NCB

It looks like the Texans may be making that trip instead, following damange to Reliant Stadium in Houston following Ike. Link

Glad to see most everyone here at UP made it through Gustav without any problems! I'm just now getting a solid internet connection in New Orleans.

As always, thanks for the updates, Slidell. Seems like most of the models are now pointing towards a Louisiana landfall somewhere between Morgan City and Lake Charles, but it's still too early to be sure about anything. No matter what, it looks like a whole lot of folks in south Louisiana will be affected by Gustav. Best of luck to everyone!

Scanning through New Orleans on Google Street View, I found a few of the major residential construction sites in the city. Here are some photos for those who haven't been able to catch up on some of the residential projects around the city. I haven't checked up on many of these projects in recent months, so I can't tell you how old these pictures are. Some neighborhoods in the city look like they were captured on Google Street View very recently, while others look like they were captured many months ago. But for those of you (like myself) who enjoy seeing great projects actually under construction in New Orleans, these should be better than nothing. All of these images are courtesy of Google: 930 Poydras I believe this is the site of 927 Poeyfarre. If not, there's another large project under construction in the Warehouse District that I don't know about. The site of Tracage, cleared and ready to go. The building is currently held up in a lawsuit. Work continues on apartments and townhouses between Annunciation and Tchoupitoulas Uptown 2600 Saint Charles apartments from early 2008 The Crescent Club on Tulane Ave. before construction was underway The Preserve on Tulane Ave Musicians' Village in the Upper 9, one of the city's greatest post-Katrina success stories Those are the projects I could come up with off the top of my head. I didn't post the Meridian site in Mid-City because it's still shown as an overgrown vacant lot on Street View.

Two local Macy's stores to open in October Macy's will mark its return to the metro area with grand opening ceremonies at two stores on Oct. 25. A renovated Macy's at The Esplanade in Kenner and a newly constructed Macy's at Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie will be opened that day, marking the return of Macy's to the New Orleans area for the first time since Hurricane Katrina. Times-Picayune

Just like that, T.D. #5 has already strengthened to Tropical Storm Edouard. Thankfully, it doesn't look like the storm will strengthen much before it makes landfall. Tropical Storm alerts stretch from New Orleans to Corpus Christi, TX:

Here is how New Orleans compares to a some other cities when it comes to downtown occupany rates: New Orleans- 90.2% New York City- 94.2% Houston- 88.1% Dallas- 78.2% Austin- 85.3% San Antonio- 86.1% Detroit- 79.3% San Jose- 87.0% So with a very healthy downtown and metro-wide office market, do you guys think we'll be seeing any new office towers anytime soon? The new national trend seems to be mixed-use office/residential/retail towers, something I'd love to see in the CBD. I also wouldn't be suprised so see a new mid-sized office tower (something like The Galleria) pop up in Metairie in the near future.

Some great news for the office market in the CBD, along with the office markets on the Westbank and in Metairie. Healthy N.O.-area office market bucks national trend New Orleans CityBusiness article

Hello from Atlanta!

Good to see 930 Poydras getting more local attention. Hopefully an official rendering will pop up soon as well!

Here is a rendering of the City Park Great Lawn, and the layout for the entire project:

From what I remember reading earlier in the year, the BioInnovation Center was supposed to break ground sometime in late summer/3rd quarter 2008, so that may well be what you're seeing. That would be great!

Zephyr Field in the CBD would have been great, but I don't know where they would have been able to put it. That vacant lot on Tchoupitoulas behind the convention center would have been a great location, but there would have been major parking issues in the area. The stadium parking lot on Airline takes up more space than the stadium itself. Wrigleyville in Chicago is great, and something around the Dome with an atmosphere even remotely close to Wrigleyville would be a huge improvement. We need something that can draw people during the summer, but can improve Saints and Hornets gamedays for all ages.

