Posts Tagged ‘LSU’

New Orleans is about to lose a huge whack of Mid-City to build a massive campus housing new LSU and VA hospitals.

Although no one disputes the desperate need for the new hospitals, how they’ve come about has been a major controversy. The two possibilities were were to renovate their existing hospital – “Big Charity” – a massive 1 million square foot building that sustained only minor damage in Katrina. But LSU fought mightily against this idea, preferring instead a second possibility-paying hundreds of thousands of extra dollars for the privilege buying and bulldozing 27 square blocks full of historic houses to get a shiny new facility. Amazingly, the new site is literally across the street from the existing building, which they’re abandoning in the middle of the Central Business District.

To be fair, this is an area of the city with issues but the neighborhood association is strong and has been working successfully to fight blight and bring people back… only for those people to now see their homes and businesses taken through eminent domain and plowed under.

One of those buildings is the Deutsches Haus, founded in 1928 to consolidate several different German clubs in the city. They host the annual Oktoberfest and celebrate other German holidays, always with lots of food, beer, music, and good cheer. They have photos of what the Haus looked like post-hurricane, and the staggering amount of work that had to be done. You’d never know it now, everything is back and better than before, but the clock’s ticking; this weekend’s Volksfest was the last major event before they have to vacate the Haus.

Unfortunately, it was a rainy miserable sendoff and there weren’t nearly as many people as we’d expected. Sad to see the courtyard so empty:

On the other hand, instead of being overrun by casual visitors the Haus was filled with members and the people who love it most. There were many in traditional costume, and groups of friends met, clustered and danced all around the building.

To find out more about Deutches Haus visit their website here.
To see other buildings in Mid-City that are going to be lost (demolitions begun last week) go here.
To find out more about the fight to retrofit Charity, visit SaveCharityHospital

Ali came home with roomie Elizabeth for LSU’s Fall Holiday, which ran from Wednesday afternoon through the weekend. All of which would’ve been much more fun if they weren’t both totally sick- Ali with a sinus infection/cold, Elizabeth with allergies/cold and needing a little TLC.

Which, in this case, consisted of a combination of being taken out to eat, home cooked meals, and sleep. Upon their arrival, she used what little voice she had to croak out a pitiful plea for Craig and Kimmie’s food. While there she took out her prescription, and I just couldn’t stop laughing:

I mean, really. Even the freaking pill bottles are in the school colors? I’ll have to check with my cousin Carolyn- a foamingly rabid UGA alum who was not exactly thrilled at Alison’s school choice- to see if this sort of detailed brainwashing is SOP for these southern schools.

At any rate, several requests were made for food to be brought back to LSU- Charlie’s special chicken, a tray of fancy-schmancy mac n’ cheese and chocolate chip cookies.

The ‘homemade’ part was stressed. Repeatedly. So how do you resist that one? You don’t. In the midst of preparations I discovered that Pratchett loves cheese.

Loves? Adores. Worships. To get his greedy talons on some, he will actually ‘fly’ over from his cage (poor lad. It’s more like semi-controlled falling, but he didn’t seem to care if there was the potential for some cheesy goodness to ease his rough landing).

Unfortunately, I also discovered that I have my grandmother’s hoarding/feeding/stockpiling genes. Every time I visited her while I was in school she sent me home with food, which I appreciated, but also started to wonder if she thought the only grocery store in existence was the one in her neighborhood. In the end, the girls were packed up with loads of food- cold cuts, chips, Special K bars, boxes of tissues, juice, only slightly parrot-nibbled mac n’ cheese, etc, and sent off after one last meal out, at Cafe Atchafalaya.

I do despair of ever getting a normal photo of them together. Here they are, ‘sizzling’ in Atchafalaya’s huge frying pan.

Then they were off, with a stop at The House of Shock. I was a little worried about that one- two years running Alison went with friends who were got scared just by the freakshow outside that they were sobbing and quit before they even got inside the building.

For the uninitatied, here’s the House of Shock, named by the Travel Channel as the most extreme Haunted House in the US:

(If you don’t have the patience to sit through it, skip to the 3:58 mark and you’ll know everything you need to about why I was worried.)

Needless to say, Alison loves it and can’t wait to go every year, but Elizabeth is a sweet, semi-sheltered religious sort of girl. In fact, they were leaving a day early so she could go home to practice for a play her church is putting on- you can see why I just wasn’t sure how this would go over.

I have yet to hear just how it went, but hey,they’re still coming for Voodoo Fest later this month, so it couldn’t have scared her off too much, right?

I guess I’ve been off too, from the blog, at least. It’s been a crazy few weeks- Alison’s 18th birthday was just a few days before she had to be up at LSU. Shopping, organizing, shopping, doctors, and a little more shopping was (almost) all that got done for weeks.

But now it’s done, and so far, so good. She and her new roomie are getting along fantastically, and it all sounds cheerfully chaotic on the phone. I’m still trying to adjust to the idea that she’s officially a college student now- or technically, she will be tomorrow, her first day of class. I can only imagine what kind of culture shock it’s got to be- her entire graduating class at McGehee was 32. Her first class is in an auditorium, so won’t that be interesting…

The house has been all frenetic energy straight through from graduation- I don’t know what I’ll do with myself now that it’s dying down. No empty-nester depression, though- she’s just down the road, after all, and we’re talking about a kid who came out of the womb ready to get her own apartment and start implementing her plans for world domination, so I’ve had lots of time to prepare.

Besides, there’s another huge project taking up all kinds of time and energy right now, but I’m just too exhausted to get into it. Let’s just say that I’ve managed to get into my absolutely dorkiest project yet and couldn’t be happier. More to come on that one. For now, just a big congrats and well done to the kiddo.

Opened in 1907, the old Dixie Brewery in Mid-City is an amazing hunk of industrial ruin. After flooding in Katrina, Dixie relocated their corporate offices, and have allowed other companies to brew smaller batches of Dixie Beer under license.

The Brewery sits inside of the planned LSU/VA Hospital complex footprint and although LSU has admitted that the building has significant architectural and historical value, the building’s future is far from certain. LSU has said that they would like to rehab the building and maintain the building, but reading between the lines it’s easy to tell that the future of the building is going to depend on just how much of a PIA it is to LSU.

In the meantime, families in the hundreds of houses in the proposed hospital’s footprint are scrambling. The hospital- despite what LSU/VA wants people to think- is not a done deal, yet these residents who’ve poured their time, money and souls into rebuilding their neighborhoods are receiving what amounts to eviction letters. Ironically, LSU doesn’t actually have the money to build a new hospital- but they do have enough cash to buy up these properties and knock them down, leaving yet more empty land in the very center of the city (duh- this neighborhood is called Mid-City) to get overgrown with weeds and sit fallow.

Meanwhile, literally across the street from where they want to build brand shiny new buildings, sits Charity Hospital- LSU’s existing hospital, 1 million (!) square feet of shuttered bedspace that’s been deemed structurally sound and an excellent candidate for renovation. It would cost far less (in time, money, and architectural loss) to rehab Charity, but nope, they’re not interested. Sorry, got off on a tangent there. This was supposed to be strictly about Dixie, but now that Dixie’s future is tied with this proposed project, I just couldn’t help myself. More pictures of Dixie here. Pictures of Charity Hospital here. Videos of the Mid-City site here.