It is a more complex than that. Perhaps if you were travelling Carrollton Ave yesterday and were caught in the underpass due to flooding you may understand our concerns for infrastructure repairs to be included in this plan. If you need to take the bus and wait in that area perhaps you would understand, or if you were a student at Xavier and attempting to cross the street you may get a better idea of what the concerns are.

If a Neighborhood is powerless to be included in the redevelopment of the Neighborhood then why did we bother attending multiple meetings for planning?

The issues of crime, blight and drugs we address as an organization as best we can.

Here’s a project that’s going to benefit people all over the city by providing a nice, convenient place to buy well-known products without driving all the way to Jefferson Parish. It will be a good source of sales tax, which will put more money into the city, which could be used for more police officers, better roads, etc. But, because the parking lots will be in front of the stores, you want to scrap the whole project. Way to go.

You would think that maybe drugs, crime, and blighted property, to name a few, would affect the “quality of life” more than NEW DEVELOPMENT! Most people would think that new development would actually be a GOOD thing! But, if you really don’t want it there, I’m sure you could buy the property from the developers and put whatever you want in its place.

The developer is saying that the way the process goes is to secure tenants first.

Then, once he’s promised tenants the parameters of their retail spaces and negotiated the terms of the leases - which the developer claims it NEEDS to do to know if the rehab money will be there - then, and only then do the neighbors get “input.”

“[D]ecisions about ‘infrastructure, access and traffic patterns’ would come later.”

So, when the neighbors agree - and it is likely they will - to require the development to reconstitute a street wall, to limit parking to the rear of the buildings, to provide neighborhood traffic outlets to the shopping centers, and perhaps even to restrict building acreage to avoid the negative environmental impact of big box developments by requiring multiple stories . . . then the developer goes back to the tenants and expects THEM to conform to the neighborhood requirements at the same price?

No, that’s not how it works for developments.

Developers make their own plans, contribute to the necessary campaigns and then hammer the plan down the throats of the people or convince a few traitors to work the rubber stamp.

“Neighborhood input” is something they work around not something they work to include.

Neighbors of Carrollton should oppose ALL development and only furnish compromises to those willing to actually meet all of the quality of life REQUIREMENTS that the neighborhood deserves.