Economic Development and Special Development Projects Committee.

And it's not just like it's happening a little and it's here or there, it's rampant. I could take you to city, I mean, to job sites right now where people were being cheated. And I'm talking about jobs that this city has invested in, okay? That's the norm in construction and it's not fair. So, you know, going back, I could go back to 2000, actually 2018, 2019, we had a contractor and I'm not going to mention his name. It's a big contractor that still does a lot of work around here, does city work, was misclassified workers, had a labor broker, right? That's just somebody that provides labor. They call themselves a contractor, but they're not really a contractor, they're providing labor. So if maybe the contractor's paying $30 an hour on each person, so that labor broker makes $5 an hour off each person, right? It is not really a contractor. But then they say, so maybe they got 30 painters, I'm using this for example, they say they all are independent contractors. It's impossible to have 30 independent contractors working on one job, especially when you have a company telling you what time to be to work, what time to leave, what time to take lunch, and directing you in your day-to-day operations. That is an employee, that is not an independent contractor. So we did have some people that came forward because they didn't get paid overtime. And the Department of Labor, I know, hits several jobs once the complaint was filed. I will say that pretty much came from us because we were getting information, that's our jobs. We are on them job sites talking to workers to make sure that they're not being abused in any type of way. So after the Department of Labor did their investigation, it wound up being $260,000 they had to pay in back wages. That's one project and that's just one trade. So the building trades represents 15, 16 trades. So that's one trade that happened in on one job, or let's say four jobs, okay? And then the same thing happened two years prior. Again, my trade, this was drywall finishers, happened on Canal Street. They were doing a project, same thing. A contractor got hit for $220,000. It wound up being like 106 workers that were not being paid overtime. This still is happening. And I feel like this ordinance, by holding the general contractor accountable, because they got the prom contract with the city, the general contractor should enforce, hey, listen, now they're on the hook for this. And it's really their job to make sure that those contractors are following the law. Basically, what we're asking is for contractors to follow laws that already exist. And if they don't, to be held accountable. That's really all it's about. But I do appreciate your time and I appreciate you letting us come up here. Thank you, Chip. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. We're just asking everybody to follow the law. These changes will essentially reward our good contractors and it flags the bad contractors. So I want to thank you, really, for putting in the sweat equity on this and working with Aaron on my team. I know we had a quick turnaround, less than two weeks to put this together. So I really want to thank you. It's been a pleasure working with you. Andy? Good morning, Councilman. First and foremost, thanks for taking the time. To hear us, I'm not going to be redundant and go over some of the points and facts that Tiger and Chip has said here this morning. I'll be brief. But just maybe, if this ordinance with these current amendments had been in place on Saturday, October 12, 2019, and the Office of Safety and Permits was confident, the tragedy that took place at the Hard Rock Hotel might have never happened. So again, we feel that these amendments need to be added to the ordinance. And again, thank you. Thank you so much, guys. Any questions or comments from the dais? Councilmember McCairn? Well, thank you, Councilmember Willard, for your leadership on this. I think I remember the three of us standing at our post-endorsement breakfast talking about this very thing with the building trades and now we're actually making it happen. So big day today, and I'd like to co-author on that. I did have one question on here. How will the CAO waivers for requirements under this ordinance be reported to the public and to the council? And have we talked through how that looks and what would qualify as a... So it spells out... Do you have a page on that one? Page 13 in the... In gross version? Endorse version B. Yeah. So it spells out reasons why the CAO could waive it. Could we consider some kind of reporting mechanism on that? Yeah, of course. I mean, we want this to be as transparent as possible. The Bureau of Purchasing will put this information on their website as it relates to any contractors or organizations that have been deemed non-responsible. So we'll have that. But as far as any waivers for certain projects, the council definitely should get that information so we can include that. Okay, great. Thank you. Great point. Great point. Council President Morrell. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to Council Member Willard. Thank you to the Building Trades for working with him. This has kind of been a long-standing issue that you sought to get resolved. We did not see a lot of interest from the prior administration in resolving this issue in a definitive way. And I look forward to working with you guys in the current administration to have this resolved in a definitive way with teeth so that we can actually, as you've said repeatedly, reward our good contractors and really try to expose our bad ones. Because I'll tell you in particular, and I share your concern, Chip, there is a growing effort for people to enter the labor broker kind of market where they pretend that they have people that are independent contractors to try and show cities and show businesses that they are saving money by hiring independent brokers through temporary workers.

