WWOZ Must Move to a New Home. Where? A Two-Step Solution Can Be Both Good and Great for New Orleans and the World
Moving WWOZ to 717 St. Charles Avenue and then to a rehabilitated Municipal Auditorium will let this Big Boon of a Community-Radio Station flourish
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY: LOOKING AT 717 ST. CHARLES AVENUE, THE MUNICIPAL AUDITORIUM, AND HUNDREDS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AVAILABLE
The form of this piece is addressed to the thousands of Members who support New Orleans’ community-radio station WWOZ with Pledges—and to the more than 100,000 who listen to WWOZ worldwide, through the station’s 100,000-watts local 90.7 FM signal or online through WWOZ.org.
Members and listeners may want to know why WWOZ’s Staff and Show-Hosts were denied a splendid facility of more than 6200 square-feet along the St. Charles Avenue streetcar-line in downtown New Orleans (717 St. Charles) by a secret-ballot of the 26-member Board of WWOZ’s license-owner, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, on May 11, 2023 .
Over the preceding two months The Jazz & Heritage Foundation Board had committed to a Letter of Intent (on March 6) and a Purchase Agreement (on April 3) for the 717 St. Charles property.
What advantages does this propery offer for WWOZ? Please see below for photos of the exterior and interior of 717 St. Charles and floor-plans of its three stories.
Above, photos from 717 St. Charles. The building holds three Conference Rooms, three Kitchens, six Offices, and a Reception Hall.
Below, floor-plans that may suggest to you how spaces could be used for a community radio-station with a Staff of 18 and weekly Show-Host numbering 43 and a mission to engage and present musicians and other culture-bearers of New Orleans, Louisiana and elsewhere.
Staff and Show-Hosts of WWOZ now face a August 2023 deadline for vacating their single floor in the French Market Corporation building.
Above, WWOZ lobby in its current, leaky, single floor of five Offices in the French Market Corporation building. This video-still is from a WWL report on the Station’s prompt jump into operation after Hurricane Ida, September 2021, prior to another ‘Jazz-Festing in Place’ from it during COVID lockdown.
Jazz & Heritage Foundation Board members have proposed that the station return to Louis Armstrong Park and an unspecified location.
Above, the Park named for the inestimably great Louis Armstrong, following18 years of Federal, State and City neglect and disrepair. Photo from May 14, 2023.
The crisis created by the Board’s vote may lead, however, to a beautiful solution. This two-step solution will benefit WWOZ, the City of New Orleans, and the Jazz & Heritage Festival—the Festival that largely funds the Jazz & Heritage Foundation and that to a much lesser extent accounts for WWOZ’s profitability since 2020. This two-step solution will let WWOZ grow to who-knows-what capacities for the artists and communities of New Orleans and Louisiana and the global listeners it’s meant to serve.
‘A world-class station deserves a world-class facility,’ as one listener writes. 717 St, Charles offers that place, right here and right now.
The two-step solution will also enable rehabilitation of a building neglected since Hurricane Katrina and “the Federal flood” of 2005.
January 11, 2023, NOLA.com reported that the City of New Orleans had contracted with two ‘Disadvantaged Business Enterprises’, VergesRome Architects and Nano Architecture, to design plans for post-Katrina repair of the Municipal Auditorium, using some of the $37 million that the Federal Energency Management Agency (FEMA) had at last allocated for this ‘Historic’ building in 2018.
The Municipal Auditorium in the southeast middle of Louis Armstrong Park is five stories of stately limestone, completed in 1930 and adjacent to the seminal, sacred ground of Congo Square. The Municipal Auditorium holds more than 75,000 square-feet in its Theater and over 35,000 square-feet in its Exhibition Hall. Its also contains numerous Offices and potential Offices. Its Theater has hosted Duke Ellington and his Orchestra, Kid Ory and Danny Barker at the 1971 JazzFest, James Brown, Rod Stewart and band, the Neville Brothers, and decades of Mardi Gras Krewe Balls and High School Graduations.
The Municipal Auditorium represents culture and memories of the adjoining Tremé neighborhood. The Tremé over 250 years has offered up many of the richest and most fundamental of African-American arts and accomplishments inthe Western Hemisphere. The Tremé is exact and inimitable and irreplaceable companion to Congo Square and the Municipal Auditorium.
