One of my acquaintances, Dudus Maximus, posted an interesting entry in his blog.  He pointed out an interesting location on I-10 on New Orleans’ east side.  There is a series of three incomplete interchanges.  The first interchange you see is overrun by fallen trees and vegetations.  The next interchange to the east only provides access to a nature preserve and a trail running along Lake Ponchartrain.  The western interchange is for Michoud Blvd, which runs south from I-10.  Looking at these areas, it’s all marshy.  You cannot build anything on this terrain.  I don’t know why they built all these interchanges that don’t really go anywhere.  I initially thought the interchange covered by trees was the result of Hurricane Katrina, but I pulled up some USGS aerial photos from 1998 that show the interchange inoperable back then too.  Was it ever operating?  What caused it to become inaccessible?

Anyway, I followed Michoud Blvd and saw a ruined apartment complex.  A cell tower south of the apartments has a diesel generator there to power the cell tower.  I assume Google’s imagery is from the period within a year of Katrina’s landfall.  Lots of blue tarps on the roofs of nearby houses.

I then arrived at the intersection of I-10 and Louisiana 47.  At this interchange is the Six Flags amusement park.  It suffered damage, but more interesting was the assembly of FEMA trailers in the parking lot of the amusement park.  On a road leading into Six Flags you can see trucks pulling more trailers into the parking lot.  This was the first time I had bothered to look at the aerial photography of New Orleans after Katrina.  I was surprised by the amount of devastation.  Sure, I saw all the coverage from the helicopters on TV, but aerial photos have more impact for me.  I spend all day looking at aerial photographs for work, so I have a greater appreciation of things when viewed for above.  Usually people get all confused or disoriented when looking at aerial photography, but for me it’s a more natural view of things.  I must have been a bird in a previous life.

I continued southwest on I-10 and found the Lake Forest Plaza mall (aerial photo).  Totally desolated, without a car in its parking lots.  You look at it and say “What the hell?” because it just looks wrong.  The property looked kind of dirty but the roof was intact for the most part.  I saw that Deadmalls.com had some accounts of the mall’s history.  Turned out the mall had been going downhill for a while, due to economic downturns and an unsavory element moving into all of the apartment complexes on the city’s east side.  There’s good stuff on Deadmalls.com; I wrote a great post about a dead mall a few months ago.

A webpage shows how high the water got at the Lake Forest Plaza.  Apparently the flood water will be what killed this mall.  On the upside, the mall will be demolished to make way for a Lowe’s and what sounds like a lifestyle center.

I am not a fan of large indoor malls.  When they fail, they leave a huge blighted spot on a city’s landscape.  It’s difficult to fix the mall piecemeal or tear the whole thing down.  There’s a lot of mass and material to the building, making it difficult and expensive to get rid of.  I don’t enjoy shopping at malls either because of the higher prices and crowds, but that’s besides the point.

I think big regional malls are done.  The existing regional malls may survive, but I don’t think anyone will build a large indoor regional mall during my lifetime.  The “in thing” recently have been lifestyle and power centers.  More upscale outdoor malls with several big box retailers as anchors and smaller retailers in between.  More convenience thanks to parking directly in front of stores.  Also, should the lifestyle center fail, I think it would be easier to demolish.  A linear building that’s one story with minimal interior walls I bet is cheaper to break down than a multi-story irregularly-shaped building with hundreds of interior walls and hallways.  The easier demolition will make for easier renewal of the area.

However, that’s not to say that an area will be problem free if a big box like Wal-Mart goes out of business.  It takes a while for such large stores to become leased, if they ever do get leased.  I’ve seen some big box stores have to be split, presumably so the cost is more palatable to a renter.  East Dundee in my area is faced with losing their Wal-Mart within a year.  My two cents – that Wal-Mart was always dirty and nasty, good riddance.  That Wal-Mart will be “moving” to the Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee, taking its sales tax with it.  The Spring Hill Mall has been staying afloat, doing some remodeling from what I have heard in order to compete with Algonquin Commons, a lifestyle center several miles to its west on the Randall Road retail corridor.  I’ve been reading that the relatively young (<20 yrs old) Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles is of concern now because of people traveling to the Geneva Commons lifestyle center to its west, again along Randall Road.  St. Charles experienced the closure of a mall that sat abandoned for a while before it was demolished; it still sits as asphalt and concrete with plants growing through.  Recently there has been talk of an upscale downtown-like development for that space, but the site has been unproductive for 15 years.  When malls go bad, it brings down the surrounding area for many years.  St. Charles, if it is not careful, may soon have abandoned mall sites on each side of the city.

But back to New Orleans.  I think they have a great opportunity to rebuild the city and make something nice.  Everything’s crap now anyway.  The key to the city’s renewal in my opinion is to build the new stuff as high-quality construction that looks good and is inviting.  Ignore the poor people who say they need a place to live and can’t afford anything.  If you can’t afford to live somewhere, go somewhere you can afford.  This is the market at work.  Bring the rich people back first.  Then the poor people can eventually come back when they are needed to fill service jobs.  But we cannot force these poor people to live in large apartment complexes.  These projects turn into ghettos, which spread their malaise into the neighboring commercial areas.  Just like how all those apartment complexes put the criminals in proximity to Lake Forest Plaza.  Communities need to say no to large “building-heavy” developments.  Apartment complexes everywhere I go have more crime and unsavory people around than the single-family developments.  Townhomes fall somewhere in between.  But these apartment complexes so easily fall into disrepair, causing the Broken Window Hypothesis to come into effect, resulting in the complete downturn of the complex into something nearly impossible to repair in terms of physical construction and neighborhood pride and spirit.  If you cannot tell, I am a huge believer in the broken window hypothesis.  It states that a broken window that goes unrepaired shows those living in the vicinity of the window that nobody cares about the window, meaning they are free to participate in illegal and immoral activities, resulting in further damage to the community which will also go unnoticed and unaddressed.  The lack of action by the residents in caring for their community and surroundings continues and results in disorder.  Hence my opinion that large developments like indoor malls and apartment complexes should be avoided due to the difficulty of maintenance, destruction, and the concentration of a lot of people in a small area, which makes crime and poor behaviour easier to carry out.  We saw that the high-rise projects didn’t work out in Chicago, which in my opinion caused feelings of anonymity among residents, which festered into turning a blind eye to crime and destruction.

I have no connection to New Orleans, I’m just giving my opinion as an outsider.