This week’s snowstorm paused efforts to spruce up New Orleans ahead of next month's Super Bowl.The big game will be held at the Superdome on Sunday, Feb. 9.
City and state officials are busy working with private entities to get hundreds of infrastructure projects finished so the Crescent City can put on its best face.
Spearheading that effort from the private sector is CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc. and Super Bowl 59 Project Coordinator, Michael Hecht, who spoke with WWNO’s Bob Pavlovich.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
BOB PAVLOVICH: With just over two weeks to go, where do we stand?
MICHAEL HECHT: Well, you know, before a couple of days ago, I said, man, you know, the runway's a little bit short, but we're going to land the plane. The vast majority of the infrastructure projects, over 500, are coming to completion, including the end of the French Quarter and stuff in the CBD. Murals are beginning to go up. But this week we had the great snowstorm, which is going to take a couple of days out from underneath us. So the runway's a little bit shorter even yet, but I still think we're going to land the plane and you're going to have a city come that first week of February that is going to look, feel, and dare I say even smell better than it has in many, many years.
PAVLOVICH: Michael, where are we with the budget on all this?
HECHT: I mean, one of the things that's kind of remarkable about this is that we'll end up doing, we're gonna have to do an after rounding accounting, but my guess is around $60 to $80 million worth of work. And of that only about between $6 and 8 million will be new appropriated money from the state. Everything else is coming out of existing budgets or existing grants. So this was actually a deployment exercise more than it was an appropriations exercise.
PAVLOVICH: What's been the biggest project of all that's been tackled for the Super Bowl in your estimation?
You know, I would say it's collectively the French Quarter, because there were so many elements to it. There were the roads, the sidewalks, the lights, the street signs, the quality of life sweeps, the homeless abatement, obviously crime, both in terms of local crime, but also now having a harden after the terrorist attack. It's a gumbo of challenges, but I think it's gonna come out really tasty.
PAVLOVICH: Is there one improvement or project that has pleased you, made you smile, or that has been something that's bugged you that's finally gotten fixed?
HECHT: Let me tell you a story about my personal pothole. Since Katrina, there has been really not a pothole, but an archipelago of potholes at the intersection of Poydras Street when you cross Claiborne getting on I-10 towards Metairie. And it's been dangerous because it forces people to swerve out to the right or you break your axle. It’s also been embarrassing because it's outside the Superdome, outside the mayor's office, and I said if there's one thing that we are going to get done out of this list of 500 plus, it's going to be that pothole, even if I have to go to Home Depot at 10:00 p.m. the night before and get a bag of gravel.
And now it's just a memory. In fact, I think we're gonna lay a commemorative plaque that says something like, “Here lies Michael's personal pothole, 2005 to 2024.” Gone but not forgotten.
PAVLOVICH: Beneath all of the cosmetic and structural work to roads and sidewalks, has any consideration been given to a long-term discussion of the city's sewer and water system?
HECT: Yeah, the issue there, so one just to be clear about this, the vast majority of potholes are because of sewer and water board failures. They're water pipes that fail and create these cavities. What’s beginning to happen is that by putting in the new automatic meters, the public is gonna get better billing. When there's better billing, trust is going to increase in the sewer and water board. Once trust increases, then the board is gonna be in position to start having discussions about some type of drainage fee that everybody in the city, including those that don't pay property taxes like schools and hospitals and churches will have to pay into if they do actually drain and from that revenue, we'll have the revenues to begin to replace a 100-year-old system. If we don't do that and just address this issue, then we're gonna be in this never-ending cycle of replacing roads above collapsed pipes. So at some point we’re going to have to bite that bullet, but I do think that an establishment of trust is going to be fundamental, and I think that automatic billing is going to help with that significantly.