And what has really been a concern of mine is, as you know, the city has a living wage ordinance. The way that these brokers work is they take a portion of your hourly wage as part of their fee for linking you with work. And I'm increasingly concerned that we are going to find, as we dig into these labor brokers, that we have people doing the actual work who are not getting a living wage, who they're showing on paper this person's making $17, $18 an hour. They might be making $12 because the broker's taking a cut off the top. And the best way to avoid that is to not use independent contractors, especially in that kind of mechanism, and to really expose those efforts. So I want to work with you all and continue to look at that. I know that we have a variety of other trades throughout the city that we work with, and I'm sure they're all experiencing some kind of problems with that activity. So thank you. Thank you, Council President. Chip and Andy, I really love that. It's me, JP, and Amy up here because we were the three in front of you at that meeting. And like Amy said, this was one of the issues that we talked about. So this is really full circle for me and probably for my colleagues as well. We will get into public comment. First up, we have Erica Zucker. Good morning, everyone. Erica Zucker, 7600 Jeanette Street. I am the Co-Director and Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Workplace Justice Project. Workplace Justice Project is a worker resource center that provides legal services and representation. representation to low-income and marginalized workers, advocates for policies that support worker equity and advancement, and provides worker education. I also was part of the team with these folks up here that helped draft the original ordinance and advocated for it. And in fact, even before the ordinance that is being amended today, worked with Tiger. One of the first things I did when I moved to New Orleans, shortly after I moved to New Orleans, was advocating for the old contractor responsibility language that really didn't do much. But we also amended that in 2021. As everyone has said today, this is about workers. And it's about, as Council Member Willard, as you said, it's about the city being an example. And also about responsible and transparent use of city money, which is public money. I support the rewrite of this language. It's actually an improvement on the original language that I helped write. So congratulations. The penalties and the consequences are clear. I think that it is really essential, as I say over and over again when I come to this podium, it is essential that the ordinance and the regulations are implemented and enforced. And I'll use this as a reminder that the labor audit that the council funded with ARPA funds is still waiting for the results of that audit. We still don't know how we're enforcing living wage, or ban the box, or local hire, or any of those things. And I've been trying to get the CAO to give me the data on that. I am happy to, the questionnaire and the collecting of data are really the key to this ordinance working. And I'm happy to help with the drafting, and the brainstorming, and the implementation, the review of waivers, and all the things that you mentioned, Council Member McCarran, happy to work on that. And I'll just throw in before my. And I have a question. Would that have to consider the creation of an office of labor standards to centralize the collating of labor and policy standards? Thank you, Ms. Zucker. Next up, we have Matt Olson with the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice. Following him, we'll have Calvin Lawrence. Good morning. My name is Matt Olson. I'm a resident of New Orleans, and the Director of Research and Policy at the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice. The Workers Center had a member who worked at the Hard Rock Hotel collapse in 2019, and was prevented from testifying as an official witness when they were deported for speaking up. So we deeply appreciate the refresh attention given to the responsible contractor ordinance, and we welcome its overdue implementation and enforcement. Today, I also want to bring attention to the labor audit approved by City Council in May 2023, and contracted in late 2024 with the American Rescue Plan local funds. I sat on the committee that submitted recommendations for the audit. An audit's goal was to review all current contractors and those from the recent past to ensure that each contractor, and at some contractors if applicable, is complying with the living wage ordinance, the disadvantaged business enterprise rules, and to what extent it was following local hire laws aimed at increasing the number of workers who reside in New Orleans to be hired on city contracts. Both the previous and current mayoral administrations acknowledged that the labor audit was completed by an external auditor, and its results were turned over to the administration last fall, almost one year ago. Despite repeated inquiries, nothing has been released to the public, and no presentation to City Council has been scheduled. I recommend that the council request the mayor and CAO's office publicly present the audit results by the end of 2026. The public deserves to know the results in order to help shape future contractor oversight, accountability, and best practices. The oversight provided by this one-time audit should be permanently built into how the Bureau of Purchasing implements the responsible contractor ordinance to ensure we offer no taxpayer funds to contractors who violate labor laws and underpay and underhire New Orleans workers. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. We're going to track down that audit. Next up, we have Calvin Lawrence with IBEW Local 130. Following him, we'll have Andrew Schmidt with IBEW as well. Good evening. All I want to say is about the enforcement of this, man. You already had these things in place, and now we again putting more teeth in it.

