Last fall, New Orleans voted to give a rebuilding master plan the rule of law. Though contentious, the charter amendment ultimately passed because voters were convinced it was important to take zoning and planning decisions out of the hands of politicians who have tended to be too easily swayed by special interests or their own inherent parochialism. By passing this ordinance and empowering the planning firm Goody Clancy to imagine a comprehensive master plan, New Orleanians were waving goodbye to one of the more flawed processes of the past and saying hello to a better model based on transparency and professional practice. William Borah, President of Smart Growth Louisiana said it best then, by describing the prospect of it's passage as an end of "planning by surprise."

So why do proponents of the $2 billion hospital complex plan seem to think that they can operate under their own set of rules?

Recently, Goody Clancy completed a preliminary draft of this comprehensive zoning ordinance and master plan. New Orleanians have the opportunity to modify this draft by participating in a series of public meetings that are occurring throughout the month of April. We have a few of the meetings pertinent to Charity Hospital and Lower Mid-City in our calendar and the rest are listed at nolamasterplan.org, along with many more details about the plan. Goody Clancy was asked to create a plan that would chart a sustainable course for how and where New Orleans grows over the next few decades. According to nolamasterplan.org:

This Master Plan will build on, integrate, and go beyond all the post-Katrina recovery and rebuilding plans that citizens have worked so hard on since the storm. The Master Plan will create a 20-year policy and strategic framework to guide decisionmakers (sic) and the community to make New Orleans a model of 21st century city life while honoring and preserving its unique identity.

Given the massive impact that the proposed $2 billion LSU/VA medical complex will have on the future of the city, from neighborhood life to the economy, one would think that some evaluation of different site selection proposals for the hospitals would be significant part of what Goody Clancy was doing in creating a comprehensive master plan. But in fact, the hospitals and medical district were specifically excluded from the master plan scope of work. Goody Clancy even issued a draft report to encourage governmental agencies behind the $2 billion medical complex deal to reconsider their position:

As one alternative, the firm proposed that LSU could rehab Charity for its own use and allow the VA to build on the site now proposed for LSU's new hospital -- thereby eliminating the fallow land in the middle.

Interestingly enough, this is pretty much the same as the proposal put forth by RMJM and subsequently embraced by a diverse group of community partners looking to find compromise. So if Goody Clancy is plenty good enough to do the entire city’s master plan but isn’t quite good enough to integrate the hospital proposals into that master plan, proponents of the LSU/VA complex must have something really impressive in mind, right?

That would be what is being called the Greater New Orleans Bioscience Economic Development District, or GNOBEDD. Essentially, GNOBEDD is the geographic district created by another partnership called New Orleans Regional Biosciences Initiative (NORBI), a regional venture involving the Downtown Development District, the Regional Planning Commission, and various other public and private entities.

From what one can gather via online search engine, the idea is to attract businesses associated with the health care industry and modify the surrounding neighborhoods to accommodate workers. It’s not apparent, however, what role ordinary citizens played in partnering with GNOBEDD or if they’ve even been informed of its existence, not to mention it’s scope.

GNOBEDD is bounded by Loyola Ave., Earhart Blvd., Iberville St., and Carrollton Ave., but is best understood by looking at a map.

This one is a scanned image obtained from a recent meeting of the Downtown Development District:

And this one is the same thing displayed using Google Maps.

View GNOBEDD in a larger map