A Big Easy Dose of Tough Love
NEW ORLEANS-It looked as if this forlorn city's knight in shining armor might finally save the day.
In late March, Edward Blakely, the city's belatedly appointed recovery czar, laid out before a city hall gathering what was praised as the last best hope for New Orleans: a $1.1 billion plan that-unlike far broader previous proposals-judiciously targeted 17 "redevelopment zones" that generally stood the best chance for revival. "By September, we want to see cranes on the skyline," said Blakely.
Erudite and plain-spoken, the 68-year-old urban planner from Oakland, Calif., left little reason for doubt. The globe-trotting chairman of urban planning at Australia's University of Sydney had arrived in January with an impressive track record shepherding other recovery efforts-from California's 1989 earthquake to the aftermath of 9/11-and quickly set about fashioning an up-by-your-bootstraps plan that focused on neighborhoods like the Broadmoor, where residents had already begun elevating their low-lying homes above Katrina's insidious high-water mark.
Tough love. He called on the city's sniping political factions to abandon their "mendicant" ways. Instead of looking for a handout, he proposed the city finance its revival, in part, by issuing bonds that use blighted city property as collateral. "Let's not act like we're crippled here," he scolded them.
Yet in a place where bumper stickers say, "Louisiana: Third World and Proud of It," such blunt assessments hit too close to home-especially after he publicly described some citizens as "buffoons" and likened himself to a surgeon who operates on a patient only to find him returning to his bad habits. While he hopes the patient lives, "if they start eating hog maws again and not exercising, what can I do?" he told the New York Times.
The backlash was swift, prompting apologies from Blakely and undoing much of the goodwill needed to push the plan forward. City officials have since all but put the kibosh on Blakely's "blight bonds" scheme. Meanwhile, the Redevelopment Authority he expected to carry out the plan instituted a hiring freeze last week after officials said they would run out of money by year's end.
"It's clearly in limbo," local political analyst Jeff Crouere says of the rebuilding plan. "I'm looking out at the skyline now, and there's no sign of any cranes."
Yet Blakely remains undeterred. Despite near silence from Mayor Ray Nagin (who declined to comment but said through a spokesman that he still "supports" his recovery czar), Blakely claims his plan is "right on track" and says that he already has commitments for about $400 million in financing.
"If this plan fails, it won't be because I failed New Orleans," he says. "It will be because New Orleans failed itself."
This story appears in the May 28, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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