See this Auditorium in glory days below. See its storms-wrecked roof, too. See and hear it be setting for a vibrant, brilliant abd excellent Concert by the Neville Brothers in 1991, through video linked on one lovely Web-page of the ‘A Closer Walk with Thee’ gallery, produced by Ponderosa Stomp folks and the Fertel Foundation … and presented on WWOZ’s website.
The Two-Step Solution will let WWOZ have 717 St. Charles Avenue as its short-tem home and then have a rehabilitated Municipal Auditorium as its long-term base.
There are literal billions of City, State and Federal funds available—right here and right now—to make the Two-Step Solution happen. On March 30, 2023 journalist Michael Issac Stein wrote for Verite News and WWNO about more than $1.8 billion awaiting use by the City of New Orleans. You may pause to EXCLAIM: $1.8 BILLION is $300 million than the entire 2023 Budget for all expenses in the City of New Orleans’ Budget.
Among the funds that Michael Issac Stein noted then are more than $1 billion for post-Hurrican Katrina repair of roads and other infrastructure. FEMA released $2 billion to New Orleans for repair of infrastructure. Also noted by Stein three months ago are and a City surplus of $274 million—and $171 million in ‘voter-approved bonds’.
All that’s needed are trust and will. The Purchase Agreement for 717 St. Charles signed on April 3, 2023 for the entire New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Board by its President, David Francis, can be fulfilled. The 18-years-overdue work to rehabilitate the Municipal Auditorium, other ‘Historic’ buildings such as Perseverance Hall No. 4, and ALL of the Park bearing Louis Armstrong’s name can be completed within FIVE years through concerted efforts, per Contracts that entail both Performance-Bonuses and Delay-Penalties with no room for Cost-Overruns, funded and carried out with a respect by Federal, State, and City officials commensurate with the value that these Builidngs, Louis Armstrong Park and the neighboring Tremé and French Quarter deserve.
We who love WWOZ, New Orleans, and Louisiana can help, one way or another. Heck, everybody likes to Two-Step!
WHAT WE KNOW FROM POPULAR MEDIA
JUNE 13, 2023
Dear Fellow Listeners, Members and Supporters of WWOZ,
You may have read or heard something about the prospective and then thwarted move of New Orleans’ community radio-station WWOZ from its offices in the French Quarter Corporation building. Let’s review these reports first.
WWOZ appeared to be moving from one floor in the French Market Corporaiton building at 1008 North Peters—where two or three or more staffers and volunteers worked within Offices of less than 300 square feet—to a three-story townhouse in New Orleans’ Central Business District. On April 24, 2023 the New Orleans’ outlet of the online publication AXIOS brought out this piece by Chelsea Brasted.
Brasted cited ‘a prime location at 717 St. Charles Avenue’. She wrote:
‘WWOZ is on a deadline to leave its longtime French Quarter broadcast studio and looking to buy its own headquarters, eyeing a St. Charles Avenue building in the Central Business District.
Why it matters: There are few New Orleans institutions as well known and well loved as WWOZ.
What's happening: The station's new home looks to be a prime location at 717 St. Charles Avenue, according to a letter obtained by Axios and prepared by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, which owns the radio station.
The document was prepared in advance of an April 20 neighborhood meeting to discuss a zoning change that would allow for the building's use as a broadcast studio.
In the letter, neighbors are told WWOZ would utilize nearby paid parking lots and soundproof the first-floor studio. Offices and meeting rooms would occupy the top two floors.
In another letter obtained by Axios and addressed to station show hosts, WWOZ general manager Beth Arroyo Utterback says the Jazz & Heritage Foundation has entered a purchase agreement for the St. Charles Avenue property.
The property is listed at over $2.3 million. Zillow notes the building is under contract.’
Next, we the public read about the Board of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundaiton rejecting such a move by the radio-station whose license the Foundation owns. On May 12, 2023, the Friday following the two weekends of JazzFest and that Festival’s attendance by more than 450,000. Offbeat, quoted WWOZ General Manager Beth Arroyo Utterback extensively.
Offbeat wrote:
‘The Board voted not to approve the purchase of the property as the majority of board members voting said the building was not “suitable” for WWOZ, without elaboration {…}. Sources also revealed that Jazz & Heritage Board members who voted against the purchase of the 717 property were more inclined to recommend that the station move back to Armstrong Park, the historic site of Congo Square.’
