When Pres Kabacoff talks about his vision for the future of New Orleans, he does so against the backdrop of half a century of family influence on the shape of his hometown.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
By Doug MacCash

Standing on his office balcony 31 stories above the Central Business District, mega-developer Pres Kabacoff looks out over the sweep of the river and describes his vision of a recovered 21st-century New Orleans.

In his rosiest of imaginings, Kabacoff sees the future Crescent City as a sort of Afro-Caribbean Paris, a concentrated old world-style berg clustered along the high ground near the Mississippi River, just as the City of Light is centered on the Seine. He pines for a light rail system like the ones in forward-looking cities such as Denver, St. Louis and Portland, Ore., connecting downtown New Orleans, the Armstrong International Airport and all points between. Verdant, pedestrian-friendly parks would line both the east and west banks of the river, welcoming tour ship passengers and local recreators alike.

The Canal Street of Kabacoff's dreams would be swept of trashy tourist-oriented shops and revamped as a signature promenade of chic boutiques and restaurants with residences above -- New Orleans' Champs Elysees. Medical research facilities would sprout in the now-crippled hospital sector. An entertainment district, encompassing the now-empty historic theaters, would glow anew. Hundreds of blighted homes in historic neighborhoods would be restored. Visitors and locals alike could wander the city for miles, from attraction to attraction.

Any Afro-Caribbean Paris would, of course, have its version of an Eiffel Tower, a lighted beacon situated at the corner of Canal Street and Loyola Avenue. In the current PowerPoint presentation, the monument is depicted as a lighted fleur-de-lis, "tall enough to be seen from the river and the center part of the city," steadied by statues of heroic human figures holding guy lines. Suspended within the fleur-de-lis, which was drawn by New Orleans artist and voodoo priestess Sallie Ann Glassman, is a gigantic glowing jellyfish by emergency room doctor/neon sculptor Eric Ehlenberger. Kabacoff is quick to say that a giant neon jellyfish may never loom over Canal Street -- if a monument were to be built, the artist would be selected by international search.

Kabacoff had beaten the drum for his Parisian plan, dubbed "Operation Rebirth," months before Katrina and he believes it's as important as ever. The price tag would be $4 billion.

Despite his connections with the city's top-echelon decision-makers, Kabacoff seems to have no better idea than anyone else which of the multiple conflicting and colliding urban redesign plans will eventually come to pass. "You never know what's going to get out of the gate," he said. "I'm not suggesting that my plan is the plan."

. . . . . . .

Kabacoff is just one of the dozens of interested parties who see the potential in post-Katrina New Orleans. And judging by his high-stakes deal-making track record -- he counts the development of the massive Federal Fiber Mills apartments, American Can Company apartments and the controversial River Gardens mixed-income housing development among his Crescent City accomplishments -- Kabacoff is one of the few that may stand a chance of seeing at least parts of his vision become real.

The offices of his Historic Restoration Inc. Properties, the real estate development company he co-founded in 1982, occupy the entire 31st floor of the red marble business tower at 909 Poydras St.

On a day last month in which Kabacoff surveyed the city from the balconies that surround the glass-and-carpet hive, scores of employees busied themselves inside, overseeing the design of new buildings and the rehabilitation of old ones, managing rental apartments and selling condominiums, seeking government partnerships and working capital, in cities near and far. As usual, hundreds of millions of dollars were being made and spent. HRI has developed $1 billion in properties since 1982.

Outside, cold breezes occasionally tussled Kabacoff's smoke gray hair as he extended his hand Caesar-like toward the Mississippi and beyond, describing a vision of the cityscape that he and his father both have helped to sculpt over the past half-century -- one that he hopes to shape further. He wandered from one of his office balconies to another, pointing toward this neighborhood and that, describing the city's triumphs and troubles.

"It's kind of convenient having these balconies isn't it?" he asked absently.

Kabacoff knows that competition for the future development of the city will be fierce, and his plan may not emerge intact. But he is convinced the competition is good for the city, and that some version of it will eventually be done.

