Freret Street Revisited
Throughout New Orleans residents band together to regroup and rebuild
Today, an agreement reached by the Greater New Orleans Foundation fully 10 months after the storm seeks to weave the plans of individual neighborhoods into a unified city effort, thanks to a $3.5 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that helped match up neighborhoods with urban planners of their choice. But while this master plan integrates the wishes of the residents, it also sidesteps key environmental concerns, say critics-and it isn't slated to be complete until the end of the year. "We hear, 'Why don't you just get in there and plan the damn thing?'" says Steven Bingler, the architect in charge of the revamped process. "But if there's anything that's come out of this whole enterprise that has major significance, it's this whole concept of democratic process and self-determination." The struggle to survive also created dynamics that many hope will be the key to a stronger city, particularly in Freret, says Anderson of Neighborhood Housing Services. "People are so much more civically engaged since the storm."
As children returned to school last week, Jesse Murdoch was fixing up his new business, an ice cream shop that he plans to open on Freret Street next month as part of a new, blue block of storefronts that have been developed since the storm. In the meantime he is living with his wife and four daughters in a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer-the kind of sacrifice countless residents across the city are making to save money. Murdoch is optimistic but also filled with anxiety as his hometown enters the peak of a hurricane season that could make or break it. Like so many residents here, he is rolling the dice, hoping for the best-and gambling, he says, everything he has.
SLOW GROWTH
Back in February, U.S. News charted the efforts of residents to rebuild on Freret Street, a 3.8-mile stretch of road running from the Pontchartrain Expressway in the east to the Mississippi River bend in the west. Katrina's flood line wove in and out of homes and businesses, uprooting many lives there. Since February, a lot has happened to the denizens of Freret Street; these are their updated stories.
advertisement
