New Jazz District Plans
Stock Market News and Investment Information | Reuters.com NEW ORLEANS, May 30 (Reuters) – New Orleans plans a new $700 million jazz district and central park, aiming to use the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to rebuild the damaged core of the city.
A very nice sounding plan, but it does raise a few questions. Namely would it really end up being a predominantly educational complex or would it become the theme park version of New Orleans that we all fear will be forced down our throats by the developers? Conceptually sound, but in need of watchdogging.
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It could turn into the Overture Center, the huge arts district developed in downtown Madison along State St. For the most part, it has added beauty, brilliance and tourist dollars to Madison’s center (not that State St. wanted for appeal in the past). However, local bookstores, pubs and shops were forced to close because they couldn’t handle the high rents caused by the emergence of the Overture Center, an effect we already see in the Sliver here.
As Paul Soglin, former mayor of Madison, points out in a blog post following the demise of an old and large local theatre group:
“Taken together, such factors could mean that the worst fear of the early critics of the Overture Center may be coming true: that the expensive performing arts center will – through high overheard costs and increasing rental fees – drive tickets prices up and attendance down to the point where the survival of the very groups that the $205-million arts complex was designed to benefit will instead suffer or fail.”
The District could be really good for developers, local financiers and independently-wealthy business owners, but not for the antithetic mom-and-pop places and small businesses which really make New Orleans.
And don’t listen to “Oh, this will bring money to until-now-impoverished artists.” The Overture Center hasn’t done anything for the starving artists of Madison.