In Fat City, where the strip joint abuts the barber shop and the old Playboy Club building sits empty with weeds growing three feet above the concrete, Tim Tompkins delivered a threefold message Friday: Think small, think art, keep trying. The president of Manhattan's Time Square Alliance came to town to help Jefferson Parish political and business leaders brainstorm...
In Fat City, where the strip joint abuts the barber shop and the old Playboy Club building sits empty with weeds growing three feet above the concrete, Tim Tompkins delivered a threefold message Friday: Think small, think art, keep trying.
The president of Manhattan's Time Square Alliance came to town to help Jefferson Parish political and business leaders brainstorm ways to reanimate Metairie's former nightlife hub. Judging from his presentation, it will require neither big bucks nor a bulldozer.
Instead, pick a block -- maybe just one spot in a block -- to create a "cluster of cool." Put up $5,000 or $10,000 in a contest to reward creative use of a vacant building. Sponsor a series of small concerts. Organize a bike tour. Have artists paint interesting or funny murals. Repeat when necessary.
"You start with some focus, where you can really make it look and feel different," Tompkins said. In time -- perhaps a long time -- the efforts could transform the 134-acre district.
Since its peak in the mid-1970s, through countless studies and considerable hand-wringing, Fat City has confounded outsiders. It sits across Severn Avenue from Lakeside Shopping Center, which produces $20 million in sales tax revenue, 5 percent of the parishâs total take. But market forces have somehow left it a broken shell.
"It's got a fantastic location, yet it's under-performing," parish Planning Director Terri Wilkinson said.
Several efforts by Jefferson officials over the decades to make something happen made very little happen. But two years ago, the Parish Council rezoned the entire area, essentially forcing out rowdy barrooms and, by the end of 2012, "adult" businesses such as the one remaining strip club. The Sheriff's Office hammered stores that sold alcohol to minors.
The hope, over 10 to 15 years, is to introduce New Urbanism, the pedestrian-friendly atmosphere that has retail shops and restaurants on the ground floor, professional offices and residential units upstairs and a lively, hip air all around. Think Frenchmen Street transplanted to the Warehouse District.
Thus Greater New Orleans Inc. turned for advice to Times Square, a frightening den of sin in the 1970s but now a booming nexus of business, entertainment and tourism where crime is way down and rents, Broadway attendance, foot traffic and property values are way up.
Through 47 lawsuits and countless false starts, New York used tax incentives to coax, and laws to force, its vision onto Times Square. The non-profit Times Square Alliance commissioned public art, invited street performers, held a kiss-in event a la the iconic Life magazine picture marking the end of World War II, sponsored a yoga day in the street and scattered lawn chairs across the pavement for passersby to relax.
"A lot of what we did was things like just painting the grills that they pull down over the storefronts some crazy color," Tompkins said.
Tompkins addressed the Fat City Advisory Board on Thursday and walked the area Friday with board members and others. In a white tuxedo shirt, pear-green necktie, dark gray suit coat, blue jeans and black boots, he provided a creative, upbeat perspective on what is, for now, a decidedly drab streetscape.
His escorts, several in business attire, included Parish Council member Cynthia Lee-Sheng and Wilkinson, regional planner Walter Brooks, advisory board chair Patricia LeBlanc, economic developer Jerry Bologna, GNO Inc.'s Caitlin Berni and Fat City property owners such as the grocer Barry Breaux, restaurateur Tommy Cvitanovich and advertising executive Dana Pecoraro.
Beginning near the old Kenny Vincent's Southside nightclub, boarded up these days, and past the Red Caboose restaurant, now a mini-storage building, Tompkins found much to improve, if only local leaders can focus their efforts, get creative and stay the course.
The latter point was not lost on Cvitanovich, whose family owns Drago's restaurant, perhaps the most visibly successful businesses in Fat City.
"It took 25 years or so to get to this point," Cvitanovich said of efforts to remake Fat City. "It's not going to change overnight."
Is there anything in Fat City's history worth keeping? Tompkins asked.
"Just the name," Cvitanovich replied. "I would change as much else as possible."
"Celebrate it," said Tompkins, intrigued by the moniker. "It's the one thing that's quirky and authentic and weird."