I know me coming up in this city, every time I broke the law, I had to pay a penalty for it. And so these contracts have been doing it time and time again. And so whatever we got to do as an organization to help the city out, to stop them from getting over on the city, man, because that is affecting our community. That's all I want to say. Thank you, Calvin. Andrew. Following Andrew, we'll have Jennifer. Is Jennifer here, too? All right. Thank you, Andrew Schmidt. I just want to say, I think the amendments on this ordinance are going to help create fairness across union contractors and independent contractors. Thank you, Andrew. All right, Jennifer Hernandez. Hey, Jennifer. I didn't see you. Hi, good morning. Thank you. So first of all, good morning, and thank you to the chair and council members for the opportunity to speak in support of the Responsible Bidders Ordinance. At its core, this ordinance is about fair competition, protecting workers, and then supporting responsible contractors. Just want to highlight and retouch on some of the things that were shared. Worker misclassification is the perfect example that leads us here for the need for some of these changes, and that these contractors who do misclassify their workers reduce their labor costs by 30% to 40%, giving them an unfair competitive edge. I do also want to highlight and bring up that the important element of this also is the public transparency part of it. That's beneficial not only for the contractors, but also just for the public trust in this process. And we can't forget the lessons that we've learned at the Hard Rock Collapse, with three workers losing their lives, and not suggesting that misclassification caused that. But it's a reminder for us of why contractor accountability, and worker safety, and transparency really matters. And this is a pro-responsible business ordinance that helps to level the playing field. And so I appreciate your support in this. Thank you, Jennifer. Next up, we'll have Parker Diaz with IUPAT. And then following him, we'll have Luis Mendez, I think. Hey, Parker. Hey, how's it going, man? Hello, everyone. Parker Diaz, Director of Organizing for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. I just want to attest that I meet workers where they're at, which is on job sites. And worker misclassification, unpaid overtime, and wage hour violations are rampant in the city. So I'm in support of this responsible bidding ordinance, as I think it helps us elevate the status of workers in the city. And it enforces benefits for contractors that properly classify employees, carry workers' comp, and things of that nature. So I'm in support of this. Thank you, Parker. Luis. Following Luis, we'll have Aldo Duran, or Dupon. I don't know if that's a P-R or an R. Duran. Duran. Morning, Luis Mendez. I'm the organizer for IUPAT. My job is just to check all the jobs. This is just, it's gotten out of hand with the 1099. I go to the Superdome. Speaking for my trades, painters and glaziers, they didn't have not one taxpayer on that job, which is the Superdome, which is taxpayers pay for that. And hopefully you all push through this. All this is modern day slavery. They use fear to the workers. How are you going to eat, or even threatening them? But that's all it is, just modern day slavery. And hopefully we can stop, put an end to it. Thank you, Luis. Aldo. And then we'll have Brad Gross. Brad's not speaking. Good morning. And I'm Aldo Duran. I'm with the Ironworkers, a local 623 in New Orleans. And all we're pretty much asking for is a fair playing ground. When our contractors have to go out there and have the insurance rates, the taxes, and you have another contractor who is just being not fair. So I'm in favor of it. And that's pretty much my time. Thank you. Thank you, Aldo. We also have cards in support but not wishing to speak from Brad Gross. And then we have one from Ronnie Rosser. All right. Board is clear. Any final comments from the dais? Council Member McCarron. I just want to say thank you again to the unions. I see many of you. We knocked doors together. I appreciate you. I'm glad that we're able to get this done. And I know the administration is going to get this implemented. Thanks, y'all. Yeah, and I'll just echo that. I really want to thank you guys for working with my team, especially Aaron, to put this together so fast. And just for everybody out there, a big part of how successful this will be is how the process is laid out and the enforcement mechanism. So my office is committed to working with the chief purchasing officer, the CAO's office, the law department, the department heads to lay out a clear and fair process and to make sure that the enforcement holds up. Because that's the only way that this process will be successful. So with that, I will move adoption of the ordinance. Can I get a second? Second. Seconded by Council Member McCarron. All in favor? Yeah. Oh, there we go. Well, we're Still learning the system. All right. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, guys. Andy's trying to kill me up in there. All right. Thank you, everyone. Next up on the agenda, we have contracts for consideration pursuant to Rule 57. Can we have someone from the administration? Is someone from the administration handling these? Thanks, Jeff. Of course. It's not in any agenda. All right. Thank you, Council Member Willard. These are relatively brief. So we have two agreements for the committee's consideration. The first is for the YWCA. As many of you are aware, we have been working in close collaboration with the council to identify funds for Southeast Louisiana legal services. And as a part of identifying funds for that this year, we had to re-appropriate funds that we had previously obligated to the YWCA. And so essentially, what we're doing is proposing an amendment to the contract that removes CDBG COVID dollars and replaces them with regular entitlement money.

So that's all on the YWCA contract front. On the other agreement, this is funds that the city is actually receiving from GNODF, which is GNO Inc.'s nonprofit arm. They received a grant award and are sending $75,000 to JobOne for a regional initiative that focuses on our workforce centers. So this is to receive the funds and obligate them. I'm happy to share additional details if there's interest, but we're receiving $75,000. All right, sounds good. Any questions? I have one question. Council Member McHeron. Jeff, on the YWCA, on the contract summary, it says effective date is May 1, 2026. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Yes, the building is actually actively under construction. This is the building on Norman Francis Parkway. And so these are funds that are part of their capital stack. And so we want the dollars to be. That was when the original agreement was to be effective. And since we're swapping out the funds, we don't want to delay it any longer. Okay, thank you. Yeah, of course. All right, thank you. Which one are we voting on first? B is up on the board, so we can vote on B first. All right, so we'll take a vote on the loan agreement with YCA. