Some New Orleans executives clearly aren’t listening to the journalists and talking heads saying New Orleans may never rise again:
BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 9 – The New Orleans business establishment-in-exile has set up a beachhead in a government annex here, across the street from the state Capitol. From here, organizations like the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau have begun to plot the rebirth of the city.
In the cramped offices and hallways of this building, called the Capitol Annex, and continuing into the evening at bars and restaurants around Baton Rouge, New Orleans’s business leaders and power brokers are concocting big plans, the most important being reopening the French Quarter within 90 days.
Also under discussion are plans to stage a scaled-down Mardi Gras at the end of February and to lobby for one of the 2008 presidential nominating conventions and perhaps the next available Super Bowl.
So far, those conversations have been taking place largely without the participation of one central player: the city. “They’re still in emergency mode and not yet thinking strategically,” said J. Stephen Perry, the chief executive of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We’re thinking strategically.”
The hurdles are formidable when so much of the city is still flooded and some are predicting it could be six months to a year before New Orleans is once again habitable. But the power brokers are not deterred.
If they got anything off the ground, New Orleans would likely get a huge outpouring of support from people all over the country who’d want to see it succeed. Cleary, the financial Powers That Be in New Orleans are not listening to people such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert. MORE:
For instance, F. Patrick Quinn III, who owns and operates 10 hotels in and around the French Quarter, has set up shop temporarily at the office of a friend and business associate in Baton Rouge so he can make frequent trips to his hotels, where guests – from journalists to employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency – are now staying.
Emergency generators have allowed Mr. Quinn to provide limited power to his guests, and he has bused in workers from Texas and Florida. …Power should be restored to the central city within three weeks…and the water and sewer systems will be functional not long after that. Some parts of the city are already getting power.
(It) is the French Quarter and nearby areas that draw virtually all the visitors to New Orleans, where tourism is king. The industry brings in some $7 billion to $8 billion a year, according to the convention bureau, with most of that spent in the French Quarter, the central business district and the warehouse district – precisely those areas that were least affected by the flooding.
“We’re walking a fine line here,” said Bill Hines, the managing partner at Jones Walker, a leading New Orleans-based corporate law firm that moved more than 100 of its lawyers into a satellite office here.
“People in Baton Rouge are looking at me funny, as if talking about bringing back music, or Mardi Gras, or the arts or football is frivolous when we’re in the midst of this kind of human tragedy. But I think New Yorkers can relate,” said Mr. Hines, a native of New Orleans.
“Just as it was important that Broadway not remain in the dark after Sept. 11, it’s important that we start thinking about the future despite all the very depressing news around us.”
Alden J. McDonald Jr., chairman of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, is more subdued than some of his business brethren. He is chief executive of the Liberty Bank and Trust Company, the third-largest black-owned bank in the United States. Mr. McDonald…said his customer base, unlike those in the tourist business, was hit hard and at least half his branches were badly damaged by water. Yet he, too, is starting to have some of the same conversation.
The Times notes that McDonald plans to reopen several of his bank’s branches in Jefferson Parish on Monday.
So now the question becomes: Will and CAN they pull this off?
Perhaps not as fast or as easily (even though they know it is an extremely difficult task) as they might wish.
But the fact that they’re talking about it and making plans means New Orleans is likely to rise again…hopefully with some kinds of protections so it isn’t under water again (or at least not as much). If they just look at what might actually be possible and realistic, and ignore the doom-and-gloom-pronouncing journalists, politically-anchored talking heads, and foot-in-big-mouth-politicians’ predictions that New Orleans is now lost might prove to be a bit hasty.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.