WWOZ’s General Manager since 2017, Beth Arroyo Utterbach, is quoted by Offbeat. “This is a real shame for WWOZ. In the last two months WWOZ has broadcast/ streamed 190 musical sets and cultural bearer performances live featuring over 900 musicians. This includes Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, Treme Fest/Congo Square, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation’s concert series, live ‘OZ studio performances and Piano Night. WWOZ has been on someone else’s second floor for 42 years: Tipitina’s, The Treehouse in Armstrong Park and the French Market. 717 would have been the first real home which our staff, show hosts, musicians, volunteers and culture bearers so richly deserve.” ‘
New Orleans’ and southeast Louisiana’s major source of print journalism, online or paper, NOLA.com and its companion newspapers the Times-Picayune and The Advocate, published on May 27 a more detailed and evocative account, written by Keith Spera.
Spera wrote for thousands of readers in NOLA.com:
‘Staffers at WWOZ 90.7 FM thought they had finally found their forever home.
Facing an Aug. 1 deadline to vacate the cramped, increasingly dilapidated French Market space the community radio station has leased for 18 years, they embarked on a months-long search.
Working with an executive committee of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, which owns WWOZ’s broadcast license and would be funding the purchase, they zeroed in on a three-story building at 717 St. Charles Ave. listed for $2.3 million….
But on May 11, the full 26-member Jazz & Heritage Foundation board voted against authorizing the purchase, effectively killing the deal.’
Keith Spera and NOLA.com quoted Board members’ complaints.
‘Some board members believed the executive committee had not kept them informed and overstepped its authority by making an offer.
“Communication was an issue,” one board member said.
Beyond that, some members characterized buying a building on St. Charles Avenue as “tone-deaf.”
“We were not going to invest $2.3 million on St. Charles Avenue,” said a board member. “It doesn’t square with our mission. We’re going to invest in a community where it will make a difference.”
That community, the argument went, should be more “culturally relevant” than the 700 block of St. Charles….
Some foundation board members suggested WWOZ move back to Armstrong Park. That option is untenable, WWOZ management contends, given the condition of the Armstrong Park structures and other concerns.’
Keith Spera notes that the vote on May 11 was ‘closed-door’. The vote was also done by secret ballot.
WHAT YOU MAY NOT KNOW: A TIMELINE OF PRINCIPALS AND EVENTS NOT YET IN POPULAR MEDIA
STATEMENTS by the realtor for the seller of 717 St. Charles Avenue contradict quotes from the ‘anonymous’ Board members cited by NOLA.com .
Debbie Lewis of Burk Brokerage, headed by Gigi Burk, was and is the lead agent for the seller of 717 St. Charles Avenue, Lindsey Cheek.
Lindsey Cheek is an attorney who litigates on behalf of victims of mesothalmia and ‘pharmaceutical/product liabilities.’ Cheek and her sister Kelsey moved from Texas (they were raised in suburban Friendswood, between Houston and Galveston) in 2015, following the elder sister’s five years with the Harris County District Attorney’s office. Lindsey founded the Cheek Law Firm in New Orleans in 2015. Kelsey works with her as Paralegal. The Cheek Law Firm has won more than $47 million for its clients in Jury Verdicts or Settlements.
The eldest of five children, Lindsey Cheeks lists 22 items of ‘COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT AND CAUSES SUPPORTED in her ‘Our Team’ biography on the Law Firm’s website. Among the 22 are ‘Roots of Music’ in New Orleans, 2021-2022, and ‘St Augustine High School, New Orleans, The Cheek Law Firm's $25,000 Emergency and Covid-Relief Scholarship Fund (2020-2022)’. Her Facebook page features photos of her with bandleader, trombonist and singer Glen David Andrews at a baby-shower that she hosted. She and her sister Kelsey, a paralegal in the Cheek Law Firm, are Black Belts in karate.
Lindsey Cheek formed the Ferbo St. Charles Limited Liability Corporation on December 28, 2021. According to the neighborwho.com online service, she closed her purchase of 717 St. Charles through the Ferbo LLC on January 23, 2022 for a price of $1.6 million. She and Ferbo St. Charles LLC evidently made more than $250,000 in improvements to the property before it came into consideration as a new home for WWOZ in early 2023.