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Council President Morrell has seconded. All right. It popped up. There it is. Technology. There you go. 3 a's, 0 nays. It's been approved. And then we can vote on A. And now we'll vote on the consulting services agreement with Greater New Orleans Foundation. It's been moved by Council President Morrell, seconded by me. All in favor? Aye. 3 a's, 0 nays. That has also been approved. Council Member, do you want all three of the items that we voted on to appear on the consent agenda? Yes. Okay, thank you. And can you add Council President Morrell and Council Member McCarran to the responsible bidder ordinance? Yes. Thank you. All right. Item number 5, Deputy Mayor Lapparoli, if you want to come down. We have a presentation on the Mayor's Executive Order H.M. 2621 on the New Orleans East Innovation and Industrial Corridors from Deputy Mayor Swartz and Lapparoli. The floor is yours. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Want me to kick us off? Sure. Can we get? There it is. All right. The presentation is on the screen. Thank you, Council Members. First and foremost, we're really excited to be here today. This is the first of what will be a series of presentations on a quarterly basis to you all, where we are going to be reporting out on the Jobs and Innovation Corridors that the Mayor and many of you helped announce six or seven weeks ago. And we're going to use it as a platform to talk about, I think, a lot of the really fantastic things that are happening in New Orleans East in addition to updating specifically on the corridors. And so Renee and I will be coming to you all with these updates as well as a regular dashboard of progress. I think one of the main items I want to make sure we discuss is getting feedback from you all and from the community about what are the sorts of things that you all want to see us presenting on, what sorts of initiatives, what would you all like to hear more about. And so we put together this presentation today to share updates on some of the items that we've been prioritizing over the last month or two, but obviously happy for feedback and comment from you all and the public. We can run through this PowerPoint presentation briefly. So just by way of background, Executive Order H.M. 2621 is what actually established the Jobs and Innovation Corridors Initiative. This is grounded in some really generational investments being made in and adjacent to New Orleans East and where the mayor and the administration really wanted to put a flag in the ground and make sure that we name it and identify it as a priority. And so it's actually a two-fold initiative, these intersecting corridors that you all can see on the screen here. The first is the Michoud Innovation Corridor. So this is an area of New Orleans that has the regional business park in it. It has really incredible businesses and assets in it, but where for the last 10 or 15 years there just has not been the level of dot connecting and strategy and governance and investment that we all would like to see and would expect. And because this area has the NASA Michoud campus in it, which if any of you have not been out there, we'd be more than happy to arrange a tour. It is a truly breathtaking facility. It's one of my favorite talking points. It's where about 3,000 of our fellow New Orleanians work every single day. Many of them are union members literally building the Artemis rockets and the Orion capsules. So every rocket that has ever flown from U.S. soil on a NASA mission to outer space has been built in New Orleans East. And, Jeff, I know this session the legislature stood up some incentive programs for aerospace. They did. Are we looking at how to piggyback and take full advantage of those in the city of New Orleans? Absolutely. It's a fantastic question and one that we'd love to collaborate with you on about how to leverage all of that. Yes, the state has passed some incentives and some other legislation because there is incredible opportunity. Today it's a very poorly kept secret at this point, but the SpaceX announcement is happening later today. I was not invited. Me neither was I. I think most of us. And that is nothing if not a market signal that New Orleans and South Louisiana really is a commercial aerospace hub. We have been for generations. We built all the Apollo rockets, the Saturn rockets that took the Apollo missions to space and the moon. We built 136 external fuel tanks at NASA and issued for the space shuttle program. And we've now transitioned to the Artemis program. And so we believe that this next generation of commercial aerospace is a real opportunity to create jobs in New Orleans East and in the region really anchored at the NASA Michoud complex.

And we are actively working with a lot of partners, as we'll talk some more about today, on developing those opportunities. So as we speak right now, NASA has a 50-acre parcel that Renee and I toured a couple weeks ago on the Michoud campus that is actually out there for development solicitation. And we are dead set on trying to make sure that aerospace companies nationally and internationally know about that opportunity. So the Michoud Innovation Corridor is all about leveraging these amazing assets from the industrial canal to Bayou Sauvage and then from Chef down to the intercoastal waterway. It has rail access. It has deep water port access. And we'll talk some more about that. But it can really anchor these commercial aerospace, advanced manufacturing, maritime, and other industries. Intersecting with this corridor, we now know that the port just received its final permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. There will probably be some additional litigation, but we know that the port is on track to open its new terminal, the Louisiana International Terminal, in 2029-2030. And that is anticipated to generate at least 15 million square feet of demand for logistics and warehousing space. And we will have failed if we do not capture a significant amount of that activity in New Orleans East. These are high-paying jobs. These are jobs where you can have a CDL license. You don't even need a high school diploma, and you can have a very high-paying job that is a career. And so we are doing everything we can to capitalize on the new demand that's being created from that corridor, where everything that comes out of that new port complex has to come up the Paris and 510 corridor, which means it drops down right in New Orleans East, in the business park, in the Michoud Innovation Corridor, and will continue up to I-10. We know that Southern Mississippi and the North Shore are already actively pursuing opportunities in that space, and so we are working tirelessly every day, both at the city and with our partners, to make sure that we're capitalizing on those opportunities. So this is really, this is the flag in the ground that we planted. We did it at the Delgado Maritime Center, which is an incredible facility. I know Councilmember Willard and Amaral, you all were there. Councilmember Hughes was there. This is incredibly exciting work, and it is real. It is happening. This is not pie in the sky. This is a real strategy that's going to create real economic imperatives, and we need to capitalize on it. And so that's what we're doing. Digging into some of the updates that we're really happy to talk about here, that's really drilling down into economic development more broadly in this area. The first is NORA, which is one of the best partners to the city in doing community and economic development work. They have an amazing program called Facade Renew. That program, we worked with them. They had a focus of making sure that New Orleans