Makin' Groceries

Seymour D. Fair at The Third Battle of New Orleans has a post about the reopening of the Sav-a-Center Fresh Market in Mid-City and its significance for the rebuilding of the rest of the city.

Since the early 1990's I have preached (nearly literally) that I believed the adaptive reuse within the Warehouse District coupled with the re-development of the Lower Garden District/former-MICO Railyard site/St. Thomas held the key to the future of New Orleans over the next twenty years leading up to the city's 300th anniversary in 2018. I still maintain the revitalization of the expanse from the Pontchartrain Expressway to Jackson Avenue is a fundamental puzzle-piece to the city's future, but the MANMADE-induced flooding post-KTMB has forced a re-examination and re-definition of this stance. Post-KTMB I now feel the rebirth of Mid-City has a greater importance for New Orleans for both symbolic and practical reasons. I honestly believe the fate specifically of Mid-City will determine the post-KTMB destiny of the City of New Orleans. Mid-City's central location, it's wide-variety of housing stock, it's historically-significant architecture, it's location on the Canal Street Streetcar Line, and its proximity to recreational and cultural assets such as City Park, Bayou St. John, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), and The Fairgrounds led to its resurgence in the years pre-KTMB and will again spur it's rebirth. Because of Mid-City's location at the convergence of the Metairie, Bayou St. John, and Esplanade Ridges and that most of it's houses were constructed in the traditional New Orleans vernacular (thus being raised off the ground), not every structure in Mid-City was catastrophically impacted by the flooding similar to homes in nearly all of Lakeview, most of Gentilly, and the majority of New Orleans East. Thus, Mid-City has the opportunity to rebound relatively quickly compared to these other parts of the city.

Read the whole thing.