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Catalyzing Entrepreneurship Assets, Gaps, and Interventions for Areas Beyond the New Orleans Renaissance A Forward Cities Report by the New Orleans Research Advisory Council, researched and written by Richard Campanella, with special thanks to Summer Suleiman, Allen Square, Aaron Miscenich, Glen Armantrout, Matt Wisdom, Louis David, and Forward Cities co-founders Denise Byrne and Christopher Gergen. New Orleans, Louisiana, 2015.

CONTENTS

Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Introduction and Goals ............................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Definitions and Process ............................................................................................................................................................................ 4

Geography and History of Study Area ...................................................................................................................................................... 6

Baseline Socio-Economic Data .................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Assets and Gaps in the Current State of Entrepreneurism in Study Area ................................................................................................. 9

Asset/Gap: Existing Businesses, Missing Businesses ............................................................................................................................ 9

Asset/Gap: Social Capital, Fiscal Capital ............................................................................................................................................... 9

Asset/Gap: Nonbasic and Basic Sectors ............................................................................................................................................. 10

Asset/Gap: Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises ............................................................................ 10

Asset/Gap: Transportation Arteries, Reliable Public Transit .............................................................................................................. 11

Asset/Gap: Historicity and Proximity to Historic Core ....................................................................................................................... 11

Asset/Gap: Affordability, Rising Costs of Living ................................................................................................................................. 12

Asset/Gap: Flood Zones and Urban Risk ............................................................................................................................................ 12

Asset/Gap: Dillard University as Anchor Institution ........................................................................................................................... 13

Asset/Gap: Creole Culinary Heritage, Culinary Offerings ................................................................................................................... 14

Asset/Gap: Vocational Education and the Skilled Trades Heritage .................................................................................................... 14

Potential Interventions for Fostering Entrepreneurship in the Study Area ............................................................................................ 16

Co-Location of “Food, Food, Food” .................................................................................................................................................... 16

Cluster Strategy: Creation of a Visitable Destination ......................................................................................................................... 16

New Orleans Master Crafts Guild ...................................................................................................................................................... 17

Cluster Strategy for Light Industry, Artisan Product Manufacturing, and B2B Businesses ................................................................ 18

Overlay Districts ................................................................................................................................................................................. 18

Live/Work Zoning ............................................................................................................................................................................... 20

Short-Term Rentals, AirBnB, and the Sharing Economy ..................................................................................................................... 20

Unbundled Procurement for Neighborhood DBEs ............................................................................................................................. 21

Entrepreneurial Ombudsman ............................................................................................................................................................ 22

Restrained Regulatory Environments and One-Stop Licensing .......................................................................................................... 22

Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 23

Appendix: Organizational Inventory ....................................................................................................................................................... 24

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Forward Cities report explores and recommends specific interventions toward fostering entrepreneurial activity while avoiding gentrification in a selected neighborhood in New Orleans. Working with a wide array of community advocates and entrepreneurs, members of the Forward Cities New Orleans Research Advisory Council selected in early 2015 a study area that boasted sufficient potential and momentum, yet that lay outside the current or soon-to-be “renaissance spaces” of the post-Katrina city. In the ensuing months, we explored, researched, mapped, and analyzed socio-economic data in the 2.5-mile area, and interviewed stakeholders in its commercial, civic, nonprofit, academic, and government sectors. Analyses aimed to identify assets and opportunities conducive to a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well as gaps and deficiencies, and proceeded to propose ten potential interventions. After debates and discussions with stakeholders at year’s end, council members decided to recommend pursuing and implementing the following interventions in the next phase of the Forward Cities effort:

(1) Formalizing the Informal Economy, through techniques such as the easing of permitting processes, simplifying paperwork, providing tax advice, greenlighting use of residencies as workplaces, streamlining of bureaucracy for microbusinesses, microfinancing, and ombudsmen support; (2) Empowering the Dillard University Film Program to aid film-based enterprise development by students of this HBCU, in an era when Louisiana ranks among the most popular states for film production and digital media; (3) “Food, Food, Food,” an effort to promote food-based enterprises in a neighborhood that is—or should be—world famous for its Creole culinary heritage. These opportunities may include eateries, retail, wholesale, at-home preparation, catering, food processing, stall markets, destination food courts, and traditional restaurants and luncheons.

INTRODUCTION AND GOALS

This investigation seeks to understand and improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a neighborhood which lies at the heart of New Orleans society—but at the margins of the city’s post-Katrina “renaissance.” It does so by studying the area’s history, geography, culture, and economy; by spatially analyzing its assets and gaps through detailed maps, field surveys, and interviews; and by proposing specific interventions toward a broader, more inclusive, and less disruptive brand of revitalization.

This work is supported by Forward Cities, a national learning collaborative launched in 2014 endeavoring to help “local innovators connect with one another as they take on the challenge of increasing entrepreneurial activity…in

disconnected communities.” 1 With support from national donors such as the Case Foundation and Aspen Institute, Forward Cities operates by organizing consortia of leaders, entrepreneurs, and citizens in four comparable American cities and, using a consistent set of goals and investigative rubrics, guiding them to explore and improve their entrepreneurial ecosystems through cross-city learning. To this end, Forward Cities’ two key tactics are the formation of local advisory councils “to ensure local input and ownership by the key stakeholders and donors in that city's ecosystem,” and the launching of a mapping and research component, which this report represents.2

The cities include Cleveland, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; Detroit, Michigan and New Orleans, Louisiana, all of which have historically experienced economic booms followed by declines and, more recently, sporadic revival as well as upheaval. New Orleans offers an extreme case within this cross-city collaboration, given the massive trauma of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina deluge and the unevenness of the ensuing recovery. Financial contributions made specifically for the New Orleans work come from Entergy, Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, and the Foundation for the Mid South.

The goals of this investigation may be captured in the following guiding question, complete with its four conditional statements: How may we foster local entrepreneurial activity which (1) produces sustainable fiscal, human, and/or social capital in (2) spaces at the margins of New Orleans post-Katrina-recovery renaissance, (3) among peoples not proportionally represented in the archetypal renaissance scene, (4) without precipitating gentrification, displacement, and neighborhood upheaval?