East businesses, particularly in the Lake Forest corridor, were prioritized in this round of grants. And I'm very happy to say that NORA just went through their most recent process and awarded 12 commercial sites in the east to receive between $50,000 and $150,000 each, depending on how much frontage they have and some other features of their business, to do design and construction improvements on their businesses. So these are direct cash investments. These are not loans. These are precious dollars that the city and NORA have that we can grant out strategically to support initiatives. Jeff, where are some of those sites located? Yes. So we didn't actually put the map in this, but I'm happy to circulate this afterwards. Yeah, if you could get us a list, but if you can run through what you have right now. Absolutely. So the lion's share of these are on Lake Forest Boulevard, so that was a focal point. We have a couple on Crowder, one or two on Bullard, and three or four on Reed Boulevard. So these are sites where it's active, it's in use right now. Correct. Yes, that's right. And so this supports existing businesses. It also supports some of our really amazing, not just business owners, but landlords out there who are doing everything right. We have a lot of landlords in New Orleans who are not actively pursuing opportunities. It's something we've talked about on Canal Street, and the same is true in the east. But we also have landlords who are pursuing every opportunity that they can to get investment, to support the businesses that are in their shopping centers, et cetera. And so this is one of the ways that we can support them. That's great to hear. Yep. It really is. And Nora's program is wonderful because before anybody starts talking to a contractor, puts pen to paper, there's technical assistance that happens on the front end, and so that's what these businesses are going to be going through to help them develop a budget, identify what's going to be most effective at helping drive retail activity at their storefronts, et cetera. Great program. Something that the city is also leading that Renee and myself, and also some members of the OED team who are here today, Andrew and Rita and Courtney, we've been working with a consulting team, a national firm out of Philadelphia called U3 Advisors, which has done a lot of work in New Orleans. They've worked downtown with Tulane and others, as well as Studio West, and some really amazing subs like Moray Engineering and other DBEs, to do an analysis of the Michoud Innovation Corridor area, because when you look at national best practices, like what Huntsville has at the Cummings Research Park, which is anchored by NASA and where they have hundreds of businesses that are operating there, that is what we should have in the former regional business park area, the area that the regional business park has been operating in. And so you can do anything, but you can't do everything.

We know we need a plan, a vision, a strategy for not just how you fund these activities, for business attraction, for doing the land use changes, supporting redevelopment. You also need governance, and you need the ability to staff these initiatives and make sure that over time you're working on these, not just for a year or two, but really for the decade or two that it takes to really get traction. Just as a note, that Cummings Research Park in Huntsville was started in the 1960s, and now they have University of Alabama anchored there, NASA's anchored there, and again, hundreds of businesses. And so we are in the fourth and final phase of this U3-led work, and we'll be really excited later this year to fully release the strategy for that Michoud Innovation Corridor. I'm also happy to say this is kind of an indictment of maybe what the city was doing previously, but the city of New Orleans has never had a certified site. A certified site is a process that you go through with the state to say that you are development ready, and New Orleans Parish had never had one until last year. We got the first site, which is a CSX-owned parcel in the regional business park footprint, which basically says you have the land use, you have the utilities, you have the zoning, you are basically entitled to do the development that you want to see here. And I am also happy to say that in addition to that first site, we are actively working with the regional business park and GNO Inc. on getting the second portion of the regional business park footprint, which is about 45 acres across from NASA Michoud, to be the second certified site in New Orleans Parish. And so that's the, you know, the mayor and the administration talk about, you know, what are the things that we can be doing to lay the groundwork. That's yet another thing that we can do to say that we're open for business and are going to take advantage of these new economic opportunities. Does that tie into the fast site incentive at LED? It does, very much so. It's a great point, Council Member Willard. Yes, the state is doing another round. We actually submitted seven fast sites applications for the first round. It was way oversubscribed. They got hundreds of millions of dollars of applications for less than $150 million of available funds. They just released another round that I believe is $25 million, so it's a smaller second round. But yes, sites that are certified move to the top of the list. They're highly considered. You score more points in those applications. We also have dedicated some ARPA funds to the regional business park. The regional business park has a facility, it used to be a Siemens warehouse many years ago. It needed a new roof desperately, and so we actually allocated during the pandemic a million and a half dollars of ARPA money to get a new roof and support new tenants locating at the regional business park enterprise center. I'm very happy to say, working closely with that board and Studio West, who is actually their construction manager on that project, they did it in record time under, I think it was like a 60-day roofing turnaround to meet some ARPA deadlines, and I'm very happy to say that that million and a half dollars is spent and is positioning the regional business park for some exciting announcements that we'll be happy to talk about in the coming weeks. A couple of other report outs here. These are proposed small business supports that the Office of Economic Development, the National League of Cities, Nora, and some other partners are working on. One is an initiative called Prosper in Place. This is an initiative that is a pilot program working with the National League of Cities, which I'm sure you all are familiar, have a lot of best practices to share among municipalities and things like community development, economic development, model ordinances, et cetera. This is an initiative to support small main street businesses through business training and other technical assistance. We are anticipating being able to implement that in very short order. Then we are also in the last stages of planning on some post-IDA funded work, which is going to create a main street resilience program. Big thank you to, again, Ruta and Courtney and Andrew for their work on this. These are CDBG DR funds, post-disaster funds that the city was awarded from IDA that had to be used on community and economic development projects. One of the things that we've worked to program is