City Planning Commission says University Place should not become Roosevelt Way
Rename University Place as Roosevelt Way to honor the Roosevelt Hotel?
View full sizeThe Roosevelt Hotel building was photographed in July 2007, when it was still awaiting renovation after Hurricane Katrina. No Way, the City Planning Commission said this week.
The City Council, however, might decide that where there's a will there's a Way.
University Place, between Canal and Common streets, is a one-block stretch of what farther upriver is known successively as O'Keefe Avenue, Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard and Dryades Street.
It got its name in 1887 because the University of Louisiana, later renamed Tulane University, was located there until it moved to its present Uptown campus in 1894.
The block previously was part of Phillippa Street until 1852, when the street was renamed Dryades.
Like the street, the hotel that has one of its two entrances on University Place has gone under a variety of names. It opened in 1893 as the Grunewald Hotel and was renamed in 1923 to honor former President Theodore Roosevelt. It became the Fairmont New Orleans, often known as the Fairmont Roosevelt, in the 1960s.
It was closed for four years after Hurricane Katrina, but after a major renovation it reopened in 2009 as the Roosevelt New Orleans.
The hotel's owners proposed renaming the street in 2009 as a way "to pay tribute to this property," which they described as "a landmark in downtown New Orleans and a fabled destination for travelers from around the world."
The name change would "create a more recognizable geographic indicator for citizens visiting the city and further position New Orleans as a luxury travel destination," the owners said in their petition to the city.
Councilwoman Stacy Head, whose district includes the site, praised the idea in early 2010, saying the hotel "has contributed to our city's history by welcoming multiple U.S. presidents," serving as former Gov. Huey Long's local headquarters, hosting the first meeting of the NAACP in the South and presenting scores of famous entertainers at the Blue Room supper club.
The City Planning Commission staff, however, raised several objections to the idea.
Naming streets for businesses can be a risky proposition, it said, noting that in 2004 the city renamed a portion of Lake Forest Boulevard as Six Flags Parkway to honor a theme park that closed a year later and has never reopened. But in this case, the change would also carry the name of two former presidents.
City policy requires that anyone proposing to rename a street seek written approval from at least 80 percent of the property owners and residents who would be directly affected by the change. In this case, the Roosevelt apparently has not obtained the approval of most of the small number of affected property owners, such as the owners of the Orpheum Theater across the street from the hotel.
But for the commission's staff, the key factor was that the city already has a Roosevelt Place, a one-block street near Bayou St. John, and a Roosevelt Mall inside City Park. Having several streets with the same name can be confusing to the public and to city personnel responding to medical emergencies, fires and the like.
In this case, the Fire Department, Police Department and Emergency Medical Services indicated they did not think the change would cause serious problems.
Even so, the commission voted 7-1 to endorse its staff's opposition to the change. Craig Mitchell cast the lone dissenting vote.
Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3320.