the FMIA’s blight report in October 2010, which reported 7 percent of commercial and residential properties in the neighborhood are blighted. Half of those properties lie within the St. Claude corridor. According to the report, owners of blighted property either ignore fines the city continues to impose against them or are low-income residents who don’t have the money or resources to improve their properties. Others, Campos says, not only ignore the fines but can’t be convinced to do otherwise. “I go to the national Main Street meetings — people from all over the country have the same problems,” says Campos, pointing to a graying building with a yellowed “For Rent” sign in its window next to a Shell gas station on St. Claude and Franklin. “She’s being fined $500 a day. You can’t make someone put their building into commerce if they don’t want to.” Despite offers from a number of small business owners, nonprofits and other prospective buyers, many owners aren’t interested in selling. “I have two or three people call a month wanting space on my part of St. Claude,” Campos says. “The roadblock is space. People are recommended to me, people contact me from the website or other places looking for space, but I have nothing, unfortunately. And it’s heartbreaking.” LIKE MANY NEIgHBORHOODS ACROSS the city, crime is a problem in the 5th District along St. Claude and its surrounding neighborhoods, particularly St. Roch, which has witnessed violent crime sprees and home invasions. In March, Christopher goodly replaced Capt. Bernadine Kelly as the 5th District police commander, inheriting both a weak public perception of NOPD within the district as well as rashes of violence and drug-related crime in neighborhoods crippled by blight. Campos says St. Claude isn’t necessarily excluded — there’s a memorial garden in Bywater at Press Street dedicated to Jessica Hawk, a young woman who was murdered during a home invasion five blocks from St. Claude in 2008. But the neighborhoods, she says, are seeing increased police response. “I don’t want to dismiss other people’s concerns,” Campos says. “I see the police cars, patrols, going by my house every hour. … I don’t want people to think it’s not safe to be here. I’m out here every weekend; there’s a lot of people out here, and it does my heart good to see people so happy.” New York transplant Otter opened St. Claude’s Backyard Ballroom theater in 2005 after she met New Orleans Fringe Festival director Kristen Evans. “It felt like a no-tomorrow kind of thing. Nothing to lose, what the hell, might as well, never know what’s around the corner kind of page 12
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determine the best use of the building, but nothing has been decided. Earlier this year, a film crew used the market’s storefront as a run-down Panamanian grocery and flea market, even though it was not close to opening let alone offering anything like a mercadito. “It is literally the centerpoint of St. Claude Main Street,” Campos says. “It’s the cultural center, the historic center. Everything about it is what brings people here. If you go down St. Roch, there is the cemetery. Tourists go down there every day. They drive past that market.” Another blighted grocery store, the former Robert Fresh Market at Elysian Fields and St. Claude, also continues to rot while residents nearby commute as far as MidCity or Chalmette to shop at a full-service grocery. “Nobody wants to come in and set up shop and have [Robert] reopen and draw away business,” Lorenzen says. Small neighborhood convenience stores, like Hank’s Seafood & Supermarket on St. Claude, sell the basics. Since November 2010, Sankofa Marketplace has operated a weekly farmers market on St. Claude in the Lower 9th Ward. Director Rashida Ferdinand says it’s not a replacement for traditional groceries but presents a new way for the community to find sustainable food solutions in the interim. “The market is an experience,” she says. “It’s a part of knowing where your food comes from. It’s a community event where people come together.” The market began as a monthly event, but neighborhood demand for more fresh produce prompted Ferdinand to expand. She says Sankofa soon will partner with St. Claude’s KIPP middle and high schools (the former Frederick Douglass) to have students work with the market and neighborhood farms in the Lower 9th Ward. Lorenzen says a couple of properties in Bywater have been identified as potential food stores, and national healthy foods advocates have descended on the neighborhood to find solutions, but “nothing has happened with that,” he says. Attracting a grocer to St. Claude is one of the challenges BNA is addressing in 2011; blight is another. The same goes for the rest of St. Claude. Kirsha Kaechele’s former KK Projects, St. Roch’s cluster of homes-turned-art projects in 2007-2009, now are slated for demolition because of neglect and have returned to their pre-Katrina blighted state. In December 2010, eight people — some identified as artists, travelers and musicians — were killed in a fire inside a St. Roch warehouse that should have been empty. Alexandre Vialou, who chairs the Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association’s (FMIA) blight committee, issued
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