to provide solar and battery backup and some other improvements to buildings to help them weather the next storm. The Alce Forche Corridor is the corridor that we'll be working in, in Village de l'Est in New Orleans East on that. We're very excited to push that work forward. How are we determining the businesses that get support right there? Great question. The corridors themselves... For Prosper in Place as well. For Prosper in Place? Yeah. There will be an open call. It will be a solicitation... For Prosper in Place? For Prosper in Place and for the Main Street Resilience. Main Street Resilience, because those are CDBG funds, there's a lot that you have to do to document in programming the dollars that it's benefiting an LMI community and that you're doing certain other program requirements that you're checking those boxes. Yes, there will be an open call for businesses to support. Okay. We'd like to work with your office on that. Also, are you collaborating, communicating with the Community Lighthouse Program, NO-SIM, Get Lit, Stay Lit, when you talk about the solar panels and the backup batteries for those businesses? It's almost like you know the program design. We have not executed a sub-recipient agreement yet, but we almost certainly will be working together. Louisiana on the rollout of the Main Street Resilience Program. Okay, perfect. Yeah. Certainly no need to reinvent the wheel on borrowing on the expertise of those organizations. Same way I was thinking.

Absolutely. Deputy Mayor Laparola, would you like to talk about some of the infrastructure? As part of the executive orders, with respect to the two main corridors, we talk about we're committed rather to investments in infrastructure, right, as we want to attract business. But overall, beyond the corridor, throughout just New Orleans East, DPW has completed over 1,800 streetlight repairs since January and completed repairs on Old Gentilly Road near the NASA facility. There were three additional sinkage issues in that area that we're going to start working on this week. Is that this week? I think it's this week, sure. Do you want to go to the next one? Absolutely. 6700 Plaza Drive, the former RTA office building everyone's familiar with. The status of that is a demolition permit was issued, I think it was July 20th. That property was on the CAB agenda. The Willows Apartments sold to a new developer who's committed to creating a clean and safe environment. They're doing a complete renovation, they're moving, they may have all the residents out. They plan to move everybody out and repair, rather, renovate down to the studs on that property and they, along with Councilman Hughes, had a town hall that I participated in, a town hall meeting at Goretti just a few weeks back. Very nice people, one of them is a native of New Orleans and that's entirely a private investment and their plan's moving along. And actually, the sort of management firm that was engaged by the, I think by the trustee, was so impressed with these developers that that firm is staying on in, I think, a property management function. And what that representative stated at the town hall was the first time he'd seen a situation where the private developer put, I think it was $50,000 committed to help with the moving folks, helping them with their relocation expenses. That's awesome. Deputy Mayor Laparuluri, I just want to thank you for your commitment to New Orleans East and your presence out there. Since it's announced that you're kind of the czar out in New Orleans East, I've just really been impressed by how serious you're taking that responsibility and your boots on the ground out there, so please continue that good work. On 6700 Plaza, do we have an expected date for the demolition? I don't know that we have a date for the demolition. We have heard from the property owner. Most recently, he told me he knows it would be more cost-efficient for him to handle the demolition. That's the latest I heard, so I don't have a date on the city side, but I can let you know. I'm just curious. Do you want to continue? Absolutely. Thanks, Rene. Just on the theme, I touched on some of this earlier, but the business retention is essential, obviously supporting the businesses in place, and we have some really amazing work. I saw Mr. Cook in the audience, I believe, earlier. We know that ENONAC and New Orleans East Matters and the Greater New Orleans East Business Alliance and others are working every day, and programs like the Facade Renew that Nora is doing and some of the other programs that we talked about around Main Street Resilience, those are designed to support our existing businesses. We also are very focused on bringing in outside investment, and so I already mentioned the Discovery Park solicitation that NASA just put out on the streets. We just had a call with them and NASA leadership yesterday. It's going to be open until November 20th, and we are hell-bent on making sure that we get nationalized on that 50-acre track that NASA, it's behind the fence. It can have aerospace, maritime, defense, all sorts of companies that we know can and should be in New Orleans. We're going to make sure that that's seen by all of them. We're very focused on that opportunity right now. There's a company called Vivace that has long been housed at NASA Michoud, and it's had actually two really exciting recent wins. One, a couple weeks ago, was selected by Textron, which is another New Orleans East major manufacturer and employer to manufacture defense vehicles for the Marine Corps. That was a very exciting announcement. On the commercial aerospace front last year, and this work is just ramping up, Vivace was selected by Starlab, which is the commercial successor to the International Space Station. They were selected by Starlab to manufacture major components, structural elements at NASA Michoud. That was a major coup, a major win. What it does, again, it's another market signal, another data point that the brand in New Orleans should be like, if you want to manufacture the most complicated machines in the world and also be able to get them to a spaceport and get them into space, New Orleans East is where you should be doing that. I think that the SpaceX announcement, what NASA Michoud and its tenants have been doing over time, we have everything in front of us with that. That, I think, is a really big win. We have to be our own cheerleaders and start telling these stories better. Absolutely. Then lastly, I already mentioned Louisiana International Terminal, the exciting announcement about their permit that they secured from the Corps last week. Just to give a sense from our colleagues at GNU Inc. and LED, this is a lot of the duck on a pond work of economic development. There are a number of prospects that we are regularly speaking to that are in the priority sectors that represent really large job and investment numbers. It's a sales funnel. These are site selection calls that we respond to. These are business retention relationships that we cultivate with our partners. You can see on the right-hand column of this slide, these focus sectors are the priority industries for the administration. It's what are laid out in the mayor's executive order and align with our vision for being a hub for commercial aerospace, for the future of energy, for food manufacturing, even for transportation and logistics and maritime. We have lots of prospects.