For instance, he sees New Orleans Building Corporation director Sean Cummings' "Reinventing the Crescent" riverfront development plan as one good bet.

"The riverfront is low-hanging fruit," he said. "It will be developed. . . . People may think the money belongs elsewhere, but I do believe the river's important and I'm pleased Sean is putting an emphasis on it. The only caution I have is, let's not spend all our available resources on it, let's penetrate some of these poorer neighborhoods. . . . The risk is, if you only develop the riverfront, you get to be an Atlantic City, where poverty encroaches."

And he disagrees with those who would argue that the overall planning process is proceeding too slowly.

"I don't think any city in the country has been planned as thoroughly," he said. "We could argue we've really done nothing (since Katrina), but if we'd done it sooner, we may have gotten it wrong. It's going to be much more difficult, much more protracted. . . . Until the dust settles, it's hard to get your arms around the situation."

. . . . . . .

Overlooking the city from his high Poydras Street perch, presenting a PowerPoint presentation in a handsomely appointed office, riding in the gold-toned elevator with former mayor Sidney Barthelemy, who is now HRI's vice president for government relations: This is the Pres Kabacoff you expect.

But he apparently does not entirely conform to the high-pressure Donald Trump mold. Since December 2005, Kabacoff has regularly attended an off-the-radar Sunday evening gathering, a salon of outside-the-box thinkers who are the antithesis of the scotch-and-water, button-down banker and businessman crowd.

First held at the ever outré Barrister's Gallery in Central City, where snake skins and tribal carvings compete with conceptual art, and more recently at Glassman's Achade Meadows voodoo temple in Bywater, the salons have been a forum for everything from ecological issues to cultural boosterism to amorphous New-Age spirituality. The free-thinking attendees are artists, inventors, writers, intellectuals and self-styled social pundits. The atmosphere can be a bit dreamy.

"The truth of the matter is we have often ended up discussing completely extraneous philosophical issues," said salon regular and Barrister's owner Andy Antippas. "We end up with an argument about quantum physics and dark matter and stuff. It can be pretty wide ranging, but we eventually come back to the important things."

Kabacoff first attended the salons at the invitation of his friend Glassman.

"Sallie Ann Glassman suggested an alternative think tank," he said, "in the nontraditional manner, to come up with solutions."

At a January salon at the voodoo temple, six participants sat in a circle of plastic lawn chairs on the cement floor. The important issue at hand was the need for a healing center in the suffering city, not a conventional medical clinic or gym, but a place where natural cures and ecumenical religious guidance could compensate for New Orleanians' abundant physical and mental ills.

Around the perimeter of the small room were altars to the Loas (the voodoo spirits), festooned with sequined flags, decorated rum bottles, candles and carvings. A large gray dog lay near the wall, snoring softly.

Over the months Kabacoff has become the salon's de facto moderator. Tall and lean, he reclined languidly in one of the chairs, peering at the group through his wire-rimmed glasses, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. Predictably, the rash of murders that had stunned the city in the previous days intruded again and again on the discussion of the healing center. As the participants aired their fears and proposed solutions, Kabacoff seemed to drink it all in, adding an occasional comment and keeping everyone on-point as best he could.

"I'm not quite as spiritual as you guys," he said when the conversation drifted too far from the practical.

Kabacoff said the most significant impact the salon discussions have had on him is his environmental awareness. He plans to incorporate green building practices in his future projects -- as best he can -- and is searching for a healing center site.

"Part of the problem is convincing my own company," he said.

Glassman believes that dragging Kabacoff from the board room into bohemia may have had a more profound effect on his role as New Orleans visionary.

"My perception was that movers and shakers were having meetings, recognizing that they were movers and shakers," she said. "Then they'd have another meeting, and another meeting and on and on. Pres is having to bring that into balance and focus on the fact that public life is made of the public. If anybody isolates themselves from the people, they're not participating in reality. It's healthy to be talking to one another."

Kabacoff, 61, was born to the visionary business. His father, the late Lester "Kabby" Kabacoff helped create the Crescent City of the 1960s through the '80s.