The Ferbo St. Charles LLC engaged Debbie Lewis of the Burk Brokerage to act as lead realtor for it as seller. Debbie Lewis recalls that management from WWOZ, headed by General Manager Beth Arroyo Utterback, and persons belonging to the Friends of WWOZ Board and the Jazz & Heritage Foundation Board, first visited the 717 St. Charles Avenue site “in early February.”
There’s overlap of seven Members of the 17-person WWOZ Board who also belong to the 26-member Jazz & Heritage Foundation Board.
These dual Members are Judge Sidney H. Cates IV (President of the WWOZ Board and Secretary of the NOJ&HF Board), David Kerstein (Treasurer of the WWOZ Board), Brittany Major (Secretary of the WWOZ Board), J Pegues (Treasurer of the NOJ&HF Board), and Richard Cortizas, Deborah Harkines, and Ronald P. McClain.
WWOZ’s Board.
Above, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s Board.
Steps toward purchase of 717 St. Charles for WWOZ moved swiftly. On March 6, according to realtors Debbie Lewis and Gigi Burk, a Letter of Intent for purchase was signed by David Francis, President of the Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s Board.
Lewis and Burk relate that “all” of WWOZ’s Board and “almost all—at least 20 members” of the NOJ&HF Board visited 717 St. Charles for site-inspections in March, most of them on the dates of March 15 and 22, as recorded in the Brokerage’s log.
On March 31 Lindsey Cheek as seller signed a Purchase Agreement for 717 St. Charles and on April 3 David Francis completed the Agreement with his signature on behalf, as Lewis and Burk recall, of the entire NOJ&HF Board.
Thus, claims from anonymous Board members, as related by Keith Spera for NOLA.com on May 27, appear invalid.
Keith Spera reported, you may remember:
‘Some board members believed the executive committee had not kept them informed and overstepped its authority by making an offer.
“Communication was an issue,” one board member said.’
What happened between the April 3 signing of a Purchase Agreement by David Francis for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation and the May 11 secret-ballot vote by the 26-member NOJ&HF Board?
What led the NOJ&HF Board to reject 717 St. Charles and its multiple, immediate advantages for WWOZ and OZ’s Staff, Show-Hosts, and local and global communities?
What’s going on here? As more than one WWOZ Show-Host has observed: “Something doesn’t smell right.” Or: “There’s something fishy here. Why all the secretiveness?” Or: “We thought we had a great place for a radio-station.”
GOOD NEWS REDUX: HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE AT HAND FOR THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS, THE JAZZ & HERITAGE FOUNDATION, AND WWOZ TO WORK WONDERS
IN 2015 the City of New Orleans and the Administration of Mayor Mitch Landrieu received $2 billion from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The funds were largely dedicated to repairing New Orleans’ infrastructure after its damage from the Federal flood that followed Hurricane Katrina.
SO: THERE’S MONEY FOR INFRASTRUCTURE THAT COULD AND SHOULD INCLUDE AREAS WITHIN LOUIS ARMSTRONG PARK
BY May of 2022 less than $300 million of that $2 billion had been spent by the Administrations of Mitch Landrieu and successor Latoya Cantrell.
Michael Issac Stein quoted contractrors in his piece for The Lens of May 10. 2022. ‘Contractors on the project have criticized both Landrieu and Cantrell over the project’s slow progress.’
Stein, you may recall from the Introduction to our review, wrote on March 30, 2023 about the more than $1.8 billion that still awaits use by the City of New Orleans.
Stein had changed place of work. He was by March of 2023 writing for the investigative website launched in 2022, Verite News. (Verite’s Executive Director is David Francis, President of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s Board.) Stein quoted New Orleans’ City Council-person Joe Giarusso and broke down the ‘abundance of cash’ thus:
‘ “We’ve reversed 180 degrees,” Councilman and budget chair Joe Giarrusso told Verite. “For too long we've said money is our problem, we can't do anything because we don't have the money. And now the money is there to do a lot of these things. So what is actually being done?”
A report from Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration in early March indicates the city is on track to spend just 65% of its already reduced personnel budget for 2023. Some departments are on pace to spend as little as 37% of their budgets for the year. The March report also shows the city’s fund balance — which comes from unspent surpluses — grew to $274 million in late February, up from $238 million in December.