We're not going to land all of these, but these are all very real companies that we are actively courting for New Orleans East. You can see that if we landed every single one of them, which we won't, but if you landed every single one of them, it's a half billion dollars of investment that we're currently pursuing right now and over 1,600 jobs. We just wanted to share this. We'll update this list every quarter and share, hopefully, some successes. We'll have some good announcements, I'm confident, in the coming weeks, and then there are others that we'll just keep you all apprised of. All right. Well, I really appreciate you guys for coming today. Please keep us posted on the progress. We look forward to quarterly updates. Before we get into the public comment cards, someone is asking for updates on Lincoln Beach and Bayou Phoenix, if either of you can touch on those. Absolutely. Sure. I'll address Bayou Phoenix first. Very little I can say because it's being handled by the, really, a law with NORA. Everybody knows that a letter was sent with regard to compliance with the lease agreement and or the CEA. That's where that stands. Lincoln Beach is on schedule with regard to where we are in the design phase. The financing is in place, thanks in large part to this body, to break ground at the end of the year and to open the phase one elements by the end of next year, calendar year 2027. Thursday night at 6 at Joe Brown at the Recreation Center is a community meeting to report out exactly that. Things are on track for phase one development. Perfect. Thank you. All right. Any questions, comments from the days? I would just like to add, thank you all for the work that you're doing. I just want to tell you, Jeff, that quietly, UPS in New Orleans East is doing a tremendous investment at Dowman and Morrison. Did you all talk about it earlier? No, no. It's a great ... I just want to put that on the record so that people know that in addition to all of these projects, and that's why New Orleans East is so special in terms of its support of business and creation of jobs, there are some entities such as UPS that has been there 50 years, views this as the most important regional asset that they have, and they're investing significantly in it. Maybe they can come and talk one day, Councilman, about the investment that they're making and talk about why they're doing it. I know the story because it's in the district and I've gone there, but it's a great story about why New Orleans is a great place to do business. You're here. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Green. All right. We have Edward Parker. I don't know if you still want to come down on the Lincoln Beach in Bayou Phoenix, but you're welcome to come down if you want. Next, we'll have Jerry Cook. The main thing about that is we just wanted to... on top of the two projects, and to piggyback on the early amendments that you had as far as pay, thank you for doing that. And also, when it comes to tracking that, the Office of Supplier Diversity, from what I can understand, is also supposed to be involved in helping make sure that the people who are supposed to do the work on projects are doing that work. And from what I can understand, the office has been, well, does not have the same complement of employees to go check on these projects. Now I don't know whether that is true or not, but that is a rumor that we've had. So that Office of Supplier Diversity, and please, take a look at the disparity study, because that is a very important study that was done in this city a couple of years ago. And that disparity study definitely has to help our community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Parker. My team's going to get with Deputy Mayor Schwartz on that. But thank you for flagging it. Next up, Jerry Cook. Seems like you're a recipient of the Facade Program. No, I wasn't. But thank you guys this morning. I know you want to talk about it. Oh, denied. I do want to talk about that, yes. Thank you all for allowing me to come and speak this morning. Jerry Cook, I'm a CAB member with ENO-NOC, representing Bullard Park, as well as a business owner in the East, a member of the Greater New Orleans East Business Alliance, and the Economic Development Chair for New Orleans East Matters. Just coming today, I want to thank this team here as well, Renee and Jeff, and the council as well, for the great information that was shared today. I'm excited to see what's going on and what's going to happen in New Orleans, what's future to come. So thank you all for working hard on that. Thank you guys. We definitely need to share more of this information abroad with our community. And so I appreciate it. Now, if I can step back for a personal moment, again, I'm also a business owner, Jumpstart Child Development Center. My wife and I own that building, and it sits right there at 7700 Lake Forest Boulevard. Now, this facade program was written for that corridor. We're at the very cuffed of the beginning of Lake Forest, sit on a lot by ourself. So I can understand how it can be easily missed, thinking that Lake Forest starts at the next block. But I want just to take in consideration for future opportunities when NORA has these opportunities. So consider my building as part of Lake Forest, and that's the business right there that we have. Our daycare has been there since 2008. And so we want to continue it to grow as well and have the opportunity to take advantage of some of the programs that come out through the city. So I appreciate that. Thank you, guys. Got it. Thank you, Mr. Cook. Next up, we have Sage Michaels. And then the next person, I'm sorry, it's Osa Oga. Oh, Osa, sorry. Sage? Hey. Hello, everybody. Hey, thank y'all for the focus and investment in New Orleans East. I'm very excited. I really am, y'all. You know, just having this major investment in New Orleans East where it's rolling, not just on this parish, but connecting other parishes.

