Long-vacant city-owned lot on edge of French Quarter to become mixed-income apartment building Quarter to become mixed-income apartment building

BY JONAH MEADOWS | Staff writer  Mar 21, 2026

Construction is underway on a mixed income apartment complex that will bring 50 apartments, including 37 "affordable" or rent-restricted units, to a long-vacant, city-owned property on the edge of the French Quarter, Treme and Faubourg Marigny. Developers and city officials held a groundbreaking Friday on the Esplanade Delille Apartments, set to be completed in April 2027, on a site that was part of the St. Aloysius School campus until the 1960s.  In 2023, HRI Communities and New Orleans Restoration Properties were selected to do the project by the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, which is leasing the property from the city. The developer's plans call for constructing three buildings — a main structure fronting Esplanade Avenue with 40 apartments above two ground-floor retail storefronts, and a pair of smaller, camelback-style houses along Henriette Delille Street will five apartments each. Most of the units will be one-bedrooms.  The $22.2 million project comes as the city continues to struggle with a shortage of workforce and affordable housing. Housing advocates have said the city needs 55,000 more units of affordable housing than is currently available. "The general approach to this one was they wanted a lot of housing, because we have such a housing need in the city," said Josh Collen, president of HRI Communities. "But it's a tight site. It really is a very, very small site, and so we had to stretch to get 50 units onto the property." Long-term affordability Thirty-seven apartments will be set aside for affordable housing for renters earning 60% or less of the area median income, which currently restricts it to people earning about $38,800 if they live alone or $43,200 for two-person households. The terms of the project's financing require those 37 units to stay affordable at that level for at least 45 years, although the fact that the land has been leased from the city means that the public can effectively keep them affordable far longer. Of those, 15 will be covered by project-based vouchers from the Housing Authority of New Orleans, including a dozen designated as official replacement housing for units that were lost when the city demolished the Iberville public housing development.Under the terms of a $30.5 million federal program, the Iberville-Treme Choice Neighborhood Initiative, the city was required to build 859 replacement apartments and 1,549 total units in the neighborhoods previously served by the Iberville development — the area between St. Bernard and Tulane avenues and between Broad and Rampart streets. Fifteen years later, that money has long been spent. But the completion of the Esplanade Delille project — along with two other projects near the Lafitte Greenway that are currently under construction — will bring the total number of units built as part of the initiative to 1,580, and the total number of replacement units to 859, according to Maggie Merrill, senior director of asset management, development and modernization for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Finding the financing Funding for the Esplanade Delille comes from a variety of sources. They include a 9% low-income housing tax credits from the Louisiana Housing Corporation — accounting for about $13.5 million of the construction cost through First Horizon’s Community Investment Group — a $6.5 million loan from the city, a $500,000 loan from the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and a deal with Finance New Orleans to pay a fixed $10,000 a year instead of property taxes.  "This is a totally replicable model," Collen said, describing it as "best practice" to use quasi-public groups like HANO or NORA to leverage private capital in order to get vacant or blighted city-owned properties back into commerce. "The real secret here is having the city have enough funding to go along with these properties to win the scarce resources that the state of Louisiana puts out," Collen said. "A lot of their programs, they don't give you enough money to get the whole thing done." Friday's groundbreaking comes less than a year after the same contractors and development team completed another affordable apartment building about a third of a mile away in the 7th Ward.“They are very comparable,” Collen said. “Where they really differ is in their building shapes and historical context.” Read the full article on NOLA.com.

Redevelopment of historic school, originally opened for Black students and shuttered after Katrina, must include educational component

by Safura Syed

March 5, 2026

Officials in the New Orleans public school district and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) are moving forward with the redevelopment of an historic 7th Ward school property, which was donated nearly a century ago under the condition that it only be used for education. 

NORA and the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) on Wednesday (March 4) heard community input for planned redevelopment of the Valena C. Jones Elementary school building, one of the first public elementary schools for Black children in New Orleans, which was closed after Hurricane Katrina. The building takes up almost an entire city block on Galvez and Annette streets. 

The school board has partnered with NORA to redevelop two of its long-vacant school properties — Valena C. Jones and the Israel Augustine School building — to generate extra revenue for the NOLA Public School district, which faces financial trouble due to decreasing enrollment. While the properties likely won’t be reopened as schools, given the shrinking number of students in the school district needed to fill them, they can be repurposed into other types of developments for which the school board would serve as a landlord.

NORA Debuts 1st Double Up! Duplex Home

NORA Debuts 1st Double Up! Duplex Home. Getty image.

NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority will mark the completion of the first home built through its Double Up! Duplex Program with a ribbon cutting ceremony March 10, highlighting a new approach aimed at expanding affordable homeownership while allowing residents to generate rental income. NORA: Expanding Homeownership Through Double Up! Duplex Housing Launched in June 2025, the Double Up! Duplex Program is designed to help families build wealth by pairing owner-occupied housing with a secondary rental unit. The program partners with local developers including People’s Housing+, Habitat for Humanity and CNTRD to construct duplex homes on NORA-owned lots across the city. Each duplex includes a primary residence for the homeowner along with a smaller rental unit that can be leased to generate passive income or used to house extended family members. Officials say the model allows homeowners to offset mortgage costs while building equity. The first completed home is located at 3333 Fourth Street in Central City. The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at noon on March 10 and is expected to include New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris, who represents District B, along with leadership from the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and People’s Housing+. The pilot program is expected to produce four duplex homes, representing eight total housing units, in neighborhoods including Tremé, Central City and the Seventh Ward. City leaders say the initiative reflects growing interest in small-scale multifamily housing models that can increase neighborhood housing supply while supporting long-term homeownership for local residents. The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority works with public and private partners to stimulate redevelopment, attract investment and support economic development projects throughout the city. The program reflects NORA’s broader focus on expanding housing opportunities through innovative development strategies. In its 2025 annual report, the agency highlighted several initiatives aimed at increasing affordable housing and neighborhood investment across the city. “Our focus remains on creating opportunities that last and outcomes that matter,” said NORA Executive Director Brenda Breaux. “Every project represents our commitment to creating quality housing and investing in long-term opportunities that strengthen communities across New Orleans.” Read the full article on the Biz New Orleans.

