This week on All Things Local: Parks and Greenspace in the Crescent City with guests Scott Howard, NOLA Parks for All, Kurt Weigle, Downtown Development District, and Sophie Harris, Friends of Lafitte Corridor.

Source: All Things Local, WGSO 990AM

Full Audio: http://wgso.com/all-things-local-mar-21-2015/

Make way for Greenway:

As the Lafitte Corridor nears the 90 percent completion mark, there are opportunities to help keep the biking and walking path from Treme to City Park clean and safe, according to Sophie Harris, executive director of Friends of Lafitte Corridor.

Harris said FOLC and the NOLA Trash Mob welcome more volunteers for Lafitte Corridor neighborhood cleanup day April 11 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Volunteers will me at the Sojourner Truth Neighborhood Center, 2200 Lafitte St.  For information email [email protected] or call 504.462.0645

An old warehouse located at 2606 St. Louis Street near the corner of North Dorgenois Street may soon become Urban South Brewery, a beer hall and restaurant.

The building, located near the Lafitte Greenway Corridor, is currently under construction, according to Ramsey Green, partner of Green Coast Enterprises – GCE Green Development, LLC and former Deputy Superintendent for Operations of the Recovery School District.

Developers are proposing an assortment of residential and commercial projects between Orleans Avenue and Bienville Street, while a vacant big box store on North Carrollton Avenue is being primed for new retail options.

The site of the former Home Depot on Carrollton Avenue may soon become a new strip mall anchored by a 13,600-square foot CVS pharmacy.

Renderings provided to the City of New Orleans show a development with ten possible retail buildings and a parking lot to go along with it. The current existing parcel would be demolished, if approved by the city’s Neighborhood Conservation District Committee.

As the $9 million Lafitte Greenway project nears completion, details are emerging about a handful of new developments being proposed near the 3-mile bicycle and pedestrian path, which stretches from the edge of the French Quarter to Mid-City.

Better + Boulder, LLC, a local company run by Millennial visionaries including CFO Donegan, has 8.6 acres of land under contract. Located behind the Rouses Supermarket on N. Carrollton Avenue and Conti Street near Canal Boulevard, south of the old Public Belt and a few blocks from The American Can apartment building and City Park, there are 5 parcels of land Donegan said will become a cohesive, self-sustaining, active gathering center.

A shuttered industrial laundry warehouse that sits alongside Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans would be renovated into a brewery, tap room for beer tastings, restaurant and offices under a plan being proposed by a team of local developers. GCE Green Development LLC -- a partnership of developer Ramsey Green and the environmentally minded real estate firm Green Coast Enterprises -- is under contract to buy the building at 2606 St. Louis St., contingent on City Hall approving plans for the renovation. 

NEW ORLEANS -- If you build it, they will come? For now that is what a portion of Mid-City is starting to look like as the Lafitte Greenway Project inches closer to completion.

The bike and pedestrian trial is clearing the way for ambitious ventures by commercial developers.

The city of New Orleans is transforming a vacant railway into a scenic transportation route for locals and tourists.

The Lafitte Greenway was initially a historical canal that connected Bayou St. John to the French Quarter, and it later became a railway that has been abandoned since the mid-twentieth century.

Construction of the Greenway began in March 2014 and is more than 75 percent complete.