Parsing the above directive, readers will note that condition #4 makes all prior ones that much more challenging, but also more pressing. Many cities over the past twenty years have discovered the “creative class”3 and striven to attract young educated knowledge workers through the tax-incentivized housing development, “up-zoning” of inner-city residential areas to make space for the new units, and municipal marketing aimed at real estate renovation and reinvestment in areas that previously experienced divestment. What has resulted is a remarkable rediscovery of the inner city, particularly by younger generations reared in the suburbs and exurbs by parents and grandparents who had fled urban areas decades prior. Their skill sets have attracted employers

1 Christopher Gergen and Denise M. Byrne, “Welcome to Forward Cities,” http://www.forwardcities.org/features/welcometoforwardcities.aspx , visited June 29, 2015. 2 Internal document titled FORWARD CITIES: A National Learning Collaborative Among Cities of Innovation, 2014. 3 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Perseus Book Group, 2002.

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and capital, and their creativity and verve have turned deteriorating arteries and crumbling buildings into entrepreneurial hotspots and fashionable addresses.

We now know how to do this brand to revitalization quite well, and its fruits may be found in all four Forward Cities sites as well as most American metropolises. In post-Katrina New Orleans, well-educated newcomers have established themselves in and near the urban core, in both their residential and work locations, and have injected new rigor and excitement in this downtown area. While their numbers are relatively small, their impact on the city (and the perception of the Katrina recovery) has been outsized. Quite often, flattering national media representations of New Orleans’ unexpected postdiluvial renaissance focuses on this group, and hard data—in the form of national business rankings and economic statistics—seem to back up the narrative that certain portions of New Orleans, and certain New Orleanians, are doing quite well. To wit, the rate of individuals in greater New Orleans starting their own businesses has more than doubled during 2004-2011, from 218 per 100,000 adults to around 500, and has remained well above the national average of 280 to 300.4 Idea Village co-founder Tim Williamson described the new New Orleans as “the Third Coast for entrepreneurship”—a riff on the fact that the vast majority of venture capital gets invested on the other two coasts—and cited evidence that the New Orleans renaissance is no myth:

New Orleans is 56 percent above the national average in the number of startups-per-capita (The Data Center). We've been called America's No. 1 Biggest Brain Magnet (Forbes), the No. 2 Best City for Women in Technology (SmartAsset.com), one of the 20 Hottest Startup Hubs in America (The Kauffman Foundation), No. 7 on the Most Inspiring City in the World list (GOOD Magazine) and the "Coolest Startup City in America" (Inc.com). In May, Steve Case, Co-founder of AOL said, "I think New Orleans is poised to reemerge as one of the great startup cities in the country, maybe even the world."5

Injecting outside human and fiscal capital into areas of divestment, in sum, has proven to be highly effective in catalyzing urban revivals. But it comes at a cost, as it is capable of traumatizing the working-class denizens of those areas, who oftentimes find themselves priced out of their own neighborhoods, displaced from their social spaces, appropriated of their neighborhood culture and language (revitalization is often accompanied by changes in neighborhood names), and excluded from the new

4 Drawn from graph in report by Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015. 5 Tim Williamson, “Let's Make New Orleans the Hub for Entrepreneurship by 2018,” NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune, July 17, 2015.

downtown economies. “We have this incredible economic growth that’s happening,” said one informant on St. Claude Avenue, “but we are also sacrificing the things that make it beautiful.”6 Indeed, the very divestment that afflicted these areas in the 1960s-1990s came to be viewed as a bargain in the 2000s-2010s, and their affordability became drivers for their transformation. In one 2015 study by SmartAsset.com, for instance, analysts ranked the nation’s “Top Ten Cities for Creatives” by calculating the per-capita number of people in 28 creative professions, including designers, artists, and architects, and weighted it by that city’s affordability, in which “any city with a cost of living that is 85% of the national average or lower scored a perfect 100 for affordability…”7 In other words, the lower cost of living on which lower-middle-class locals depend becomes a driver in gauging an area’s attractiveness as a transformation target. “The rate of change in the neighborhood has been helpful. You have lots of wealthy young folks coming in [and] spending money. [But] I have mixed feelings about it… [Incoming entrepreneurs] should consider the social, political and economic impact of what they’re doing. They should think about the broader picture when they’re deciding on suppliers, location, where they’re taking money from and who they’re hiring. It’s really, really difficult; we have devalued social impact and only valued monetary impact.” —entrepreneur on St. Claude Avenue interviewed by Summer Suleiman, July 2015 Trends like this have made “gentrification” among the most disputatious words in the discourse of urban affairs, especially in postdiluvian New Orleans, and it draws attention to the fact that the New Orleans renaissance has been socially and spatially circumscribed. The rest of the city, flooded or otherwise, struggles with near-national-highs of everything from poverty rates to crime rates. (Incidentally, the #1 City for Creatives, according to the aforementioned study with its affordability-based methodology, was New Orleans—and by a substantial margin.)

Thus, while we know well how to do creative-class-style revitalization, we are less adept at broadening the participation in this American success story. That broadening would need to include underrepresented groups and minimize the deleterious effects upon working-class populations that occur when affordability is viewed as “slum opportunity,” as the late geographer Neil Smith put it.8 Per-capita numbers of minority business enterprises (MBEs) fall

6 Interview, anonymous St. Claude Avenue entrepreneur, by Summer Suleiman, July 31, 2015. 7 Nick Wallace, “The Top Ten Cities for Creatives,” July 7, 2015, https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-top-ten-cities-for-creatives , visited July 23, 2015. 8 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge Press, 1996.

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well below minorities’ share of the total population: in 2007, minorities comprised 43 percent of the population of the greater New Orleans metro area but 27 percent of its businesses—and a scant 1.9 percent of total receipts, implying that the vast majority of MBEs were microenterprises. “[P]articipation parity for MBEs in the robust entrepreneurship ecosystem of New Orleans,” concluded the authors of a recent study, “has not changed significantly from pre- to post-Katrina.”9

Entrepreneurship is challenging for any one individual, and it’s nearly as difficult for local societies to create optimal conditions for entrepreneurship to flourish. Hardest of all, perhaps, is for societies and local government to catalyze entrepreneurship without also triggering gentrification. It may even seem paradoxical: said one frustrated entrepreneur on St. Claude Avenue, where he is experiencing both success and criticism, “[it’s] damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” 10 But American cities abound with examples of neighborhoods which “gentrified in place,” through the gradual economic rise of the local population rather than the importation of empowered outsiders. The raw material already exists: as the authors of the previously cited study pointed out, “metro New Orleans is currently number one in the nation in the rate of self-employment among African-Americans, at 17.4 percent.” More so, nearly 90 percent of the DBE respondents to the study’s survey questionnaires indicated “they became entrepreneurs because they saw business opportunities,” not because of “discouragement by low wages and/or institutional resistance to hiring people of color.” 11 The city in general and this neighborhood in particular are also known for having a substantial informal economy (known as “the hustle” in the local vernacular) which includes everything from food preparation to landscaping, to auto-repair and music-making to vending at second-line parades. Many of these microenterprises have the potential to come out of the shadows and become legitimate if permitting and other barriers were adjusted appropriately.