Meanwhile, the city is sitting on a huge pile of federal funds. Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration still hasn’t spent the bulk of the $388 million the city received in federal COVID relief aid. The city has only used $600 million out of $1.6 billion in FEMA infrastructure funds from Hurricane Katrina, risking blowing a federal deadline and losing the unspent dollars, the city’s infrastructure czar Joe Threat said at a Monday council meeting. And he said the city has only spent $171 million of more than $500 million in voter-approved bonds intended for infrastructure projects.’
We may count these amounts and exclaim. $1.8 billion is a lot of money for New Orleans!
The numbers add up thus. $274 million + at least $200 million + at least $1 billion + at least $329 million (‘more than $500 million in voter-approved bonds’ minus $171 million) equals more than $1.8 billion in money that could be spent … to (drum-roll again, please) rehabilitate the Municipal Auditorium, other historic buildings in Louis Armstrong Park, Congo Square itself, … and to repair and improve roads and sewerage that deteriorate exponentially across every Ward of New Orleans … and to otherwise enhance tourists’ access to musicians’ and other culture-bearers … and to employ at fair wages and in useful apprenticeships the young people whose ‘Crimes’ stem directly from the same Malign Neglects that New Orleans as a whole suffers.
Hundreds of millions of Dollars are at hand.
All that’s needed for a Renaissance in New Orleans that would uplift the world is the will to make big and urgent happen.
MONEY THAT THE NOJ&H FOUNDATION CONTROLS
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundaton also has plenty of money to do good things—such as augmenting the $37-or-so million in Federal funds that are still available and designated for rehabilitating the Municipal Auditorium.
The NonProfitt Explorer that serves Propublica offers the following amounts for the NOJ&HF iin 2021 and 2022. The NOJH&F had $55,852,647 in Assets in 2021 and $42,354,603 in 2022. It somehow lost almost $5 million in ‘Investments’ between 2021 and 2022—$32,143,184 the amount for 2021 and $27,166,22 .for 2022. Please see below.
The largest single source of NOJ&HF revenue for 2022 is the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, a Festival directed by the international Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and the local Festival Productions company. Please see below. JazzFest provided $3,456,511 of Net Income for the Foundation in 2022. A comparable amount of $3,376,943 came from ‘Federal grant’. The Foundation’s ‘Total net revenues’ for 2022 total $4,515,481.
The prior year of 2021, when JazzFest was cancelled and WWOZ broadcast its highly industrious and successful ‘JazzFesting in Place’, the NOJ&HF had almost 100% more in ‘Total net revenues’—$9,002,609.
What gave the NOJ&HF its 2021 boost? The Foundation’s ‘Federal grant’ for 2021 was $6,623,057. It had also a plus of ‘Investment income (loss) net’ as $5,473,693.
MONEY MADE BY WWOZ AS AN INDEPENDENT RESOURCE
WWOZ has grown in profitability since Beth Arroyo Utterback became its General Manager in mid-2017. Its Assets and Net GREW especially in the non-JazzFest years of 2020 and 2021. It proved it could flourish through in-station efforts such as ‘Jazz Festing in Place.’ The 18-person Staff marshalled programming resources during COVID lockdowns. Dave Ankers, Director of Content, and Murf Reeves, Music Director, were integral.
The Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archives from JazzFest yielded up their innumberable Bright Moments, as noted by Keith Spera. Rachel Lyons and Joe Stolarick of the Archives were central. Audiences worldwide loved their JazzFests past in the digital-media and FM-signal present.
Back to finances, Please look below to a progression from 2016, when David Freedman remained WWOZ’s General Manager for the 24th year, into 2022. Again, the Non-Profit Explorer offered by ProPublica is our source.
WWOZ’s revenue in JazzFest years 2016 through 2019 ranged between $5,085,263 and 5.857,815.
Its Net Income ranged from deficits in the Fiscal Years 2016 and 2017 of minus $78,950 and minus $103,720 respectively to gains of $88,546 in the Fiscal Year ending August 2018 (Utterback become General Manager in June 2017 about 15 months of after interim management by Arthur Cohen) and $136,098 in 2019.
