Signs of renewal are everywhere at City Park.

Work crews are putting finishing touches on a remodeled concession stand inside the shuttered Casino building. Heavy equipment is rumbling across battered fairways of the north golf course, preparing for a late-spring reopening. New bleachers are going up at Pan American Stadium.

Visitors soon will see more: a new -- and far bigger -- Ferris wheel at the amusement park, a rebuilt tennis complex, sidewalk repairs, new landscaping near the New Orleans Museum of Art and a massive replanting of Couturie Forest.

By mid-2009, access to the park also should improve as road repairs proceed along Marconi Drive, Wisner Boulevard and Harrison Avenue.

Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina flooding left City Park a tattered wasteland, New Orleans' high-profile swath of green space is experiencing a revival. The flurry of building and repair projects is unlike anything the 1,300-acre park has seen since a massive work force dug lagoons and built bridges and buildings during the Depression, turning City Park into a regional attraction.

"There is no doubt that the park has never had this level of infrastructure and project investment since that time," City Park Director Bob Becker said.

Now the park's recovery is shifting into high gear, with administrators having assembled nearly $70 million in federal, state, city and philanthropic dollars to finance dozens of projects, a good-news tale that will get attention during a news conference scheduled for Monday. Becker said he also hopes to announce more work in the months ahead as the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues its evaluation -- and private dollars continue to roll in.

The park's signature long-term project is the replacement of the ruined east and west golf courses with a state-of-the-art golf complex, one worthy of hosting professional tournaments. The golf development, still facing scrutiny by City Park's board, has been proposed by the nonprofit Bayou District Foundation.

It would be part of a bold $240 million effort to build mixed-income housing, two charter schools and a YMCA center at the site of the soon-to-be-demolished St. Bernard public housing complex, just across Bayou St. John.

Even if the Bayou District plan, modeled after a revamped public housing site east of Atlanta, never becomes reality, the park has about $14.5 million in hand for a more modest golf restoration agenda that calls for renovating the east course and building a new clubhouse.

'We had a road map'

The construction-and-repair push now playing out was hard to imagine in days after Katrina, when floodwaters and scores of fallen trees covered the landscape. As they surveyed the destruction, park officials had virtually no money or equipment and -- except for a handful of employees and volunteers -- no staff.

But they had a plan.

Adopted five months before the storm, City Park's master plan was intended to be a grand vision that, at a projected cost of $115 million, would reshape the bedraggled park during the next decade, finishing in time for New Orleans' tricentennial celebration in 2018.

But since Katrina, Becker's team has used the document to guide efforts to repair the shattered park. And, perhaps more important, the blueprint has emerged as a valuable asset in the quest to raise cash needed for rebuilding.

"Nobody just says, 'Oh, we like you. Here's a million dollars. Go fix things,'?" Becker said. "Nobody does that.

"The advantage we had was we knew the fundamental direction we wanted to take the park, and we had a road map. ... And whether we were chasing public money or private money, this plan gave us the best chance of using those dollars in the most productive way."

Working with FEMA, state government and nonprofits, Becker and his aides have spelled out how each appropriation will be used. The 3-year-old master plan is helping the park seize an opportunity brought on by disaster.

Another critical development has been an improved relationship with FEMA. City Park, like most local government entities, initially had a difficult time satisfying FEMA demands for storm-damage evidence to secure repair money. Ranking FEMA officials have accepted part of the blame for slow progress for many months in awarding recovery grants.

But communication improved sharply in late 2006, after the agency assigned three employees to work every day with the park's staff. As a result, damage reimbursements have increased steadily, from about $10 million two years ago to more than $31 million. Park officials say the final tally may approach $40 million.

FEMA officials say they are committed to the effort.

"City Park is an integral piece of the New Orleans community," said Jim Stark, acting associate deputy administrator for the agency's Gulf Coast Recovery Office. "Its continued successful recovery is an exciting boost for the overall recovery of the citizens of the city. And FEMA is pleased to play its role in the park's rebirth."

In many ways, replacement facilities will bring drastic improvements over conditions in the park before Katrina hit, said John Hopper, the park's chief development officer.

"I've never heard anybody say, 'Thank God for the hurricane,' even if it does end up with us in a better place," Hopper said. "It was a miserable thing to go through. But if you have to go through it, why would you just put the park back together like it was?"