“Metro New Orleans is currently number one in the nation in the rate of self-employment among African-Americans, at 17.4 percent.” --McCline et al, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans”

9 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015. 10 Interview, anonymous St. Claude Avenue entrepreneur, by Summer Suleiman, August 3, 2015. 11 Drawn from graph in report by Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

DEFINITIONS AND PROCESS

Definitions

Forward Cities defines “entrepreneur” as “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise that translates an idea or invention into a good or service which creates value or for which customers will pay.” “Enterprise,” meanwhile, is understood as “an individual effort, a nonprofit organization, or for-profit business;” thus for this study, someone running a sustainable nonprofit promulgating a valuable idea would qualify as an entrepreneur, regardless of revenue generation. More commonly, however, the typical entrepreneur envisioned here would take the form of a person or persons launching and managing a small business.

The word “innovation” occurs frequently in the lexicon of urban revival and community development, as well as in Forward Cities’ founding documents, which define it as “an idea that involves deliberate application of information, imagination and initiative in deriving greater or different values from resources to satisfy a specific need in a way that is replicable at an economical cost.” By extension, “social innovation” is “an innovation focused on addressing a social problem.” Innovation and innovative entrepreneurism may well be the engine room behind technological progress and wealth-creation. But they are also relatively rare, and usually require larger numbers of deeper reserves of capital (fiscal capital, human capital, etc.), and draw from larger population pools more likely to yield specialized talents. Prioritization for innovative entrepreneurism thus tends to involve tactics designed to attract outsiders with outside resources, which in turn are more likely to trigger upheaval in local neighborhoods. For this reason, the standard of success for this investigation is simply the launching and sustaining of for-profit or nonprofit enterprises which bring beneficial services, products, jobs, and/or capital to neighborhoods, regardless of its size or whether its offerings are pioneering, brilliant, or innovative. (One could argue any entrepreneurial effort that survives in an environment with an 80-percent failure rate is necessarily innovative.) A new roofing business employing local workers, or a new mom-and-pop corner grocery serving local needs, would quality in this study as “success stories,” as much as a new digital media firm or artisanal industry.

On the “Intelligent Evolution” of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Advocates for entrepreneurship borrow a concept from the biosciences—a healthy ecosystem—to herald the importance of habitat and resources in both economics and ecology. Economist Daniel Isenberg, who pioneered the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the early 2010s, argues that six broad domains drive rigorous entrepreneurship within a specific space:

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a conducive culture, enabling policies and leadership, availability of appropriate finance, quality human capital, venture-friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports.12

Isenberg maps these six domains amid a larger framework of key elements and drivers in the graphic Domains of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.

Historic New Orleans abounded with bustling industry districts, and while no one called them entrepreneurial ecosystems, they formed enlivened spaces of economic opportunities (at least for the empowered segment of the population) whose whole was greater than the sum of its parts. A banking district, for example, formed around the intersection of Royal and Conti streets in the French Quarter; cotton merchants clustered around Carondelet and Gravier in what is now the Central Business District; wholesale grocers operated on Tchoupitoulas at Poydras in what we now call the Warehouse District; sugar and rice traders dominated the upper French Quarter riverfront; theaters concentrated around Canal and Baronne; and anything involving the printed word could be found on Newspaper Row on 300 Camp Street, New Orleans’ original media district.13 More to the goals of our project, the French Market and most other municipal marketplaces—the system had 34 units at its peak in 1911, the largest per-capita in the nation—formed amazing examples of diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems, where men and women (most of whom were immigrants and/or people of color) found low-capital, easy-entry opportunities to own their own businesses in the form of a stall inside an open-air pavilion. So robust were these hotspots of commerce that other entrepreneurs opened businesses adjacently to take advantage of the foot traffic, among them restaurants and eateries, to serve hot food to customers and vendors; retailers and service businesses such as cobblers and tailors, and local banks, where venders deposited their daily earnings—or obtained financing for their entrepreneurial ventures. While the markets are long gone, these century-old businesses clusters remain in the cityscape today in the form of commercial land-use zones, which were delineated and codified by planners in the 1920s.

Modern-day business clusters along Magazine Street, in Mid-City, in Tremé, and even in our study area around the recently restored St. Roch Market, can all be explained by the historic economic

12 Daniel Isenberg, “Introducing the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Four Defining Characteristics,” Forbes, May 25, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danisenberg/2011/05/25/introducing-the-entrepreneurship-ecosystem-four-defining-characteristics/ , visited July 11, 2015 13 Richard Campanella, “Remembering Newspaper Row,” Preservation in Print Magazine, September 2012. For more on this phenomenon, see the author’s Time and Place in New Orleans: Past Geographies in the Present Day (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002) and Bourbon Street: A History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).

geography of old public markets—and all of them today, to greater and lesser extents, can be described as entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Isenberg ponders whether entrepreneurial ecosystems are products of nature or nurture. That is, do they arise organically courtesy individual creativity amid free-market forces, or are they products of specific decisions and policies? The case of the old municipal markets shows that both the public and private sectors played key roles, with local government providing space, centrality, a legal and administrative framework, and infrastructure (water, sanitation, etc.), while private entrepreneurs, including the farmers, fishermen, and hunters who supplied the stall owners, did everything else. To the question of whether entrepreneurial ecosystems “evolve naturally, or can we intelligently design them,?” Isenberg responds:

They are usually the result of intelligent evolution, a process that blends the invisible hand of markets and deliberate helping hand of public leadership that is enlightened enough to know when and how to lead as well as let go the grip in order to cultivate and ensure (relative) self-sustainability.14

Process

This study gathers baseline data through two main channels: (1) via mapping and interpreting comprehensive economic and demographic data from city and federal sources, and (2) via interviews, field surveys, research, observations, and interactions with key actors. Both require that a specific study area be selected.

