This week’s Bayou Phoenix presentation, outlining new plans to revive the long-dormant former Six Flags site, was spectacular. But members of the project team who spoke to hundreds at the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans East chose their words carefully.
The vision includes two hotels; a sports complex with indoor basketball and volleyball courts and outdoor ballfields as well as training facilities; an 18-acre lake; a retail and shopping “town center”; a movie production studio and a world-class water park. Hotel rooms would include park access. The town center would offer restaurant and shopping options without park admission. It could cost as much as $900 million.
The reality is that the site has been the focus of big dreams before, only to dissipate.
Still, this proposal has moved beyond any of the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery failures in The East, a large area of New Orleans in need of significant investment.
Bayou Phoenix representatives have signed a development agreement with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. A lease agreement is expected to be signed after the developers provide NORA with a master plan and an economic impact analysis — both shared at the meeting — along with community feedback collected at the meeting.
A big piece of the project includes dealing with swampland that requires mitigation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. A drainage and pump station must be repaired. Water and power services have to be turned on.
Then there’s the matter of securing financing and signing tenants, which developers say will happen in the next year.
We are glad to see the project get this far. And we encourage patience as it moves toward what we hope will be a grand new beginning for a site that’s needed one for far too long.
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