I bought 20 gallons of primer and packed the wife and daughter off to Indiana, but somehow the prospect was still so unreal to me. I felt certain something was going to go wrong. Work was supposed to start on Tuesday, but I didn’t hear from them. My contact person didn’t return my call.
But lo and behold when I went home for lunch yesterday, there they were: a crew of volunteers wet-scraping the lead paint from our house. They’re Unitarians from Ohio. Today they started slathering on the primer. It feels weird to have all these people I don’t know working to help us out of the sheer desire to help.
There’s a little confusion over finances. My contact at ACORN had told me that all I needed to pay for was supplies: primer and paint. But he is no longer with ACORN, which is why he didn’t return my call Tuesday. So today I was presented with a document indicating I should pay 60% of the costs. (The volunteers work for free, of course, but there are also professionals involved.) Hopefully we’ll straighten this out.
Update: The plot thickens. My new contact at ACORN was pulled over for a tail light yesterday; the cops discovered an outstanding warrant from another parish. So now he’s in jail. Damn.
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I take it they’re painting the exterior. I’m glad that’s working out for you. Before all is said and done, you house is going to look “brand new.”
I can’t wait to see the colorful scheme you’ve planned for the look of your house!
hey bart. you probably already saw this. if not its from n.o. city business.
Lindy Boggs owners open to selling site
Development group considers possibilities, local doctors looking
by Ariella Cohen
Victory Real Estate Investments will sell the Lindy Boggs Medical Center site in Mid-City if a feasible buyer is interested in the property. The hospital has been closed since Hurricane Katrina,
The Georgia-based development firm that planned to raze Mid-City’s Lindy Boggs Medical Center to make way for a sprawling retail and residential development is open to selling the 26-acre Jefferson Davis Parkway site.
“We are not actively marketing (the property),” said Bill Haynes, leasing specialist for Victory Real Estate Investments LLC. “But if someone wants to buy it we would sell.”
Already one group of doctors and medical investors has expressed interest in the brick-faced facility, which remains standing though the city approved demolition permits for it in December.
“There is interest from doctors and an investment group in putting medical care back there,” said Dr. Robert Kenny, former president of Lindy Boggs’ medical staff and part of a group of doctors who tried to buy the 186-bed hospital from its former owner, Tenet Healthcare Corp..
Kenny said their offer was stymied by a pact between Tenet and Ochsner Health System that prohibits acute care on the property until 2010.
He said his group is still considering buying the property and opening it as a medical care facility again.
“All you have to do is go into a hospital here and see the lines,” Kenny said. “Clearly there is a need that could be met.”
Victory purchased the Katrina-damaged hospital from Tenet last May for $9 million with plans to demolish it and incorporate the site into a much larger mixed-use project. Plans presented to Mid-City residents last spring showed development with residences, stores and above-ground parking lots spanning more than half a square mile between Jefferson Davis Parkway to North Solomon Street and from Toulouse Street to Bienville Avenue.
That vision, however, was met with opposition from neighbors who did not want to see their neighborhood inundated with the big box chain stores Victory has put in its other developments around the country.
Following reports that the company had put its plan on ice until the national real estate market improves, it sold one of the its anchor parcels, 400 N. Carrollton Ave., to tenant Rouse’s Supermarket.
The sale signaled to observers, including the president of the supermarket chain, that plans for the project were in flux.
“The first thing they told us was they weren’t going to sell because they needed the property for their development,” said Donald Rouse. “The market changed. Neighbors raised resistance. We made an offer and they sold.”
Mid-City residents would like to see a medical facility open on the Lindy Boggs site, said Jennifer Weishaupt, president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization.
“Lindy Boggs was an anchor for the medical community in Mid-City,” Weishaupt said. “We would like to see it return.”
Neighbors are also interested in the possibility of locating an assisted living facility at the site, she said.
[…] just finished up the job at our house around noon today. It’s been three weeks since they started — instead of four days, which in retrospect seems like a silly […]