Broadmoor (NOLA neighborhood) plan gets ($5M) boost

[KamaAina]

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1159423622324810.xml&coll=1

A consortium of philanthropists President Clinton convened in Manhattan last week to tackle some of the globe's most daunting problems took on a somewhat smaller project as well: pledging at least $5 million to Broadmoor, the once-flooded neighborhood at the bottom of New Orleans' bowl that is far ahead of many of its neighbors in planning its resurrection....

And Ahlers and others are seeking more philanthropy. Among Broadmoor's friends is Walter Isaacson, the head of the Aspen Institute and former head of CNN, who grew up in Broadmoor at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and South Galvez Street....

Broadmoor is one of the city's lowest neighborhoods in terms of elevation, a triangle of about 2,000 homes bounded approximately by South Claiborne, Toledano and Nashville avenues that before Hurricane Katrina closely mirrored the city as a whole....

Katrina flooded the area with as much as 9 feet of water. An early city planning process suggesting that part of the area revert to open land to help drainage electrified a diverse group of homeowners who reached out to each other, determined to save their community. They turned their once sleepy Broadmoor Improvement Association into a grass-roots planning powerhouse.

Among those who have turned the BIA into a "grass-roots planning powerhouse" is our very own funkybutt, who proudly claims to have been the first on her block to get back in her actual house (as opposed to a FEMAnsion)! :bounce: Another DU connection: Years ago, a young man came to New Orleans and shacked up for his first few weeks there with a wild-eyed lady who had picked him up in a prominent French Quarter bar. She lived in what had apparently once been a rec room in a house on Louisiana Ave. Pkwy. in Broadmoor. Many years and several change of address forms later, that man ended up logging on to DU -- from Hawai'i, under the name KamaAina. So now you know: I, too, am a Broadmoorian (-ite?), though I do wish they had employed the talents of Yalies (like me) instead of the Hahvahd crowd. :P

As the article mentions, the demographics of Broadmoor track those of the city as a whole quite closely, in terms of racial makeup, home ownership, transit usage, and so forth. It is thus no exaggeration to say "As goes Broadmoor, so goes New Orleans." This bears watching closely, and not just because (at least) two DUers have ties to the neighborhood. :-)