On February 25, 2015, members of the New Orleans Research Advisory Council convened to discuss, debate and select a study area. We agreed we wanted to target an area with sufficient potential and momentum, yet that lay outside the current or soon-to-be “renaissance spaces.” Given this criteria, we considered but declined places such as Freret Street (already booming), South Claiborne Avenue (lots of new businesses recently), North Claiborne (Tremé is already grappling with gentrification, and the status of the I-10 overpass is uncertain), North Rampart/St. Claude (already booming), Broad Street (about to boom), Galvez Street around the Canal intersection, Canal Street lakeside of Claiborne Avenue, and Tulane Avenue (all of which will benefit from the new University Medical Center), and St. Claude Avenue in the Lower Ninth Ward (already the subject of immense amounts of ongoing research.) We narrowed down the nominees to St. Bernard Avenue, Franklin Avenue, Elysian Fields at Gentilly Boulevard and Gentilly in front of Dillard, LaSalle/Simon Bolivar, New Orleans East, and Algiers-

14 Danieal Isenberg, “Introducing the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Four Defining Characteristics,” Forbes, May 25, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danisenberg/2011/05/25/introducing-the-entrepreneurship-ecosystem-four-defining-characteristics/ , visited July 11, 2015

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Meyers-DeGaulle on the West Bank. After much discussion, we decided to forego New Orleans East as a second study area in favor of a single larger contiguous study area which integrated a series of interconnecting commercial clusters: the commercial and industrial zones of the central Seventh and Eighth wards, from Franklin Avenue to Gentilly Boulevard to St. Bernard Avenue to North Claiborne Avenue, plus business clusters therein. The fact that this study area contains an institution of higher learning (Dillard) made it all the more appealing.

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY OF STUDY AREA

Our study area straddles an imperceptible but hydrologically significant topographic bowl, with the highest lands on the river-side (south) along St. Claude Avenue, roughly 2-3 above sea level; the second-highest lands along Gentilly Boulevard to the north (1-2 feet above sea level); and lower lands to the west and especially the east (downriver), where terrain drops to -4 and -5 feet below sea level. While this elevation range might seem slight, in a deltaic city like New Orleans it is highly consequential, because it meant that, prior to the installation of the modern municipal drainage system in the 1890s-1900s, most of this basin comprised backswamp undevelopable since the founding of the city.

Established in 1718 by the French, governed by the Spanish after 1769, and reacquired by the French and sold to the United States in 1803, New Orleans saw its population double roughly every fifteen years throughout the antebellum age, 1803-1861. The city’s footprint expanded accordingly, but because of the swampy environment, it was restricted almost exclusively to the higher, drier terrain closer to the Mississippi River and its distributary ridges. One by one, plantations of sugar cane and rice immediately outside the original city of New Orleans (today’s French Quarter) were converted from agrarian to residential and commercial land use.

Our study area underwent this conversion starting in 1805, when Bernard Marigny had his plantation immediately below Esplanade Avenue subdivided as the Faubourg Marigny, and proceeded through the 1810s-1830s, when adjacent plantations in today’s Bywater were platted with streets, surveyed into blocks, and developed with houses. The rear portions of each of these new neighborhoods were lower in elevation and muddier in their soils, and thus tended to be delayed in their development, lacking in their amenities, and poorer in their economic and demographic circumstances. In time, they would gain the names Faubourg Noveau Marigny (New Marigny) and St. Roch, and after 1852, when jurisdictional lines were redrawn, they became, and remain, the Seventh and Eighth wards. New Orleans’ wards were originally designed for the purposes of political representation, but after 1912, their main purpose became to

organize balloting. Today, New Orleanians vote by ward and precinct, and although their council members are elected within decennially adjusted council districts, wards retain cultural significance as spatial references and neighborhood monikers. This is very much the case in our study area.

Throughout the 19th century, the study area occupied the margins of the city—the “back of town,” a phrase still heard today—and their inhabitants tended to be at the margins of local society: poorer, more likely to be of African ancestry, more likely to be immigrant, and less likely to speak English. Black and white francophones with roots in the colonial era (generally known as Creoles), Irish and German immigrants who arrived in the 1820s-1850s, African-American emancipated peoples who migrated to the city after the Civil War, and more recent immigrants from Sicily, Croatia, and throughout the Mediterranean and Caribbean basins, plus smaller numbers of Anglo-American anglophones, constituted local society. Many of black Creoles were descendants of the gens de colouer libre (free people of color) and worked as skilled tradesmen specializing in the building crafts.

The drainage system installed at the turn of the 20th century allowed new subdivisions to be built throughout the study area and across Gentilly Boulevard into modern-day Gentilly and to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. But by draining the backswamp and removing storm water, the system also lowered the water table, dried out the soils, and allowed them to drop below sea level, making them prone to flooding. Most of Gentilly, as well as the study area, subsided below sea level. Because Gentilly was developed with modern auto-friendly subdivisions, it became a fashionable residence for the upwardly mobile white middle class, who departed the older neighborhoods in the heart of the study area and settled into houses with explicitly racist deed covenants preventing sale or rental to black families. Our study area, on the other hand, remained fairly well integrated in the early to mid-20th century, with whites predominating closer to the river and African Americans further inland. Most residents, despite their differences, shared a common working-class economic strata as well as local cultural commonalties, so many having been born and raised locally. Period photographs of the commercial arteries of the study area show a robust economy of door-to-door locally owned shops serving local customers who mostly arrived on foot or via public transportation. By no means was opportunity evenly distributed, but relatively speaking, the area boasted a fairly healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Divestment began with the public school integration crisis of 1960-1961, which triggered a wholesale departure of white families from New Orleans, particularly the working-class 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th wards of the lower section of the city. Some settled in St. Bernard Parish; others moved westward or across the river to Jefferson Parish. They took their fiscal capital with them, leaving behind diminished spending, sales

7th-8th

Wards

Study Area• 2.5 square miles

• 7 commercial clusters

• 20,059 residents

• 88% African American

• almost entirely flooded by Katrina

• $27,619 median household income, 25% below city median of $37,146

• 26% poverty rate

• 612 licensed business

• 21 city-registered Disadvantaged Business Enterprises

1948: Rampart at St. Bernard

Photos from the collection of Richard Campanella, courtesy NOPSI/Entergy.