Much bigger gains in Net Income for WWOZ occurred in the non-JazzFest, COVID-depleted years of 2020 and 2021. The radio-station grew to $551,212 in Net Income for Fiscal Year 2020. In Fiscal Year 2021 its Net Assets increased from $3,437,129 to $4,342,196.
Again, WWOZ is succeeding on its own.
This local and global community radio-station, “bringing New Orleans and all of Louisiana’s music and cultures to the universe”, 24 hours a day, 365 days each year, might flourish EVEN MORE in a facility with the advantages of 717 St. Charles Avenue.
WWOZ might succeed so much, through engaging EVEN MORE of the ‘900 musicians’ cited by Beth Arroyo Utterback, that its appreciation from supporters might enable to buy its license from the NOH&HF.
Another reason may loom large in the Board’s decision on May 11. Members of the Board may want to work with ‘private developers on a larger redevelopment plan for the Morris F.X. Jeff Municipal Auditorium, as the venue is formally known, and the land that surrounds it in Armstrong Park.’
WE LOOK AROUND LOUIS ARMSTRONG PARK
ON SUNDAY EVENING OF MAY 14, three day’s after the NOJ&HF Board’s vote, Maryse and I took a walk in Louis Armstrong Park. We saw how much of the Park remains expansive—pretty—well-designed for reflective pleasure. A good place to think about centuries.
We also saw how much of the Park that bears Louis Armstrong’s name is now left in woeful disrepair.
We went over to “the Tree-House”, O-Z’s home in the Park between October 28, 1984 and August 27, 2005. (For multi-media evocation, please check out Alison Fensterstock on George Ingmire’s “After the Flood” in the Times-Picayune, 2015.)
“The Tree-House” always looked like a Lilliputian block relative to the Giants’ music it put out—its size like house-and-shop of a Gulf Coast net-mender maybe.
How this historic-in-itself site had been “let go” showed us just how much the City of New Orleans and the NOJ&HF’s Board had cared for WWOZ’s legacy over the past 18 years.
The blockish building toward center, above, is where WWOZ managed offices and broadcasts for 21 years.
“No care at all.” Balcony and yard of WWOZ’s building, the “Treehouse”, May 14, 2023. “
We saw once handsome and still impressive Perseverance Hall No. 4, first completed in 1820, the oldest Masonic Temple in Louisiana, where Creole bands played for mixed-race (of course) dancers, a building rehabilitated by Jackie Harris when she was a Director of Music in the 1990s’ Administration of Marc Morial,
Still looking at pictures of what humidity, mildew, and neglect can do—Perseverance Hall No. 4 over the past 18 years since Hurricane Katrina and “the Federal flood.”
We walked around perimeter of the Municipal Auditorium. We saw the fabled Auditorium’s five stories of limestone overgrown.
We talked with a crew from Cotton Global Disaster Solutions, a company based nearby Houston, Texas. The crew’s foreman explained this Sunday evening that they were pumping out the Auditorium’s basement. He said that work to be done within the Auditorium’s 75,000+ square-feet of Theater and 35,000 square-feet of Exhibition Hall was “big, real big”, but that the building’s “bones” of walls and foundation were “strong.” He said: “Oh yeah, for sure, this building is worth preserving!”
In October 2017 Danielle del Sol of New Orleans’ Preservation Resource Center wrote an updating article,’The Drama of New Orleans’ Municipal Auditorium.’
Danielle del Sol recounted FEMA’s absurd offer of $7 million in 2010 to repair the Auditorium. She strove to convey what the Auditorium meant to its multi-race communities. ‘It was a building where special events were hosted and memories made for many New Orleanians.’ She noted that Harrah’s 1994 contract for a short-lived Casino in the Auditorium had compelled it to a $39-million restoration prior to 2005’s “Federal flood.” Danielle del Sol recounted the Landrieu Administration’s efforts to land $41.7 million more from FEMA.
And now? Six years on, January of 2023, we’ve seen, the Cantrell Administration announced award of a Contract to ‘a local architecture firm to come up with a plan to stabilize and repair the dilapidated historic venue.’
The piece by Stephanie Riegel:
‘A City Hall purchasing committee selected VergesRome Architects, which is partnering with Nano Architecture on the project, after evaluating and scoring proposals from five teams that responded last fall to a request for qualifications to lead the restoration and repair work.
