, plus road improvements, Recovery School District projects and perhaps even details about road closures tied to construction jobs, said Geneva Walters of MWH, a firm hired by Nagin to manage construction projects and build the map site.

"Citizens will see the same type of information that a project manager would see or internal stakeholders at City Hall would see," she said. "Citizens are getting accurate information, up-to-date information, on a very timely basis."

When the map goes live, it will include small icons at each project location that designate its type -- a red fire hat for each fire station, for instance. By clicking on the icon, users will access a pop-up box listing the project's name, address, a description of the work and the project's place in a nine-step design and construction process.

Users also will be able to search for projects by name; by council district and ward; by type, such as "criminal justice facilities" or "recreation department"; and in each of 17 zones identified last year by Blakely as places city officials will target rebuilding dollars. The portal also will be searchable by address, with users able to designate a radius in miles around the home or business location for which they want to view all recovery projects.

Taking questions

Finally, the map site will invite residents to send questions to the MWH management team overseeing the jobs. All questions initially will go to a single address -- ORDAproject@mwhglobal.com -- though as projects move forward, messages might end up going to specific project managers, Walters said.

City officials and MWH employees demonstrated the map Thursday to The Times-Picayune, providing brief access to thumbnail descriptions of projects identified in the past week by the Nagin administration. They said the site would become available to the public after a news conference today.

Among the highlighted projects will be 26 public facilities, including City Hall and a slew of playgrounds, that Blakely unveiled on Thursday as sites where major renovations are slated to begin soon.

Carrying a combined price tag of $30 million, the latest set of jobs will be handled through the same new, streamlined process as 35 projects announced last Friday. That list includes restoration of the Municipal Yacht Harbor, three community clinics and nine fire stations, and repairs at Brechtel Park in Algiers. Those jobs will cost an estimated $100 million, officials have said.

The new list appeared to include fewer big-ticket items than last week's, with nine neighborhood playgrounds, two stadiums, a ball field and two public pools among the 26 jobs. Though City Hall and the Civil District Court building both appear on the list, Blakely said those projects are small-scale, including only superficial repairs to roofs, basements and parking areas still not fully restored since Katrina.

Financing in place

Blakely has said the city can begin to move more quickly on recovery projects because officials finally have wrestled significant chunks of cash from a variety of sources, including money from FEMA's Public Assistance reimbursement program, a state capital projects fund, traditional Community Development Block Grant financing, federal Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds and more than $400 million from the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Speaking generally, he said he expects $1 billion in public recovery money to flow into the city in the next 18 months.

"The time is right for us to implement," Blakely told a City Council committee Wednesday. "We're not planning anymore. We're moving with the projects that we have, and we think we can deliver."

Nagin administration officials announced last week that they have selected 50 architectural and design firms to serve in a professional pool that will work on all recovery jobs. The strategy reflects an attempt to streamline recovery projects by preapproving professional service providers en masse, rather than individually for each project.

Blakely said it generally takes three weeks for the city to finalize contracts with architecture and engineering firms. He said Thursday that it could take as little as a week -- or as long as three months -- for the firms to complete initial design work.

"When the architects come back, they'll give us a very good idea of how long it will take to complete the projects," he said.

When timelines are available, Blakely said they will be added to the Internet map.

"We will try to inform the public much better than we have," he said Wednesday, "and put out actual timelines and datelines as to when the buildings are expected to be completed."

Blakely said he also will post at the city's Web site a list of the architects selected last week, adding that 35 of them, including some joint ventures, are designated as disadvantaged business enterprises, or DBEs. He has declined to name any of the firms thus far, saying all contracts have not been finalized.

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Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3312.