New Orleans recovery chief weighs future

23 October 2008
By Becky Bohrer

NEW ORLEANS — The man leading the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina is debating whether to stay, as criticism grows over the pace of rebuilding.

Ed Blakely, the urban planner hired by Mayor Ray Nagin less than two years ago, said his continued employment is “a matter of kind of political judgment.

These things are day-to-day for me.”

Blakely’s weighing his options at a time when hundreds of infrastructure projects are wrapped up or under way.

But much of the recovery, particularly projects that would affect neighborhood-level rebuilding — streetscapes, encouraging “green grocers,” parks and money to buy derelict homes or businesses — is still on the drawing board, with hundreds of millions of dollars lined up.

Big-ticket redevelopment projects, some requiring private money or largely out of city hands, are still perhaps years from reality, if they ever happen.

City Council members have in recent weeks stepped up their criticism of Blakely and demanded accountability for what they see as a lack of progress in rebuilding neighborhoods hit by Katrina in August 2005. Blakely began work in January 2007.

His continued consulting work, which recently took him to Dubai, also has drawn fire.

“No matter who it is — him or the next person or whoever the next person is — has to commit to being 24-7, in my opinion, and have nothing else to do,” City Council President Jackie Clarkson said Thursday.

“We’re on the brink of making it or breaking it, and now is the time to lead or get out of the way.”

Blakely didn’t give a timeline for leaving, saying he intended to speak with Nagin in the coming months to reach a mutual decision.

Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, who represents hard-hit areas such as Gentilly and has called for a more “equitable distribution” of recovery money, said Blakely told her Thursday “he’s not going anywhere.”

“He said that he’s always evaluating and that he has no plans to leave right now,” said Hedge-Morrell, who as the council budget committee chair has threatened to use the budget process to hold Blakely’s office more accountable for recovery spending and progress.

A spokeswoman for the mayor did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment on Blakely’s future.

In April 2007, Blakely told an audience in Australia, where his wife lives and he still holds a position at the University of Sydney, that he intended to leave New Orleans this year.

In an interview Thursday with The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, Blakely said his work in New Orleans had been tough on his family.

In the midst of the criticism, Blakely has voiced his own frustration, saying there are too many meetings that pull staffers away from their recovery work.

“I’m trying, that’s all I can say,” said the 70-year-old Blakely, who earns about $150,000 a year.

“I don’t build the buildings; I just try to get the money and to the extent we can, we’re going as fast as we can.”

Blakely’s at-times brash, brusque style and bold pronouncements made headlines and helped raise expectations for the city’s full recovery.

In an interview last year, he said he’d eventually like to see the Lower 9th Ward reborn as an Afro-Cuban version of the French Quarter, with music and art, architecturally diverse homes and restaurants.

That neighborhood today is largely deserted, with pockets of development spurred by individual homeowners and third world slum housing built with actor Brad Pitt’s backing.

Small victories for Blakely — neighborhood fresh markets and bike paths, for example — have been largely overlooked by residents wanting more, faster.