This intermodal connection really, really matters. So I look forward to that. So I'm excited about the real investments. The NORA Facade Renewal Program, Councilman Eugene Green, I'm with you. Second row is the front door of New Orleans East, Danzinger Bridge, Downman, and Shelf. These businesses banning Chevrolet, been there for a long time, and they're having troubles right now with a big, huge, ugly sign. In other cities, when you enter their major corridors, you see a big, beautiful sign. When you enter New Orleans East, it starts at Downman. And Downman connects to that New Orleans Lakefront Airport with Messina's. I appreciate the street development over there, but we got to match that. This is a Downman business organization that we can work with. But not only Downman, we got to look at Dwyer. When we talk about infrastructure, I understand y'all focus on street lights, but we got to talk about catch basins, sewage discharge, water leaks, and these leaks are causing these streets to be damaged all along Downman and Dwyer. We talk about that as well. We have famous businesses like UPS been there, Bunny Braid, Ace Hardware. These businesses, those front facades, can make a beautiful corridor from there. We have trees invested as well. So when we talk about the light business, let's make sure those go in those New Orleans East restaurants. We have plenty of beautiful restaurants doing great business out there. Let's tie them into that solar program to make sure Ty, Noah, Orleans Brothers, these are B-Suite, and everybody in New Orleans East, including the new breakfast place, get those businesses. So thank you. We also need a water study in New Orleans East, east of the industrial canal. So that's one disparity I think need to be addressed, that overall, we're going to invest in New Orleans East, make sure we invest in climate adaptation and flooding, and that way we'll see it done. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sage. Osa? And next up, we'll have Chris Lane. Osa, doing Apple Street. Really excited for the project that you guys are spearheading. You know, looking at the study and looking to other studies that have been produced in tandem, maybe not in tandem, it just looks awfully familiar with former Deputy Mayor of Economic Development Jenny Mayen's husband's company study, which does go very in-depth into a lot of the potential harms that this corridor could have, like increasing the watershed and worsening flooding. Furthermore, Energy created a study documenting the wages that will be created, and they seem to be not far above the minimum wage, $15 per hour. So I'm curious if you guys could maybe give some more evidence for higher career trajectories for the so-called corridor and district. Let's see. Do I have anything else? Also, given that New Orleans East has been historically disinvested in, in many cases been turned into a sacrifice zone, environmental pollution, all that stuff, the acreage, the trees, given the respiratory or the discrepancy or the disparity of respiratory illnesses in New Orleans East, I'm wondering if you all might be able to provide some evidence on how you plan on caring for the community in that regard. And what else is there? Something else. I'll get your email. I'll be sure to send you an email. Thank you. Chris Lane. Good morning, Council. My name is Chris. I live at 2500 Dauphine Street. I was really more interested in the different aspects, I think Sage had mentioned, kind of climate adaptation within this district. I know in terms of waste management, New Orleans has been lacking a recycling facility, a waste processing facility for since Hurricane Katrina, and that was one of the reasons why the EPA Swiffer grant didn't move forward was because of the alleged lack of processing. Given that waste management owns property here that's unzoned and they've been trying for decades to try to get a resource recovery facility, at least to try to get inroads and using their land, it would be nice to see some sustainability around solid waste in this particular area being centered with investment. If you look at Phoenix, they have a resource recovery innovation hub campus there, and I think if we're going to be talking about both climate adaptation, engineering, manufacturing, we should also be talking about the solid waste that's coming with the city and helping kind of develop the infrastructure for that. Along the discussion of hazardous waste, like anyone who's driven down Almonaster or Gentilly Road, there's a lot of companies there and landowners who are violating CERCLA, which is the Comprehensive Environmental Response Liabilities Act. And so just thinking about the amount of hazardous waste that's there and how this land that's going to be unearthed for development is going to be taken into account, where this waste is going, what are the environmental impact assessments that are going to be happening there, are there fines that the city could get from those landowners who are basically receiving illegally, unpermitted, not through LADEQ, cars, tires, other hazardous wastes, construction demolition debris, all of those things should be ‑‑ they should have been for years, like, accounted for, but I would say we really need resource recovery infrastructure, organics, construction demo, recycling, and for decades we've needed it. Thank you, Chris. Solid ideas right there. All right. That is all we have for today. I will make a motion to adjourn. Seconded by Council President Morrell. And we stand adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.