Construction Maison

The proposed return of a neighborhood grocery in the Lower Garden District got stuck in a zoning quagmire Tuesday (Aug. 22) with nearby residents generally welcoming the idea of a corner store but divided over how much leeway to give developers. Liz and Robby Blum bought the former Zara's grocery at 2042 Prytania St. in 2015 for $614,000 and have been trying to bring it back as an upscale grocery including a total renovation of the building.  Zara's operated as a grocery with alcohol sales, in conflict with the underlying residential zoning of the property. The store stayed open with a legal grandfathered status as a commercial use.  But the new owners lost the so-called "legal non-conforming" status while renovating the store and the property shifted to a residential zoning. The grandfathered status can be lost when a property stays vacant for six months.  Nicole Webre, a consultant for the property owners, told the City Planning Commission on Tuesday that ...

The Late Victorian period in the United States—roughly the last third of the 19th century—produced some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the history of Western civilization . It also produced some of the most hopeless slums. In response to the crisis of industrial cities, the modern discipline of city planning emerged . The tools of this new profession helped clean up many unhealthy aspects of urban industry , but also stifled some of the best innovations of Late Victorian urbanism . By the 1920s, planners in the industrial world had established the legal authority to promulgate land-use regulations, and over the next generation, they succeeded at slowing the construction of slum housing and segregating noxious industries from incompatible activities, such as housing and office space. Through some of the same devices, however, planners curtailed some positive features of 19th- century urbanism , including the rich variety of free- form industrial development and the adaptiv...