More street-level shops, less street-level parking are sought by the city
Aides to Gov. Bobby Jindal and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu say the two administrations are still weighing changes to the design of the Charity Hospital successor, with the intention of adding street-level retail space, maintaining at least some of the Mid-City street grid and reducing the amount of surface parking on the 34-acre University Medical Center campus.
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View full sizeThe yet-to-be constructed University Medical Center campus is still undergoing design changes.Such alterations would be a victory for Landrieu, who has supported building a new academic hospital but has criticized the state's plans as too suburban and out-of-step with the city's master plan. Landrieu forced the parties to the negotiating table earlier this summer when he shelved city action on the state's request to permanently close streets bound by South Galvez Street, Canal Street, South Claiborne Avenue and Tulane Avenue.
He is also armed with a highly critical architectural peer review of the state plan authored by the Boston firm of Goody Clancy, along with other city consultants. Goody Clancy concluded that the state was claiming too much land, particularly given that the initial phase of construction will be closer to Galvez, leaving about half of the campus toward Claiborne and downtown to be covered in parking lots. That land, according to the state, is for future UMC expansion.
Michael Diresto, a spokesman for the state Division of Administration, confirmed that the state is exploring ways to build additional structured parking rather than the current plan of one parking deck and seven square blocks of parking lots. He also endorsed the city's push for more street-level retail spaces along the edges of the campus, a design feature that would encourage more pedestrian entry to the campus from the surrounding neighborhood.
State-hired architects, Diresto said, also are considering more purely aesthetic design changes to the façade. But the state still insists, Diresto said, that none of the changes add to the project's cost or threaten plans to break ground in December and begin construction in earnest some time in 2011.
Andy Kopplin, Landrieu's chief of staff, said the mayor has no problem with those caveats. "We're having good, productive conservations about all these issues," Kopplin said. "We continue to work with them so that as we build the University Medical Center, it becomes the best asset that it possibly can be."
The central question on changing the parking plan is money. The per-space cost of parking decks is significantly more than paved spaces. The parking deck already in the plans carries an estimated $33 million price tag for 1,347 spaces on five levels.
The simplest solution is simply to use money already included in the $1.2 billion construction budget if, as state facilities chief Jerry Jones predicts, the construction bids come in at rock-bottom levels because of the lagging economy. Other possibilities are privatizing some of the parking to a firm that would cover some or all of the construction cost and then control the spaces. Kopplin noted that several parking decks around the state government complex in Baton Rouge are financed by assessments to the agencies that use them.
"I would assume that all options are on the table at this point," Kopplin said. He also noted that there already are parking lots and garages across Tulane Avenue at the LSU Health Sciences Center that Kopplin said were not included in the parking needs assessment for the new hospital.
One challenge of creating more retail space is conforming to state laws that limit the private use of land that is expropriated for public purpose. Similar considerations could come into play if the project depends on federal mortgage insurance to back construction bonds.
Kopplin said the city believes that "auxiliary services" that are directly connected to the UMC mission -- pharmacies, medical suppliers, flower shops, restaurants -- should clear any legal obstacles.
The state's commitments thus far do not approach the most significant changes mentioned in the Goody Clancy report that Landrieu commissioned earlier this year. The state appears to have no intention of slowing its land acquisition process, and its contractors have filed dozens of expropriation orders on parcels in the footprint. That could still leave several city blocks of empty, unused land, even if the street grid on those blocks is reopened.
Kopplin conceded that point, but said the Landrieu administration's priority is to leave open the possibility for using the land for other purposes long before a second phase of the hospital, which isn't even on drawing boards, is contemplated. He said open streets, even if the land-use is not yet clear, is a necessity as the city considers redevelopment of downtown, including the old Charity Hospital building, and entertains ideas like taking down the raised Interstate 10.
The Goody Clancy report also raised the idea of not expropriating land on the Claiborne side of the footprint if the parcel is now occupied by a working business. Kopplin said that issue has come up in the city-state discussions. He cited other public development projects in which a public entity agreed to a conditional purchase of private property, allowing a business or homeowner to remain on the land for a certain period of time until the parcel is actually needed.
"I'm not saying that's going to happen in this case, but we're at least asking the questions," Kopplin said.
Bill Barrow can be reached at bbarrow@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3452.