Budget needs steadying

While restoring its battered infrastructure has been the top priority at City Park, it also is making strides in shoring up a shaky operating budget.

Unlike most large urban parks, City Park's annual operating budget receives no property tax revenue and no allocation from City Hall. Virtually all of the park's operating revenue is self-generated, coming from fees and private donations.

Before Katrina, the lone government subsidy was a $200,000 annual appropriation from the state. Last year, the Legislature increased that contribution to $2.5 million and agreed to give the park a percentage of the Fair Grounds racetrack's slot machine receipts, an income source that ultimately may generate up to $2 million a year.

With many of the park's money-making attractions still out of commission, the infusion of new revenue has been critical. The aid is the product of a coordinated lobbying effort by the city's legislative delegation and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

"Katrina pulled back the veil and made us aware of what the myriad needs of this park were before the storm," Landrieu said. "To get this done, a lot of people have come together to work across jurisdictional lines. And I believe the state has put its money where its mouth was."

With the extra money, the park has been able to boost its full- and part-time staff to about 100 -- up from two dozen or so workers after the storm -- but still far short of the 260 on the payroll in the summer of 2005.

The reopening of money-making attractions such as the north golf course; the Casino; and Popp's Tent, a reception hall next to Popp Fountain on Marconi Drive, will further improve the park's bottom line. And park officials say they will continue to rely heavily on private donors, who have contributed almost $10.5 million since the storm, as well as volunteers, who have provided an estimated 83,000 hours of labor that park officials say has a cash value of $1.5 million -- equivalent to 40 full-time people working for a year.

Too much, too soon?

Among some park supporters, the impending building boom has sparked concern that things may be moving too quickly.

At a public hearing last fall to discuss proposals to relocate the downtown Children's Museum to the park and to make room for a television studio, an idea ultimately rejected by the park's board, one resident called for a moratorium on development.

"There's no shortage of empty real estate out there," said David Muth, referring to vast swaths of storm-damaged property elsewhere in the city. "We don't need to turn this park into a highly developed, money-making operation."

Other residents have expressed the opposite concern: that the resurgence of City Park, an important catalyst for the flood-damaged neighborhoods that border it, has not moved quickly enough.

Park officials say there is no cause for alarm, that they carefully weigh each decision to rebuild existing attractions or to add new ones.

Jane Brooks, a landscape architect who serves on the City Park board, acknowledged that cash-strapped urban refuges like City Park are under tremendous pressure as they struggle to survive.

"This is an open space, and we are not intending to fill it up," Brooks said. "Parks are synonymous with green space, and you have to always keep that balance in mind."

It's true that some urban parks are "kind of loved to death, over-utilized," said Peter Harnik, director of the Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence, which collects data on park issues nationwide.

As an example, he cites the mall in Washington, D.C., where many nonprofit institutions have won approval to build along the crowded corridor.

Room for all

But Harnik said he believes that City Park, which stretches 3 miles from the city's midsection to residential neighborhoods lining the lakefront, has ample space for new ideas.

Noting that City Park is nearly twice the size of New York City's Central Park, Harnik said, "There's room for a lot of different things going on in the park if they are properly designed and are in proper relationship to one another. You can fit a lot of people activities in a park like this."

Felicia Marcus, chief operating officer for the Trust for Public Land, said the best safeguard against overdevelopment is regular dialogue with the community.

"The key thing is to listen to the community," she said. "There's not one size fits all."

As an example, Marcus pointed to a 50-acre green space improvement project that the Trust for Public Land plans to carry out next to a major entranceway to the park, near the lagoon known as Big Lake. The $2 million initiative will include construction of an outdoor performance stage that can be used for special events.

"People need all of that," she said. "It's all about finding the right mix."

Park officials, however, say they do not accept every offer of help.

In the months after the hurricane, Becker said the park rejected a range of "inappropriate" development proposals, including a fuel depot, a transfer station for storm debris, a National Guard facility and even a Home Depot store.

But he said the master plan envisions projects small and large that are sure to draw more visitors, including a small splash park and a dog park.

While each proposal was vetted by the park's board and staff and discussed at public hearings, Becker said he realizes that few projects are likely to receive unanimous community approval.

"A certain number of people just don't like change," he said. "And what we tried to tell the public is that was not possible. We could not stay where we were. We had to get better, or we were going to get worse in a hurry."

Link to article

10.parkmap1.pdf