1948: St. Claude Avenue

1961:Gentilly Boulevardat Elysian Fields

Neighborhood entrepreneurship

A TransformingSt. Claude Avenue

Photographs by Richard Campanella May 2015

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tax revenue, and land values—which in turn yielded lower real estate taxes. What ensued, from the 1960s through the turn of the 21st century, was a wholesale centrifugal shift of wealth and power outwardly, coupled with a centripedal (inward) movement of poverty and all its affiliated pathologies.

When Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005 and ruptured levees and floodwalls, four decades of deterioration exacerbated inestimably within the span of a few hours. Because our study area is contained within one contiguous hydrological basin, flood levels reflected precisely the aforesaid topographic patterns: higher lands and shallower flood depths occurring along the perimeters (especially St. Claude Avenue, which mostly evaded the deluge), and lower lands and deeper flooding—upwards of 7 feet—happening in the core, along Elysian Fields and Franklin avenues. Most of the study area remained empty of residents and silenced in its economic activity for the rest of the year.

Fast-forward ten years, and a stunning turnabout has occurred. Over $70 billion federal dollars have poured into the city, plus insurance and other moneys, while a rebuilding boom helped lower regional unemployment rates to levels well below that of the nation in the throes of the Great Recession. The gripping narrative of the Katrina catastrophe and the exciting opportunity of the recovery, meanwhile, attracted educated young progressives to the city—by the thousands in 2005-2007, and by the tens of thousands later by the 2010s. The newcomers fell under the city’s legendary spell and, so enthralled, gravitated to the city’s iconic historical districts—which not only exuded history, culture, and beautiful architecture, but sat on higher ground and evaded Katrina’s destructive surge. Innovative, entrepreneurial, outspoken, and civically engaged, the newcomers moved into old neighborhoods, fixed up houses, breathed new life into the city’s night scene, enthusiastically participated in cultural traditions and started new ones, and most importantly for our purposes, started new businesses and infused the local economy and society with new vitality. Observers inside and outside the city spoke of a renaissance in the postdiluvial city, and that zeitgeist was abetted by a renewed sense of civic spirit among locals, not to mention the New Orleans Saints’ 2010 Super Bowl victory. The completion of a much-improved $14.5 billion Hurricane Storm Surge Risk Reduction System by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2011 complimented the renewed confidence in the city, with its heightened levees and floodwalls, storm-surge barriers, and enormous gates and pumps.

The renaissance is real; New Orleans in the 2010s has indeed witnessed a resurgence in spirit, in investment, in civic activity, in entrepreneurism and innovation, and in real estate value. But it has also been spatially and demographically bounded: most of the stellar storylines emanate from the historic core, and most of the prospering parties are

members of the better-educated half of the population. Those not participating in the renaissance are disproportionately native-born, minority, without a college or even a high-school degree, and living in neighborhoods like our study area—with the key exception of the higher, drier, older, river-side flank along St. Claude Avenue near fashionable Bywater.

Extending Bywater-style revitalization into the heart of the study area will bring its successes into the heart of the Seventh and Eighth wards. It may also bring the sort of neighborhood upheaval which has embroiled communities along the St. Claude Avenue corridor, especially Bywater. Can we have the best of both worlds? Can the working-class residents of this area economically “rise in place” and gain the amenities enjoyed elsewhere, without suffering the deprivations of change?

BASELINE SOCIO-ECONOMIC DATA

This section establishes baseline data for the study area using city, federal, and other datasets dating from 2010-2015 (in every case, the latest available). These figures will allow for comparison and assessments if and when interventions are implemented in the future.

Neighborhoods The study area spans 2.5 square miles, or 1600 acres, and comprises primarily two “official” city neighborhoods (Seventh Ward and St. Roch) as well as the edges of Fairgrounds, Dillard, and Gentilly Terrace. While city authorities and urban planners emphasize these official neighborhoods—there are 73 of them city-wide—many of their names and limits tend to be bureaucratic constructs rather than perceptual realities embraced by actual residents.15 Locally-born people living in this area would be more inclined to call this area “the Seventh Ward,” while others on the downriver edge would use “Eighth Ward” and those closer to St. Claude Avenue “St. Roch” or “Bywater.” Those along Gentilly Boulevard would broadly refer to that area as “Gentilly.” At least five neighborhood associations operate in or near the study area: the Seventh Ward Neighborhood Center, Edgewoodpark Neighborhood Association, Esplanade Ridge/Treme Civic Association, Gentilly Sugar Hill Neighborhood Association, Pontilly Association, and St. Claude Avenue Main Street Association.

Demographics According to the 2010 Census (our most recent headcount, all subsequent population figures being city-level estimates), there were 20,059 people living within this 2.5-square-mile area. Because roughly 20 percent of the land is

15 Richard Campanella, “A Glorious Mess: A Perceptual History of New Orleans Neighborhoods,” New Orleans Magazine, June 2014 http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/June-2014/A-Glorious-Mess/

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zoned for nonresidential (commercial or residential) uses, we may say that the study area has a true population density of roughly 10,000 people per square mile (20,059 divided by 2.5 square miles X 80 percent residential). Those residents lived in 8,138 occupied household units, or 2.5 per household, while another 4095 units remained vacant.

Racially, the population was 88 percent African-American in 2010, compared to 60 percent citywide and 14 percent nationwide. The next-largest racial group was white, at 8 percent, and those 1606 residents mostly lived at the St. Claude-end of the study area. There were also 714 people who claimed Hispanic ethnicity, 79 who claimed Asian racial identity, plus 337 who denoted “other” and 321 who claimed multiple racial identities.

All these figures are now five years old, and we will not get accurate updates at a sufficiently high granularity (spatial resolution) until the next decennial census in 2020. Until then, it is reasonable to presume that the population of this area has increased commensurately with the rest of the city, by around 12 percent, during 2010-2015. If so, there are likely around 22,500 people now residing in this area. Racial proportions have likely persisted, with most incoming whites settling at the St. Roch/St. Claude end.

