It probably will be at least July before city officials decide which of three redevelopment proposals for the World Trade Center site at the foot of Canal Street they prefer. Negotiating an agreement with the chosen developer is then likely to take several more months. Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant outlined that timetable Tuesday at a meeting of the board...
It probably will be at least July before city officials decide which of three redevelopment proposals for the World Trade Center site at the foot of Canal Street they prefer. Negotiating an agreement with the chosen developer is then likely to take several more months.
Deputy Mayor Cedric Grant outlined that timetable Tuesday at a meeting of the board of the New Orleans Building Corp., the public benefit corporation that oversees the World Trade Center and several other city-owned properties.
Two of the proposals submitted last week in response to a request for proposals issued in January suggest keeping the vacant 33-story office tower built in the 1960s, and redeveloping it as a hotel and other purposes. The third proposal, backed by a coalition of local tourism leaders, calls for demolishing the building and in its place erecting some sort of new structure that the tourism leaders say could become an iconic emblem of New Orleans.
The WTC site, overlooking the river between the French Quarter and the Central Business District, is considered one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the city.
Grant said a five-member selection committee, all officials in the Landrieu administration, will hold its first meeting to review the proposals in mid-May, then hold a public meeting in June at which the three development teams will present their plans and answer questions. The committee is expected to finish its work and present its recommendations to the NOBC board in July.
The committee will consist of Grant, the NOBC's acting chief executive; Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin; William Gilchrist, director of place-based planning for the administration; Jeff Hebert, executive director of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority; and Cynthia Connick, who serves as executive director of public benefit corporations and handles several administrative matters for the NOBC.
None of the five is a member of the NOBC board, which includes three City Council members, three private citizens and Mayor Mitch Landrieu, though he has not attended any of its meetings since early in his administration.
Grant warned the developers and anyone else against trying to contact any of the selection committee members to discuss the proposals. "We are in a cone of silence," he said.
The committee members will evaluate the three proposals under a formula laid out in the request for proposals, giving each a grade weighted this way: 35 percent for the merits of the proposed redevelopment, 20 percent for the developers' qualifications and "performance history," 20 percent for financial capacity and 25 percent for the financial feasibility of their proposal.
In response to questions from board members, Grant and Connick said the selection committee will be able to hire any experts it feels it needs in evaluating the proposals. The outside experts could be authorities on finance, real estate, hotels or other fields.