That work — both the design phase and the construction that will follow — will be paid for with $37 million that FEMA allocated to New Orleans in 2018, after years of fighting with the agency over how much the federal government should pay to repair damage the building sustained in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Separately, the Cantrell administration is planning to seek proposals from private developers interested in partnering with the city on a larger redevelopment plan for the Morris F.X. Jeff Municipal Auditorium, as the venue is formally known, and the land that surrounds it in Armstrong Park.’
Thus we see more.
We see that ‘the Cantrell administration’ seeks to work with ‘private developers … on a larger redevelopment plan’ for the Auditorium ‘and the land that surrounds it in Armstrong Park.’
We know not who those developers are. We know not what their plans may be. They enjoy a secrecy like the NOJ&HF’s vote to reject 717 St. Charles as a new home for WWOZ.
Continuing within Louis Armstrong Park, Maryse and I walked along the Auditorium’s south side, the side facing Basin Street.
We proceeded to the Auditorium’s east side, the side that faces another street famous round the world through Black musicians’ expression, Rampart. We viewed again the inscriptions chiseled into stone when Municipal Auditorium opened to a ‘Whites-only’ public in 1930.
‘MUSIC / POETRY / ART / DRAMA / ATHLETICS ‘ …
We repeated the inscriptions-as-mission for the then strictly segregated Auditorium. We whispered them out-loud. “ ‘MUSIC / POETRY / ART / DRAMA / ATHLETICS ‘ “ …
All were as present in the Municipal Auditorium, over its decades, as they were made vivid through their creations in New Orleans’ Streets, Clubs, and Concert Halls … and then brought to the world through WWOZ. All deserved new and broader honoring. All could be brought together, rich as feathers and horns that cross Rivers, for the whole, 21st-century world with some will and trust and work.
A TWO-STEP SOLUTION OVER FIVE YEARS
WE LOOK AGAIN to the not-so-distant past. The multiple buildings of an expanded Charity Hospital along Tulane Avenue in downtown New Orleans were completed in 1939 after less than four years of work. Charity Hospital’s 2680 beds made it the second-largest Hospital in the United States. Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center was founded in 1931, adjacent to Charity Hospital, under the Administration of Governor Huey Long. Long wrote in his book Every Man a King: ‘That new school, upon examination, was found to have been supplied with every modern device or contrivance suggested and recommended by the national medical organizations. It was given 'A' rating by the American Medical Association before it had been in operation more than eighteen months." ‘ This Governor’s Adminstration built a 27-story State Capitol in little more than one year, 1930 into 1931. It was then the second-tallest structure, beneath the Empire State Building, in the United States. It remains the tallest of State Capitols.
No question, then, that New Orleans Municial Auditorium and all of Louis Armstrong Park COULD be rehabilitated in no more than five years.
STEP ONE. New Agreements and Contracts are formulated. WWOZ is enabled to honor the Purchase Agreement for 717 St. Charles Avenue that New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Board President David Francis signed on behalf of the Board, April 3, 2023.
As part of this New Agreement, WWOZ is contracted to move from 717 St. Charles Avenue to a permanent home in the rehabilitated Municipal Auditorium of Armstrong Park within a Term of five years.
STEP TWO. Concurrent Agreements and Contracts for Rehabilitation and Revitalization of Louis Armstrong Park and its major buildings and sites (Municipal Auditorium, Perseverane Hall No. 4, Congo Square) are concliuded between the City of New Orleans and agencies of State and Federal Government.
At last—after the Administration of George W. Bush boasted in 2008 of the more than
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/katrina/ after Hurricane Katrina (‘The Federal government has provided more than $126 billion – $140 billion including tax relief – to the Gulf Coast Region’)—funds that honor the value of the musics, other arts, and history of New Orleans’ neighborhoods’ culture are allocated to preserving and nurturing such culture and vitality.
Agreements and Contracts stipulate that young people of New Orleans’ Treme and disadvantaged Wards are primarily employed in the Rehabilitation and Revitalization. Material donations from lovers of New Orleans and Louisiana cultures are welcomed. Bonuses for reaching Goals on Annual Timelines ahead of set Dates are part of Contracts. Penalties for delayed Performance are part of Contracts, too. Cost-Overruns are disallowed. The entire Scope-of-Work for Rehabilitation and Revitalization of Louis Armstrong Park, including Municipal Auditorium, Perseverance Hall No. 4, AND “the Treehouse” that was WWOZ’s epic broadcase-base for 21 years, is completed by July 4 (Louis Armstrong’s nominal and fitting birthday, as no one has more fulfilled this Nation’s promises of giving and freedom than Louis Armstrong) of 2028,
What do you say?