Socio-Economics This is a mostly working-class to lower-middle-class population with significant pockets of dispersed impoverishment, but by no means is it, or was it ever, the poorest section of the city. The study area’s medium household income (MHHI), which was only $22,227/year in 2000, had risen to $27,619/year by 2010, but remained 25 percent below the city median of $37,146. Fully 2142 households—26 percent of all occupied housing units—remained below the official poverty line, reporting earnings below $22,314 per year for a family of four or under $11,139 for individuals. High as this rate may seem, it matches the city’s poverty rate, testifying to the representativeness of the study area as well as the overall indigence of the city—a circumscribed renaissance indeed.

Schools While there are no public schools precisely within the study area, there are seven within a few blocks of its perimeter. One is a high school (McDonogh #35 College Preparatory School) and most others were pre-kindergarten through 8th grade, all of them chartered. They are Robert Russa Moton Charter School, McDonogh 35 Career Academy, Nelson Elementary School, Langston Hughes Charter Academy, A.P. Tureaud Elementary School, and the KIPP New Orleans Leadership Academy. Total enrollment in 2013 was 3689 pupils, of whom 97 percent were black (3560) and only 2 percent were white (80). The study area is home to a substantial under-educated adult population: in 2011, there were 998 people at least 25 years old who had a formal educational attainment at or below 8th-grade level.

Jobs In 2008, there were 3,397 jobs in or within 1000 feet of the study area (including Dillard University), of which 35 percent paid under $1250/month; 43 percent paid $1251-$3333/month; and 22 percent paid over $3333/month, most of this last group located at Dillard. These figures are seven years old now, and there has since been much transformation, particularly in the river-end of the study area, so it is reasonable to expect that the total number of jobs is now closer to 4000. As most of these jobs are in the service economy with low wages and minimal benefits, labor force participation is also relatively low. Nearly one out of every three persons over the age of 16 did not participate in the labor force in 2011.

Crime By any measure, the study area suffers high crime rates. In most quantitative metrics, the Seventh Ward usually ranks second only to Central City as New Orleans’ most violent neighborhood. This stigma would not quite apply to our study area, which extends beyond the official neighborhood known as the Seventh Ward, but there is no getting around the fact that a major concentration of the worst crimes occurs in the heart of our study area. Analyses by crime statistician and journalist Jeff Asher show that the Seventh Ward has averaged 39 shootings per year since 2011, one every nine days. (Central City had the highest, 42, while Bywater and Marigny, both adjacent to the study area, had two each. St. Roch, which straddles our study area and Bywater, had 21). When the data are normalized by population, the picture worsens: the Seventh Ward had the city’s highest per-capita shooting ratio, at 301 residents for every shooting since 2011. Lakeview, at the opposite end, had 8,607 residents per shooting.16 Similar statistics may be cited for non-gun violence.

The human tragedy of this violence, and its impact on children and other innocents, are topics of important discussions. Its impact on small business, too, cannot be ignored. One informant interviewed for this investigation, when asked the biggest hurdle to stating a business here, responded, “Safety is a big concern. Attracting workers is tough in this neighborhood, because of real and perceived crime issues.”17

Business Enterprises According to records obtained from the City of New Orleans’ Bureau of Revenue, 612 licensed businesses operated within the study area as of March 2015. Most are “local” by general definition, although those with larger workforces and (presumably) revenue flows, such as Loew’s and Walgreen’s, were usually national chains. Of the 612 businesses, 79 percent had mailing addresses in New Orleans, and another 12 percent had addresses in the metro

16 Jeff Asher, Introducing the New Orleans Neighborhood Gun Violence Index, The Advocate Blog Network: Behind the Numbers, August 7, 2015, http://blogs.theadvocate.com/behindthenumbers/ , visited August 12, 2015. 17 Interview, Hotard representative, interviewed by Louis David via email, July 2, 2015.

The study area’s 2010 population was 88 percent African-American (compared to 60 percent citywide) and 8 percent white, most of whom lived near St. Claude Avenue. There were also 714 people who claimed Hispanic ethnicity and 79 people who identified as Asian.

“This is a mostly working-class to lower-middle-classpopulation with dispersed impoverishment, but by nomeans is it, or was it, the poorest section of the city.”

“…the highest concentration of Section-8 vouchers are located squarely within the study area. However, there are relatively few opportunities for the other two forms of affordable living: Housing Authority (HANO) and Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units.”

Neighborhood geographies, neighborhood topographies…

“…there were 612 licensed businesses within the study

area… Most are “local” by general definition, although those with

larger workforces… were national chains.

Of the 612 businesses, 79 percent had mailing addresses in

New Orleans, and another 12 percent had addresses in the

metro area.”

Neighborhood capital, neighborhood business…

Social capital

Neighborhood problems, neighborhood possibilities…

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area. Eight percent (46) had out-of-state address, as far away as Connecticut and Idaho, and nine were from Georgia, the most.

The Bureau of Revenue data were not broken down by race or gender of owners, disallowing analyses along the lines of proportional representation. They were, however, categorized by their North American Industry Classification codes, allowing for sector analysis. NAICS codes were “developed [by] the Office of Management and Budget and adopted in 1997 [as] the standard used by federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments.” 18 For the purposes of this project, each of the 612 businesses, which fell into a total of 171 NAIC codes, were regrouped according to their similarities (for example, all automobile-related enterprises were aggregated). The chart Business Groupings Within Study Area, March 2015 illustrates that retail, service, blue-collar, and skilled-trade occupations account for the vast majority of area businesses, outnumbering professional businesses by at least one order of magnitude.

Most of these businesses represent the sort of entrepreneurial activity we wish to foster, in that they are mostly local; they employ local people; they create and circulate wealth in the neighborhood; and they satisfy local needs and wants without radically increasing real estate values and usurping the identity and character of the neighborhood. They, in essence, are the neighborhood, and the neighborhood and city would benefit if there were more of them. The good news is that 612 already exist.

ASSETS AND GAPS IN THE CURRENT STATE OF ENTREPRENEURISM IN STUDY AREA

ASSET/GAP: EXISTING BUSINESSES, MISSING BUSINESSES

By tallying businesses by their NAIC codes and comparing the most frequently occurring categories citywide to those within the study area, we can glean which sectors are over- or under-represented (gaps). In the graphic Top 30 Business Categories by NAIC Codes, City Versus Study Area, the arrows connect the most common NAIC codes in the study area (right, in red) with their respective citywide rankings at left (blue). Those arrows in green indicate business categories that are relatively more frequent in the study area compared to the rest of the city, whereas black arrows show the opposite. Gold boxes highlight relatively common citywide businesses which are relatively rare in the study area.

