It's more restrictive than developer wanted

Monday, October 09, 2006

By Bruce Eggler

The New Orleans City Council has approved a zoning change for a large tract across Basin Street from the Municipal Auditorium where developer Tom Bauer wants to build the city's largest condo development.

But at the urging of Councilman James Carter, whose district includes the site, the council voted to make the new zoning more restrictive than Bauer wanted or than the City Planning Commission recommended.

The council voted 7-0 Thursday to change the zoning of the entire 15-acre site to C-1A, which sets a 125-foot height limit on residential buildings and gives the commission and the council authority over the design of any development covering more than 10,000 square feet.

The site stretches five blocks from Interstate 10 to Crozat Street . It includes a Winn-Dixie supermarket that Bauer built five years ago but that has been closed since Hurricane Katrina and that would be torn down, plus a large parking lot. A recreational vehicle park next to the interstate would remain.

Most of the site was used as a parking lot for the casino that operated at the Municipal Auditorium for seven months in 1995.

Bauer has declined to discuss his plans for the site in detail. But based on preliminary designs he showed to the commission and to some nearby property owners and residents, he originally envisioned a development encompassing 900 condos and featuring two or three towers as tall as 30 stories and 361 feet each.

The zoning approved by the council would rule out such towers, although Bauer could apply for waivers to the height limit.

The condos' address would be 1501 St. Louis St. , across the street from the Iberville public housing development.

As originally conceived, the project also would have comprised one or more garages with 2,500 parking spaces, including 1,500 spaces for the condos; 240,000 square feet of commercial space for businesses such as a drugstore, restaurant, bakery or coffee shop, dress shop and dry cleaners; and a 10,000-square-foot museum or theater that the city could use to show films to visitors.

Bauer, whose previous projects include the 12-story luxury condo building at 625 St. Charles Ave. , told some neighbors the new development would cost about $150 million. The condos would sell for $220,000 to $600,000, neighbors said they were told.

Bauer originally asked to change the site's zoning from LI, light-industrial, to C-2, general commercial, which would restrict the types of uses permitted but would allow new construction of unlimited height.

The Planning Commission's staff said C-2 would not provide enough control over what could be built and suggested changing the front part of the site, closest to the French Quarter, to C-1A, which would limit commercial buildings to 100 feet in height and residential buildings to 125 feet. The staff suggested changing the rear portion of the property to C-1, which has no height limit but sets other limits, such as on a building's floor-area ratio, or mass.

Under the C-1A zoning approved by the council for the entire site, Bauer will have to submit detailed plans to the commission and council to proceed with the project.

Two community activists, Mike Howells and Jay Arena, spoke before the council against Bauer's plans. Howells warned that allowing upscale condos at the site would lead to pressure in a few years to demolish the Iberville housing complex. "People will say, 'I don't want to live next door to the projects,' " he said.

"The last thing we need is more condos for the rich," Arena said. He said hundreds of working-class families relied on the now-closed supermarket and the city should insist that it be reopened or replaced.

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Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3320.