A CHRONOLOGY OF LINKS, REGARDING WWOZ AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG PARK, BOARDS AND MONEY AND INVALUABLE RICHES, THAT MAY INTEREST YOU
https://www.wwoz.org/topics/members-membership
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/717-Saint-Charles-Ave-New-Orleans-LA-70130/305157097_zpid/?mmlb=g,0
https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/orleans/its-good-for-your-soul-wwoz-offers-musical-relief-as-recovery-from-ida-begins/289-cd71686b-6855-4a0c-b93e-65ae7a82c9a3
https://www.nola.com/news/business/municipal-auditorium-repair-contract-won-by-local-firm/article_fb8b7306-9133-11ed-ac99-cf56e2b01b49.html
https://acloserwalknola.com/places/municipal-auditorium/
https://www.wwno.org/news/2023-03-30/new-orleans-government-remains-understaffed-despite-abundance-of-cash-dire-needs
https://www.axios.com/local/new-orleans/2023/04/24/wwoz-leaving-french-market-broadcast-studio
https://www.offbeat.com/news/wwoz-seeks-home/
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/wwoz-wanted-to-move-to-st-charles-ave-the-new-orleans-jazz-heritage-foundation-said/article_a260ee02-fc0c-11ed-adac-73756fd823ee.html
https://www.thecheeklawfirm.com/lindsey-cheek
https://www.thecheeklawfirm.com/case-results
https://www.facebook.com/lindsey.cheek.82
https://www.wwoz.org/wwozs-board-directors
https://www.jazzandheritage.org/about-us/board/
https://www.wwoz.org/wwoz-staff
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/music/earliest-jazz-fest-tapes-discovered-after-20-year-quest-historic-performances-are-heard-again/article_eb6af96e-a824-11eb-a3b8-3b240c817cf6.html
‘Behind-the-scenes of Jazz Festing In Place--
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/wwoz-wanted-to-move-to-st-charles-ave-the-new-orleans-jazz-heritage-foundation-said/article_a260ee02-fc0c-11ed-adac-73756fd823ee.html
https://www.wdsu.com/article/new-orleans-fema-agree-to-2b-settlement-to-fix-roads-infrastructure-1/3382566
https://thelensnola.org/2022/05/10/government-watchdogs-probing-2b-katrina-roadwork-project-as-city-faces-federal-deadline/
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/720692744
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/581702220
https://www.wwno.org/news/2023-03-30/new-orleans-government-remains-understaffed-despite-abundance-of-cash-dire-needs
https://prcno.org/municipal_auditorium/
https://www.nola.com/news/business/municipal-auditorium-repair-contract-won-by-local-firm/article_fb8b7306-9133-11ed-ac99-cf56e2b01b49.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity_Hospital_(New_Orleans)
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-was-new-orleanss-charity-hospital-allowed-die/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSU_Health_Sciences_Center_New_Orleans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Capitol#CITEREFHitchcockSeale1976
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/katrina/
Don Paul is the author of Good Intentions: A Novel about Revolution, and 31 other books; the youngest winner of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University; and the leader or producer of 29 albums, including his LOVE OVER WAR and Roger Lewis’ ALRIGHT! of 2022. He’s co-founded Housing Is a Human Right in San Francisco, Rebuild Green and the Wesley United Digital Arts & Training Center in New Orleans, and was Operations Director for Common Ground Collective / Common Ground Relief from June to December of 2006. He qualified for the 1980 and 1988 U.S. Men’s Olympic Marathon Trial and held the World Road Best for running 50 kilomters between 1982 and 1992. He and Maryse Philippe Déjean, his wife, co-direct Sticking Up For Chidren, working with Schools and an Orphanage in Haiti and New Orleans, this organization originated by Cyril and Gaynielle Neville and the Royal Southern Brotherhood in 2013. Paul and Déjean are co-directors, too, of the 22 Hours of Interviews and Music at Spiritual as Music.