This has to be one of the best results of the stimulus yet. In New Orleans, the Regional Transit Authority won $45 million dollars of stimulus money to build a streetcar line down a long abandoned downtown corridor. That just has to be a waste of money, right?
Wrong. Mega wrong.
Loyola Avenue in downtown New Orleans had been abandoned since the middle of last century. It's virtually nothing but blight now. An eyesore. Then Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, mostly known as the stimulus. Its critics claimed it stimulated nothing even though the CBO says it created or saved over 3 million jobs, and staved off far worse economic collapse:
President Barack Obama’s stimulus package may have created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs last quarter and lowered the unemployment rate by as much as 1.8 percentage points, the Congressional Budget Office said.
The $814 billion program, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, probably added between 1.7 percent and 4.5 percent to gross domestic product for the three months through June, the nonpartisan agency said in a report issued yesterday.
In New Orleans however, one stimulus project is so stimulating, it is practically overheating. Try this: invest one dollar. Get eleven dollars back. Can't think of any way to do that? Well, it's happening in New Orleans right now.
Since the Loyola Avenue streetcar project was announced in February, hotel renovations, apartments and retail projects have been springing up along the moribund 1.5-mile strip. The Saratoga Lofts will open in June, a Rouses supermarket will open in September, renovations at the Hyatt and Holiday Inn Downtown Superdome will be completed in October, and residential and retail projects are expected to begin shortly thereafter in anticipation of a growing biosciences district.
The investments could transform a corner of the city best known for surface parking lots and blighted buildings into a place where people live, work and gather without losing time and money to automobile travel.
No one is more pleased than the Regional Transit Authority, which won the $45 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus grant that is paying for the entire Loyola streetcar project.
"When you develop streetcar routes, you hope to create economic development in the communities that you serve," said Justin T. Augustine, vice president of Veolia Transportation, which runs the Regional Transit Authority. "In urban corridors around the city, you tend to see development follow transportation routes. I expect that businesses will take a second look into this area."
And how much private investment does this all lead to?
Over a half billion dollars:
With well over a half-billion dollars of new investment flowing into the area, as the Hyatt Regency New Orleans reopens with a $243 million renovation, the Benson family works toward a $100 million office-sports-entertainment district alongside the Superdome, and the Regional Transit Authority builds a new streetcar line along Loyola Avenue, the area around his properties is springing to life.
Do the math: 500 million ÷ 45 million = 11. That's $11 for every $1 of public investment. The stimulus is bringing back a long since abandoned and moribund community, and it promises to only get better:
Because of the streetcar, the Domain Cos., which built mixed-income housing along Tulane Avenue because it's a major bus route, last week announced its $185 million "transit-oriented" South Market District apartment-retail development sopping up acres of surface parking lots near Loyola Avenue. Next door, the long-troubled Plaza Tower, which was gutted and placed on the market in April for $15.5 million, is under contract and could be poised for redevelopment.
And the effects are so good, they may very well help revitalize the once legendary Canal Street:
The streetcar also could give a lift to the aspiring theater district at Canal Street, where developer Neal Hixon, for example, is trying to turn the Joy Theater into a live entertainment venue.