Sen. Mary Landrieu will tour the St. Claude Corridor this weekend to see first hand the many innovative projects engaged in bringing this area of the city back. St. Claude, of course, intersects with St. Roch Avenue, and FSRP will be one of the featured groups of her tour. Yesterday, Jeanne and I ran some errands in preparation for Saturday and hung the sign for the St. Roch Art Walk.
The Art Walk has been a two year long project to beautify the neutral ground on St. Roch Avenue. Neutral ground is the New Orleans term for the wide median on most of New Orleans main streets. The term comes from early in the city's history when the French and American's occupied separate parts of the city and really only interacted on the neutral ground of St. Charles Avenue. Jefre Figueras Manuel designed the final plan for the Art Walk, which is being funded by the City of New Orleans with Community Development Block Grants. The Art Walk will cover six city blocks, from St. Roch Market, an historic New Orleans landmark, to Independence Square. If you have a moment, it is really worth going through the images on Jefre's MySpace page. It will be amazing when finally completed.
St. Claude Avenue was the site of last semester's Main Streets Class at DUSP. The class created an economic development and area beautification plan. MIT Students have been all over this area for a number of months now. It is exciting to see the area getting more visibility.
In addition to FSRP, Transport for NOLA, a group advocating fiercely for a St. Claude Streetcar line, will be represented on Saturday. Tonight, our own Jeff Schwartz is giving a presentation on the proposed extensions to the New Orleans Streetcar system. This is more and more becoming a reality. Very exciting!
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