Thanks for adding Lake Charles to the thread, Richy! It's been quite some time since I've been through that area. Here are two more New Orleans skyline shots. The first is courtesy of "woob" of the Shreveport and Birmingham forums here at UP. He is known as CK'sPhoto on Flickr. This was taken from the I-10 highrise over the Industrial Canal: The second is a shot of the NOLA CBD from over the CBD with what I believe is the newest USS New Orleans in the foreground:

Here's a great photo of the I-10 bridge over the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. This one popped up on my Flickr page and is courtesy of lolowar.

Excellent ideas, tennis! I completely agree that the area desperately needs more greenery, especially after seeing how much better the opposite end of Poydras looks with more greenery. I'd also love to see Loyola Ave. revamped and brightened up a bit. If that happened, it would be much easier to build a streetcar line on Loyola that would run from Canal to Poydras, only a block down from the Superdome. Sports themed restaurants would work very well in that area, in addition to normal restaurants and bars that could draw people to that area when nothing sports related is happening. The emergence of the Hornets in New Orleans is also a huge positive for that part of the CBD. Instead of just having the Saints as your main draw between September-December, you'll have the Saints and Hornets drawing fans between September-May, through the both the NFL and NBA seasons.

Here is some great news for the CBD. State OKs $45M purchase of Dominion Tower, N.O. Centre New Orleans CityBusiness The future of the New Orleans Centre, Dominion Tower, and that entire portion of the CBD has been discussed numerous times on the forum, and finally it looks like we're seeing a positive development for that area. The Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District is in charge of the project, and officials from that organization want to turn the New Orleans Centre into a sports entertainment area. Additionally, a report on FOX 8 news last night mentioned that the Dominion Tower will house state offices and workers. The full plan for the area will be announced sometime next week. So now that the redevlopment of the CBD around the Dome and the Arena is a real possibility, what would you guys like to see? ESPN Zone has been mentioned many times, along with new places to tailgate before and after Saints and Hornets games. How about Stores? Bars? Sports-themed entertainment for all ages?

New buses ready to roll in New Orleans Times-Picayune article

Well they annonuced the project at the beginning of the year, but I believe they set the actual start date as summer '08. It did seem like it took a long while to get this project actually rolling, though.

This is the rendering of 930 Poydras that was posted back on page 65: Although the rendering does come from Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, the architecture firm that's designing the buidling, it doesn't seem to match the first building plan shown a few posts above. That plan shows a wide 8-9 story base with an additional 13 stories rising above in a narrow tower. The rendering shown above simply shows one large boxy tower. Eskew+Dumez+Ripple does have a very impressive portfolio of projects, so that's a positive regarding the design of the tower. Link I haven't seen an official height number, but Tracage is supposed to be 288 feet tall with 24 stories. 930 Poydras looks like it will be about 22 stories with the roof addition, so it may be in that height range; possibly shorter depending on the parking garage portion of the tower.

Here you go, nola: City launches $42.8M road-repair program New Orleans CityBusiness

It looks like Bertha will swing to the East of Bermuda, but the island will probably still have a high chance of getting hit by Tropical Storm or higher winds. The storm is 2-3 days away and there's already a nearly 30% chance of that happening according to the NHC.

Thanks to the guys over at HornetsReport, we have our first rendering of 930 Poydras, along with two site plans. The rendering is more of a large scale site plan, but it's better than nothing. Here is the link with the rendering and the plans. Scroll down past the satellite photo of the CBD with the Superdome's roof still ripped off. That's pretty sad considering the Dome has had a new roof for nearly two years now. Anyway, here is the rendering: The site plans: And some of the key information found on the website: 930 Poydras Street- opening July 2009 250 unit apartment building 8,000 square feet of ground floor retail space 8,000 square feet of 2nd floor retail space

New Orleans wins the title of "America's Most Sparkling City" Times-Picayune article

I'm really liking the new logo as well, Richy. I don't know if we have any professional wrestling fans on the board, but WWE Monday Night RAW will be live in the New Orleans Arena tommorow night. It will be broadcast on the USA network from 8-10 p.m.