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Commentary: Restaurant deserves city help instead of ridiculous

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jan 22, 2007 by Terry O'Connor

Doing business in New Orleans has never been easy. Who you know and where you spread the dough has long been key.

Historically, it is more important that your operation matches with the mindset of Crescent City cognoscente. If the insiders to the corridors of power don't want you in, you're out.

This mindset has to change. We can no longer afford it.

Developers and contractors have complained regularly to CityBusiness, particularly post-Katrina, about the costly delays caused by mindless red tape. Some have killed projects because they simply got lost in the bureaucrat jungle.

Others, however, fight back.

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Take the ridiculous case of New Orleans restaurateur Greg Sonnier and his wife, Mary Sonnier. They spent $700,000 buying the old Uptowner reception hall in hopes of relocating their famed Gabrielle restaurant, which flooded post-Katrina despite its perch on Esplanade Ridge.

The Sonniers have a license to operate their planned new business but some Uptown neighbors, led by former Councilman Eddie Sapir, decided it might bring riff-raff, traffic, excessive noise and other assorted ills they associate with fine dining.

Let's set aside for the moment the fact the New Orleans Zoning Department issued a license for Sonnier to operate a restaurant - then crawfished after pressure was applied by City Hall insiders.

Greg and Mary Sonnier are fine, upstanding New Orleanians. It's foolish in this post-apocalypse time for the city not to be doing everything in its power to accommodate a new business rather than setting up power-play roadblocks to success. The Sonniers have a city-issued document that purports to be a license to operate a restaurant. That should be enough.

Sonnier can be counted upon to operate a business in a responsible fashion. He's a proven commodity. He deserves to win this zoning dispute. That doesn't mean he will.

Back to square one

CEO Dina Finta, 42, of New Orleans is another case of lost city logic. But her company has the ability to sort it all out.

She bought Momentum, now a Baton Rouge-based business skills and technology company, six years ago after joining it in 1992. She had a 15-employee New Orleans office before Hurricane Katrina drove her to San Antonio to survive.

"The biggest way it affected us is I lost most of my staff after the storm," Finta said.

Her staff numbers one now.

"Most have gone to other states or there's a million different reasons why they are not here," Finta said.

Ease of doing business is in that number of reasons.

Yet the city's economic development organizations and the city administration are unable to reach out to these companies despite the importance of doing so.

Momentum's primary goal is to help transfer knowledge. Finta's latest information technology solution helps share reports and gather data much more easily. She claims it's better than e-mail.

Yet the Momentum office at 1555 Poydras St. is locked and empty most days because demand is not there yet. With the degree of difficulty in doing business in New Orleans at an all-time high, Finta's application could help iron out communication snafus such as those plaguing the Sonniers.

Last word

It's a start. After averaging 7.5 closings in The Road Home program over the first 15 weeks, 59 homeowners agreed to be paid last week. It was the most closings in one week by far.

Now the weekly closing average is up to a paltry 11 homeowners but it is progress.

The total amount paid out also nearly doubled from about $5 million to about $9.5 million.

"As you know, the overwhelming majority of us in this program are Louisiana residents," said Road Home spokeswoman Carol Hector- Harris. "Most were affected by one of the hurricanes and many are themselves applicants in the program. There is no reason under the sun why we would not do everything possible to deliver a fair and equitable program."

She continued to plead for understanding.

"It really does take time to set up a Fortune 500-type company and help 100,000 folks access recovery funds while abiding by federal regulations and preventing fraud in just five months," she said. "I know that when we say that people want to shrug it off as an excuse but all of this really is the truth."

Commentary: Restaurant deserves city help instead of ridiculous

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jan 22, 2007 by Terry O'Connor

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