Fearing competition from other cities for large-scale events, Ernest N. Morial Convention Center leaders are now building a new $570 million “headquarters hotel” on the site of the historic warehouse district. I am appealing to the residents of New Orleans.
Neighbors’ initial reactions to convention center CEO Michael Sawaya’s proposal suggest he’s up for a fight.
“I was very upset about his presentation,” said Jonathan, a board member of Bakery Condominiums on South Peters Street, a block away from the proposed hotel, who attended last month’s meeting where Mr. Sawaya explained his plans. Hill said. “He wants to destroy the history and culture of our neighborhood.”
Hill was one of about 50 warehouse district homeowners who gathered for a public meeting at the Common House, a private club on the site of what is now the Louisiana Children’s Museum.
Many people were dissatisfied with what they heard about this hotel. The hotel will likely be about 300 feet tall and will replace the event space at The Sugar Mill, a converted 19th-century sugar storage facility at the corner of John Churchill Chase Street and South Peters Street. .
The Festival Park section of the 1984 World’s Fair is located on land currently occupied by the Mississippi River Heritage Park in New Orleans’ warehouse district, photographed on March 29, 2019. (Photo by Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune). Hotel plans for the Omni Convention Center will incorporate the park in ways not yet indicated by the developer.
They were asking questions about the proposed building height, the fate of the adjacent park and plans to ease additional traffic in the area.
David Federico, 70, chairman of the Fiber Mills Construction Condominium Board, has collected signatures from 60 of the 250 Fiber Mills residents opposing the project, as well as signatures from nearby Bakery Condominiums. He said he is starting to collect.
“It’s going to be a nightmare,” Federico said. “I’m not against the convention center getting more business…but we have to consider the people who live here and pay taxes.”
The hotel is important to Sawaya, who has fought local critics for years by pushing for the creation of the River District, now slated for construction on barren acres upriver adjacent to the convention center he oversees. It will be a great investment.
He argues that New Orleans lags behind other cities that compete for convention business, such as Nashville, Atlanta and Orlando, all of which have “headquarters” attached to convention centers. ” We are building a hotel.
Mr. Sawaya has been making that point ever since he took over the New Orleans facility 10 years ago. These days, bookers for large conventions typically require large blocks of rooms and prefer hotels attached to event spaces to foster a sense of community.
Sawaya said he would lose business without the convention center, which is a big boost for the city’s hospitality sector.
Michael Sawaya at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center photographed on May 4, 2021 in New Orleans.
“New markets are introduced, more events are held, more jobs are brought in, new demand is created for other hotel rooms in the market, and spending at local restaurants and other businesses is increased. It will increase,” Sawaya said at a board meeting advocating for the construction of a new hotel.
In Nashville, Omni Hotels and Resorts Group built a 21-story, 800-room convention center hotel more than a decade ago. Sawaya said he currently has a preliminary agreement with Omni to build a 1,000-room hotel on the Sugar Mill site.
The project will be primarily funded by Omni, with the state-run convention center investing $70 million in the project. The company has already agreed to pay $20 million to acquire the Sugar Mill property from John J. Cummings III and his partners.
A previous deal with Omni to build a 1,200-room hotel on an eight-acre site at the convention center’s upper end fell apart in 2020 after a major financial backer pulled out amid an uncertain outlook due to the pandemic. .
Mike Smith, Omni’s executive vice president of real estate, told the convention center board in May that land development in the surrounding river district on the edge of the convention center remains too uncertain and the hotel group is underperforming in upstream locations. He said it had gotten worse.
Smith said Omni wants to build near the French Quarter.
But residents of the Warehouse District are more interested in the impact a new high-rise hotel will have on their neighborhood than the commercial rationale.
“When residents started asking questions about zoning restrictions (the current height limit is about five stories) and the demolition of the historic sugar mill, Sawaya said, ‘That doesn’t concern us. , it’s up to us.”’ said Mary Arno, a writer who lives in the Federal Fiber Mills condominium building across the street from the proposed hotel.
Sawaya said at the meeting that the hotel would likely be about 25 stories, or about 300 feet tall. Currently, city zoning regulations have a height limit of 125 feet in that portion of the warehouse district.
“There were more questions than answers,” said Marynell Nolan Wheatley, director of policy research at the Conservation Resource Center. The center is concerned with historic preservation and has an office near the proposed site.
Residents also expressed concern about the fate of the Mississippi River Heritage Park, which was included in the hotel plans in slides presented at the meeting.
The park is adjacent to a sugar mill and is currently owned by the city. But this year, a new state law proposed by freshman state Rep. Alonzo Knox would redraw the convention center’s economic development district boundaries to incorporate both the park and Sugar Mill.
The impact of the change in state law is unclear. The state agency technically does not need approval from the Historic Districts and Buildings Commission or the City Council for variances from the city planning law, according to two city planning officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. That’s what it means. However, this is a legal gray area that is open to debate.
early in the process
Sawaya said this week that it was too early to discuss details of the project.
“We tried to make it clear to the meeting participants that nothing has been decided beyond the purchase of the sugar mill’s assets,” he said in an email.
“Many of the conference attendees in attendance wanted to know about the height of the hotel, plans for Heritage Park, and ultimately where future hotel employees will park,” he said. “Ongoing discussions with the city include ideas to improve, maintain and program the park for the betterment of all residents and future hotel guests.”
He is also in talks with the city to build more parking to accommodate additional employees, visitors with construction of the River District, and increased numbers of cruise ship passengers boarding nearby. He said there was.
At an Oktoberfest block party on Tuesday, residents of other nearby apartment complexes, including The Cotton Mill on Pouifale Street and One River Place, spoke to Leslie Harris, the city councilor whose district includes the proposed hotel. expressed concern.
Harris argued that a design for the project does not yet exist and would require various levels of city approval.
“I encouraged the convention center to meet regularly with surrounding stakeholders to provide input and allow neighbors to provide feedback on the project,” she said in an email. .
Monica Ferraro, an attorney who lives in Fiber Mills and is vice chair of the building’s condominium board, said that, like in the case of the old Dixie Machine, the project was forced through over the objections of the Historic District Building Commission. He said he was worried that he might be exposed. The work was built on Annunciation Street last year.
“After Katrina, we worked really hard with the City Council and the Planning Commission to keep the warehouse district where it is,” she said. “There’s already a lot of disruption with the existing hotels around us, plus the cruise ship traffic, and let’s be honest, no one comes to New Orleans to stay in a hotel. They come to walk around the historic district.”