Revamp of Six Flags site in New Orleans East sees new operators, financing deal: See details

Staff Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune

Developers behind the massive overhaul of the former Six Flags in New Orleans East say they will soon finalize $300 million in financing and have found operators for a youth sports complex and water park resort – critical milestones in the site’s long-awaited revival.  Eastern Sports Management of Virginia and American Resort Management of Texas and Pennsylvania will run the complex and resort under preliminary agreements with the Bayou Phoenix group. Officials with those two firms joined Bayou Phoenix principal Troy Henry to announce the plans at a Friday meeting at Franklin Avenue Baptist Church.  Henry said the $300 million private equity deal – with a firm he declined to name, citing a nondisclosure agreement – will take 15 weeks to close, and that the process should begin within the next two months.   Eastern Sports Management manages nine indoor and outdoor sports facilities in its home state as well as in Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Oklahoma. American Resort Management operates water parks and hotels across the country, and its hotel brands include Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt, according to its website.  The announcement represents key progress for a project that remains on track despite years of complications over land ownership, strained negotiations and challenging conditions on the 227-acre site that has been dormant since Hurricane Katrina.  “I know it's been a test of everyone's patience,” Henry said in an interview. “We now will be shifting from being at government speed to the speed of business.” 

Andrew Ballard, chief operating officers of Eastern Sports Management, said he expects the youth sports facility to generate two million visitors annually, based on foot traffic at the company's other facilities.  "Those two million visitors are going to plug in the lodging, the food and beverage, the entertainment, and it's all happening in New Orleans East," Ballard said.  Henry said he hopes the sports complex will break ground in about a year. First, however, a site assessment must show that the land each operator gets may indeed be built upon. The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority commissioned the assessment and a firm completed it this week, though engineers still need to analyze the results.   Bayou Phoenix will then negotiate “pre-development” agreements with the operators related to construction. Those will be followed by operating contracts setting forth terms of the relationship once the park opens.  The news was welcomed by the crowd that showed up at Franklin Avenue, a megachurch along Interstate 10 where hundreds of New Orleans East residents worship weekly. Henry garnered audible support when closing the presentation with a forceful call for public officials to support the project with $60 million in funding from local, state and federal sources. He said that would represent about 12% of the overall cost.  "We waited patiently and watched every single other part of the city get redeveloped, except for us," Henry said, referring to New Orleans East. "It's our time now." Past hurdles Hurricane Katrina in 2005 forced the permanent closure of the Six Flags site, and proposals to revive it have stalled repeatedly in the years since. The site’s revival was a priority for former Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who awarded development rights of the site to Bayou Phoenix in 2021. But developers didn’t get control of the site for another two years. Public officials first had to work out the terms of transferring ownership from the city to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, a state agency, and a lease then had to be worked out with Bayou Phoenix.   Tensions flared among all parties along the way, and the project appeared close to unraveling more than once. Bayou Phoenix and NORA have sparred over developers' master plan and proceeds of scrap metal from demolished roller coasters. Bayou Phoenix eventually was allowed to keep the proceeds, which it used to help pay for the demolition. Bayou Phoenix has not met development deadlines within the 2023 lease, which called for construction to begin last October and completion of the project by April 2027. But Henry has said those deadlines are unrealistic without a site assessment, commissioned by NORA, showing which portions of the land — a combination of woods, wetlands and slab on pilings — can be developed.  The assessment, which has been underway for more than a year, was completed this week. Henry said he is confident the review won't  contain anything that could jeopardize the project.   “We want to make sure that there's not something onerous that changes our economic model, changes our financing, changes the ask that we have to make,” Henry said. “Our level of confidence is very high that there's no deal breakers.”  The operators Bayou Phoenix has previously announced a sublease deal with film composer Elvin Ross, who plans to finance and build a movie studio there. While that announcement showcased outside interest in the site, Friday’s news showed the project’s core -- a youth sports complex, two hotels, a water amusement park and arcade, along with restaurants and retail shops -- is feasible enough to attract serious operators.  Eastern Sports Management will subcontract with Hank Aaron Sports Academy, based in Jackson, Mississippi, to attract collegiate baseball tournaments and training. It will also line up programming for other sports facilities.  The operators will design their facilities and hire their own architects and contractors. Their final agreements with Bayou Phoenix will grant them a management fee as well as a share of the profits, Henry said. He said the operators will also be held to certain performance standards.  “They have every incentive in the world to make sure this is profitable and that the customer experience is outstanding,” Henry said.  The final development cost remains to be seen. Henry has always pegged it at roughly half a billion dollars, though Bayou Phoenix documents have suggested it could be nearly twice that much. Beyond that, he said retail tenants and a film studio developer would finance their own buildouts.Read the full article on NOLA.com.