These data show the study area, as well as the city, abounds in bars and restaurants, and has at least a dozen other

18 U.S. Census Bureau, “North American Industry Classification System,” http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/ , visited July 7, 2015.

categories that are relatively more abundant than citywide. Notice also the gold boxes at center-left, which highlight businesses that are common citywide but scarce or absent in the study area. Focusing on the most socially and/or economically notable categories, these gaps include physicians and lawyers, general merchandise stores, and hotels and bed-and-breakfasts—an irony, given the surging popularity and high local potential for AirBnB-style short-term rentals through the sharing economy (more on this later).

ASSET/GAP: SOCIAL CAPITAL, FISCAL CAPITAL

Our study area boasts plenty of “third places,” such as barber shops, beauty salons, eateries, and drinking holes where neighbors may meet and interact and build social capital—that is, interconnections and networks between and among individuals, groups, and institutions.19 Add to this the many churches and other faith-based and civic institutions, not to mention front stoops, and the Seventh and Eighth wards are veritable havens for social and cultural capital.

Fiscal capital, however, is a different matter. To the extent that the number of storefront financial institutions reflect the financial capital available to that community, banks and similar institutions are strikingly absent from both top-30 lists. Only three traditional bank branches currently operate within the study area, one of which has long been located along the now-booming St. Claude Avenue. Another one, the minority-owned Liberty Bank, is currently constructing a branch on Gentilly Boulevard near Elysian Fields, which is a positive step. Most other businesses categorized or grouped as financial institutions may in fact be described as “predatory” in their loans and transactions.

Fiscal capital, particularly loans at reasonable interest rates and with a tolerance for risk, has been pointed out by informants as a key element in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Said one founder of a nonprofit which is missioned to help other nonprofits raise funds, “the two biggest challenges are lack of time and lack of money. And those two are directly related. It all goes back to the dollars in the bank.” 20 Concurred the authors of a recent study on the subject, “lack of access to capital has been a persistent complaint by [minority business enterprises] since the first report on the subject was done…in 1978.” The study found that roughly half of survey respondents “considered the lenders, investors, and other key players in the finance domain to be ‘moderately’ to ‘extremely’ helpful in accessing debt and equity capital,” and that one in five “has been helped by the

19 Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. New York: Paragon House (1989) 20 Interview, Nora Ellertsen, founder of The Funding Seed, by Summer Suleiman, July 31, 2015.

Domains of Entrepreneurial EcosystemsGraphic courtesy Daniel Isenberg

Business Groupings within Study Area, March 2015 Count General services 74 Auto sales, repair, taxi, and other auto-related 73 Building trades, construction related 67 Restaurants, eateries 47 Retail, all other and miscellaneous 46 Cosmetics, beauty, hair care 39 Bars and other alcohol 33 Clothing related 24 Convenience stores and/or gas 24 Food retail and related 20 Gambling 18 Professional services-medical, health 17 Professional services 15 Child care 14 Janitorial and landscaping 10 Real estate related 9 Social services, nonprofit 9 Home office 8 Schooling, training 8 Food trucks 7 Entertainment 6 Professional services-accounting 6 Professional services-STEM 6 Lending, loans 5 Pharmacy, drugs 5 Hospitality 4 Professional services-arts 4 Professional services-funeral 4 Professional services-legal; 3 Professional services-Communications; Professional services-Insurance; Sports 2 (each)

The 612 Businesses of the Study Area, Broken Down by NAICS Codes

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incubator programs in metro New Orleans.”21 Among the incubator programs active in the region are the Small Business Development Center, Operation Hope, PowerMoves.NOLA, Funding Seed, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program, Idea Village, Accion, New Orleans Startup Fund and the Good Work Network. As for traditional banking institutions, while branch offices need not necessarily be located within a given artery or neighborhood to serve an area, it helps that they are, and their presences signals local economic vitality. A bank branch sends a message to other financial institutions that money can be made from money in this space. While fiscal lacunas (“bank deserts”?) are detrimental, they may also point to opportunities waiting to be served.

“We didn’t have any money. Running a business is very hard. Managing people is very difficult. There’s no parking. I don’t have any experience. It’s difficult to maintain quality as you grow. But if you don’t, you’re going to lose all of your customers. Running out of [inventory]… People not showing up…. Air conditioning. We bought all used equipment, and we are constantly fixing it. We finally had to buy new equipment.” —entrepreneur interviewed by Summer Suleiman, when asked to identify three obstacles to his/her business.

The demise of a well-loved local grocery store at Elysian Fields and Gentilly Boulevard, offered by an informant interviewed for this investigation, may be viewed as a case study of fiscal limitations on local entrepreneurism. The store had been founded by resourceful immigrants and run by the same family for five generations, serving Gentilly residents for decades with basic foodstuffs and other necessities at affordable prices. It did so, however, by tolerating razor-thin profit margins. When the Katrina flood damaged the building and left the neighborhood largely empty in 2005, the high costs and low demand of the recovery era wiped out profits altogether, and the owners had little choice but to close. Today, a national-chain drug store occupies that same space, and while it too employs local people and serves local needs, it does not sell produce, much less at low prices, and profits go out-of-town to corporate headquarters. The local grocer’s willingness to persevere on slim profit margins made it vulnerable to a trauma and ultimately unsustainable,

21 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

whereas the national chain, drawing from deeper resources, was able to fortify itself against such risk.22

ASSET/GAP: NONBASIC AND BASIC SECTORS

A tremendous gap exists in the study area’s balance of “basic” versus “nonbasic” sector businesses. Basic-sector business, also known as export enterprises, are those that infuse outside money into the local economy by serving external clients. In New Orleans, basic-sector businesses include hotels, oil and gas, port activity, manufacturing, and digital media and filmmaking. Nonbasic or “traded” businesses, on the other hand, tend to local needs and mostly circulate local dollars. They include food stores, pharmacies, repair shops, day care, and retailers. 23 (Some businesses straddle the two sectors; for example, a gas station near I-10 might snag pass-through customers traveling across state lines, while a restaurant in the French Quarter may cater to a mix of local and out-of-town patrons.) Generally speaking, every one job in the basic sector produces two jobs in the nonbasic sector. Yet whether we look at the jobs in our study area, which are overwhelmingly service-industry positions, or the business groupings or NAICS codes shown above, we see the vast majority of dollars circulating in our 621 businesses—and in nearly all 30 NAIC categories—flow from local pockets to local pockets, within little outside infusions. This being a mostly residential neighborhood, we should not expect it to have a particularly high Base Ratio (that is, the ratio between basic- and non-basic sector workers), but the denominator of that ratio would benefit greatly if the numerator increased.