The building of the Royal Orleans, Royal Sonesta and Hilton Riverfront hotels, creation of the 1984 world's fair, lighting of the Greater New Orleans Bridge, the development of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center: The elder Kabacoff was involved in all of it.

As Kabacoff put it, he "puppy dogged" with his father, learning "to think big."

"His quote was always, 'If you can't solve a problem, make it bigger,' " he said of his father, who died in 2004.

But on significant points, the father and son urban planners were yin and yang. "Kabby" made a killing when he anticipated the migration from New Orleans to the north shore in the early 1970s, developing the distant Beau Chene subdivision, even as gas prices rose. Pres, on the other hand, anticipated the reverse migration of yuppies returning to the city when he and partner Ed Boettner began refurbishing unused industrial-era behemoths into apartments, including the Federal Fibre Mills building in 1984, the Woodward Wight building in 1987 and the American Can Company building in 1991.

He's currently considering several such apartment/condo projects in New Orleans, including the 10-story, 300-unit Ice House building in the Warehouse District and the 50-unit Bywater Art Loft building. He believes such projects have helped revitalize whole swaths of abandoned city centers. He points proudly to the rebirth of St. Louis' historic downtown and New Orleans' Warehouse district as particular triumphs.

"We ask people, 'Where do you want your Soho?' " he crows.

HRI's slogan, which Kabacoff repeats mantra-like, is: "Revitalizing cities by building diverse, vibrant, sustainable communities."

Diverse, vibrant, sustainable and profitable. Kabacoff admits his motives are not altruistic.

"As good a guy as I am," he said smiling, "if I'm going to lose money going in, I'm not going to do it."

. . . . . . .

Though each of his past and present projects has brought forth its detractors, Kabacoff would probably be enjoying a relatively smooth public relations ride if it weren't for the rancorous River Gardens mixed-income housing development he undertook in 1999.

"We were apple pie," he said of HRI's reputation before River Gardens, "the rebuilders of the city."

The River Gardens story has become a modern morality play. In a masterful stroke of power brokering, Kabacoff convinced city fathers to allow him to build a Wal-Mart adjacent to the demolished St. Thomas housing project, then use the considerable tax revenue from the big-box discounter to help pay for a new neighborhood of two-story structures that mimicked 19th-century townhouses. The town houses were to be rented to a blend of poor families -- some former St. Thomas residents -- and higher-income urbanites.

What followed was a crescendo of conflict from all points on the social compass.

Former housing project residents regretted the loss of the homes they'd occupied, sometimes for generations, arguing that River Gardens had too few low-income slots to house them if they chose to return.

Preservationists lamented the appearance of an unsightly suburban-style shopping center in their midst, with its attendant traffic. Nearby merchants, fearing big-box competition, predicted their own imminent economic doom.

Social critics said that profit, and not urban betterment, was the primary motivation. Even architecture critics got in the act, decrying the ersatz style of the River Gardens houses.

Though he has his fan base, in many tellings the villain in the piece is Kabacoff, characterized by his opponents as a rapacious developer.

"It's frustrating," he said of the continued criticism. "I really feel I've done my homework. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. . . . My hope is that history will bear it out."

Kabacoff asserts that most of the predicted Wal-Mart woes never came to pass, that his detractors have inflated the number of lost low-income residences, and that, as painful as the process may have been, the mixed-income River Gardens is a safer, more humane, less isolated alternative to the old St. Thomas projects. In all, he does not regret his star turn in the drama.

"I really believe concentrated poverty doesn't work," Kabacoff said, adding that traditional housing projects are "unhealthy for the city and definitely unhealthy for the people who live in them," because residents "rarely escape that environment."

He plans to reprise his role. HRI is currently developing a 310-unit mixed-income River Gardens sequel and, he said, HRI is responding to the Housing Authority of New Orleans' request for a proposal to replace the flooded St. Bernard housing projects with something presumably more diverse, vibrant and sustainable.

. . . . . . .

Art critic Doug MacCash can be reached at dmaccash@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3481.