New Orleans City Council shops St. Claude food corridor to state

New Orleans CityBusiness, Jun 23, 2008 by Ariella Cohen

If all goes well on St. Claude Avenue, a piece of arts-friendly legislation intended to swell New Orleans' coolness rating could also enlarge the city's communal belly.

"You can't live on art alone," said Robyn Blanpied, manager of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's St. Claude Main Street program and mastermind behind a plan to lure culinary businesses to the corridor using new tax incentives. Her vision of a "cultural products district" would turn the ailing commercial center into the city's premier place to eat and purchase food.

Blanpied's idea moved one step closer to reality Thursday when the City Council recommended the state designate the area from North Claiborne Avenue to the Mississippi River between Elysian Fields Avenue and Poland Avenue as one of 13 proposed districts where original artwork could be sold sales tax-exempt and property owners would be eligible for tax credits for rehabilitating historic buildings.

The recommendations will go to the state's Office of Cultural Development, which is expected to determine by Oct. 1 which districts meet its criteria for tax breaks.

Broadly conceived as a way to stimulate local economies by bringing new investment tied to the area's existing culture, the cultural products legislation has made headlines as a way to support artists in the city and attract the deep-pocketed tourists who can afford their artwork.

The plan for St. Claude Avenue takes that pie-in-the-sky vision and inserts real honest-to-goodness pie -- a lure for even the most unrefined city resident or visitor.

"Imagine a cheese maker down the street from someone selling fresh seafood down the street from the food co-op, the Sysco warehouse and the bakery where you know all the city's top restaurants buy their desserts," Blandpied said.

She plans to begin marketing the corridor's old waterfront warehouses and storefronts to food supply companies later this year after the state certifies the incentive district.

Companies, Blanpied said, could use the 25 percent income tax credit given for historic rehabs to fix old warehouses on the riverfront railhead and create a fuel-efficient alternative to suburban locations that depend on trucks.

Planning phases include two centerpieces of the St. Claude Corridor cultural district, the revitalized St. Roch Seafood Market and the New Orleans Healing Center. The healing center, a $13 million "holistic health center" being built by developer Pres Kabacoff, will occupy the former Universal Furniture building at the corner of St. Claude and St. Roch avenues where Blanpied now works. It will include the city's first grocery cooperative.

The city's endorsement of the proposed cultural district marks a turning point for the Upper 9th Ward, yet even boosters say the economically depressed section of the city needs more than organic proteins to get going again.

"Not by itself, this won't work," said Dana Ennes, executive director of Stay Local!, a nonprofit that supports the creation of cultural districts in the city. "We've been given historic tax credits before. Now we know we need (the incentives) in conjunction with code enforcement and functioning security and things that address quality of life interest."

Even so, it is clear progress has started in the area. This week, a local entrepreneur, Brian Nelson, will open the proposed corridor's first breakfast-all-day diner. The 2529 Dauphine St. diner, Nighthawks, will feature the barbeque chicken legs made famous by Nelson's now out-of-service food truck, Food-to-Geaux.

Nelson cheered the city's recommendation.

"I say this area is the art and soul of New Orleans," Nelson said. "This is the place that the people who make all the other parts of New Orleans happen call home. And when they get here, they are hungry."