We nearly missed mentioning a new greenway emerging in New Orleans that will run from City Park to the edge of the French Quarter. The project has a lot of potential in terms of economic development and creating a separate bike and walking trail right in the heart of the city. The city is moving forward on completing the project, as The Trust for Public Land has just obtained rights to buy the site to eventually transfer it to government ownership. From the Times-Picayune:
The 18-acre strip, now held by a mortgage company, is part of a mostly city-owned three-mile tract that follows along an unused railway bed beginning near Basin Street Station, continuing along Lafitte Street across North Carrollton Avenue and ending near Canal Boulevard.
The area includes the Sojourner Truth Community Center, a gas station at Lafitte and Broad streets where public employees fill their cars, and the old brake tag station at Lafitte and Jefferson Davis Parkway.
“All these facilities will be repurposed to serve the greenway corridor, ” said Dubravka Gilic, director of strategic planning for the city recovery office.
Daniel Samuels, an architect, is a founding member of Friends of Lafitte Corridor, a three-year-old community group that has been the most visible advocate for creation of the corridor. He said the idea of turning this area into public space is not new.
“City planning documents have recognized the potential of that corridor going all the way back to the 1976 Claiborne Avenue Design Team Study done by Cliff James and Rudy Lombard, to successive phases of the New Orleans New Century Master Plan, which was started in the 1990s, ” Samuels said.
Filed under: renewal, transportation Tagged: | new orleans, trails
