Offering the proposal without consulting neighbors is 'disturbing, offensive, disrespectful, daring, presumptuous and downright ungodly,' one woman says
Seeking to help a would-be bed-and-breakfast operator in the Irish Channel, New Orleans City Council member Stacy Head suggested what looked like a small, fairly innocuous change in the city's rules for such establishments. But when the proposal went before the City Planning Commission this week, it ran into a hornet's nest of opposition from residents of a neighborhood far from Head's district, and the commission voted to oppose the change.
View full sizePlanning Commission rejects B&B zoning change proposed by New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head.The final decision will be up to the City Council.
The city recognizes four types of B&Bs: B&B family homes, which can have two guest rooms; B&B guest homes, with three to five guest rooms; B&B historic homes, with three to nine guest rooms; and B&B inns, with up to nine guest rooms.
All must be in owner-occupied residential buildings, and they can offer no food services beyond simple breakfasts not cooked on the premises.
The problem cited by Head was that even though B&B historic homes and B&B inns can both have the same number of rooms -- meaning equivalent impacts on their neighborhoods in terms of traffic, parking and the like -- the city's zoning law allows the first but not the second in areas zoned RD-3, or two-family residential. Thus, if a building in such an area is old enough to qualify as historic, it can become a B&B with as many as nine guest rooms, but newer buildings cannot.
At the council's Dec. 15 meeting, Head offered a motion asking the planning commission to consider making the rules the same for all buildings in areas zoned RD-3.
She proposed making the change citywide, because almost all city rules for B&Bs apply to the entire city. As a result, the new rule would apply not just to the Irish Channel, the site of the specific project Head was trying to assist, but also to many other older neighborhoods that are zoned for two-family use but usually include a mixture of single-family, two-family and nonconforming multifamily buildings.
Among those neighborhoods are Treme, Esplanade Ridge, Bywater, Mid-City, the Lower 9th Ward and Algiers Point.
Saying that some neighborhoods, such as the Irish Channel, welcome B&Bs and others do not, Head pointed out that under the change, B&B inns would be conditional uses in residential areas, meaning each request would have to be reviewed by the planning commission and approved by the council after public hearings.
Her proposal passed unanimously, with council President Jackie Clarkson commending her for a "good job."
However, when residents in an Upper 9th Ward neighborhood learned about the proposal, they took it as a direct assault on their efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina and to prevent unwelcome businesses from opening in their residential neighborhood.
In a letter to the commission, Susan Brady, president of the New St. Claude Association of Neighbors, covering the area north of Bywater, said that for a City Council member to offer such a proposal without consulting with residents of "north Bywater" was "very disturbing, offensive, disrespectful, daring, presumptuous and downright ungodly."
She denounced investors she said are trying to buy property to "make our neighborhood of 30-plus years of African-American homeownership into the wealthy's playground."
Katherine Prevost, president of the nearby Bunny Friend Neighborhood Association, said allowing B&B inns would "take away from the residential quality that we love" and increase the chance that other unwanted businesses would try to open. She warned that owners would be tempted to sell their homes for conversion to businesses.
Also speaking against the proposal Tuesday was Norbert Rome, one of Head's opponents in the March 24 primary for an at-large council seat.
The planning commission's staff recommended approving the change, which it said could lead to welcome redevelopment of vacant or underused buildings that are too large to be put back into commerce as the single- or two-family dwellings that are the only permitted uses in RD-3 neighborhoods. It also suggested several changes in other B&B regulations.
However, the commission voted 6-1 against the proposal. Chairman Craig Mitchell said he thought the idea needed more community input, and Joseph Williams said those seeking the change should talk with more residents. Also voting no were George Amedee, Pamela Bryan, Lois Carlos-Lawrence and Lou Volz. Kelly Brown voted in favor.
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Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3320.