Every one job in the basic sector produces two jobs in the nonbasic sector. Our study area has extremely few basic-sector enterprises.

ASSET/GAP: INCLUSIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DISADVANTAGED BUSINESS ENTERPRISES

This project seeks to improve the productive capacity of the study area’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and given the social inequities of the city at large as well as the paucity of minorities and women among the ranks of entrepreneurs, it particularly prizes strategies that reverse the above under-representations. When we look at a map of the city’s officially recognized list of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, we see, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the geography of DBEs generally reflects the geography of entrepreneurism rather than the geography of disadvantaged populations. That is to say, most DBEs are located in the booming urban core,

22 Interview, Dr. Robert Collins, professor of urban planning at Dillard University, conducted by Richard Campanella, May 18, 2015. 23 Victor Roterus and Wesley Calef, “Notes on the Basic-Nonbasic Employment Ratio,” Economic Geography, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Jan., 1955), pp. 17-20; Arthur Getis, Judith Getis, and Jerome D. Fellmans, Introduction to Geography, Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007.

“The City of New Orleans officially recognizes 634 DBEs who quality for [government contracts] in the sectors of Professional Services, Construction, and Good and Supplies, and 21 of them are based within our study area.”

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particularly the CBD and the adjoining spaces of the post-Katrina renaissance.

The City of New Orleans runs the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises program through its Office of Supplier Diversity, which “oversees certification, compliance, training, outreach and capacity building for local, small and disadvantaged businesses…to help mitigate the effects of past and present social and economic discrimination by increasing the utilization of certified [DBEs] in the procurement of goods and services….”24 As of February 2015, the office had certified 634 DBEs in three sectors: “Professional Services,” such as accounting, legal work, and architecture (41 percent); “Construction” (36 percent), and “Good and Supplies” (23 percent), many of which are affiliated with construction work. While their certifications are with the city (or its agencies, such as the Sewerage & Water Board), their locations are scattered throughout the metro area and even nationwide. While 97 percent had mailing addresses within Louisiana, 12 DBEs were located elsewhere, five of them in Mississippi.

A total of 21 DBEs certified to do work with the city, or 3.3 percent of all city DBEs, had addresses within the study area, which is home to nearly 6 percent of the city’s population. The CBD, on the other hand, had 51 DBEs all within roughly one square mile, by far the city’s highest absolute and relative concentration. It is understandable, and perhaps strategically advantageous, that minority entrepreneurs tap into the same networks and social spaces occupied by their peers. But given the high office rent and limited affordable residential opportunities in the urban core, an opportunity exists for DBEs to establish their operations in more affordable environs like the Seventh and Eighth ward, especially since a substantial number of these businesses are home-based.

Region-wide, a gap exists between the supportive presence of the CBD-based entrepreneurial ecosystem and the needs of the more broadly dispersed DBE community. A survey conducted by McCline et al found that while “a majority of [minority businesses enterprises] tended to agree that there is a positive presence of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in metro New Orleans,” 40 percent of them did “not feel that MBEs are equitably supported as participants in this ecosystem.”25 Eighty percent of respondents were not even officially registered as DBEs, and a quarter of them were unaware that such a program existed. Respondents also indicated that the two policy domains which they ranked as “moderate” or “major” obstacles to their success were in the areas of Business Licensing and Permits (identified by 30

24 Office of Supplier Diversity, City of New Orleans, http://www.nola.gov/economic-development/supplier-diversity/ , visited July 8, 2015. 25 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

percent of DBE respondents) and Tax Administration (24 percent). On the positive side, roughly 75-85 percent reported that they had not encountered any obstacles in basic services (electricity, water, gas, and Internet) nor in labor relations.

ASSET/GAP: TRANSPORTATION ARTERIES, RELIABLE PUBLIC TRANSIT

Our study area is uniquely girded by five four-lane transportation arteries plus five major interchanges with Interstate 10 and Interstate 610. As such, it is among the best-accessed spaces within the metropolis, so much so that the Hotard Destination Services bus company stations its fleet on Touro Street in the heart of the study area. That area is also home to the Norfolk Southern-owned Back Belt railroad corridor, which provides a bypass for trains that do not need access to the Port of New Orleans courtesy the city’s Public Belt Railroad. These wide and well-connected transportation arteries, coupled with ample commercially and industrially zoned space along the railroad tracks, comprise a unique asset which can attract entrepreneurs in light industry, particularly in the food-processing and craft sector.

However well accessed the study area is for motor vehicles, roughly one-quarter of households do not have cars. Bus service here and elsewhere is notoriously erratic, and with the exception of the new streetcar line currently under construction along North Rampart-St. Claude along the river-side edge of the study area, no streetcars connect the downtown tourism circuit with study area businesses.

ASSET/GAP: HISTORICITY AND PROXIMITY TO HISTORIC CORE

A major intangible asset of the study area is its historicity and proximity to the city’s historic core. Its building stock, which includes some antebellum Creole cottages and numerous Victorian Italianate shotgun singles and doubles at the river-end, plus hundreds of circa-1920s-1930s Craftsman-style bungalows and Spanish Revival villas toward Gentilly Boulevard, exhibits the sort of walkable streetscapes and intimate urbanism increasingly sought after by suburb-weary Americans. It is also located within a short drive, and in some areas a long walk, of the French Quarter and the city’s most famous downtown neighborhoods.

However, in neither regard does our study area rank as a “superlative.” Adjacent neighborhoods—namely the Faubourg Marigny (established 1805), Faubourg Tremé (1810), and the neighborhood now known as Bywater, which comprises five faubourgs established between 1807 and the 1840s—are all older, more integral in their historical architecture, more famous, and closer to the French Quarter. Relatedly, they are also experiencing the most intense gentrification pressure, bringing with it renovation and new

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amenities as well as higher housing prices and cultural change.

Two types of official historic districts exist within the city. One is designated at the national level, through the Department of the Interior, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as “National Register Districts.” New Orleans is home to some of the largest urban National Register Districts in the country, and the study area contains two: the Edgewood Park Historic District on the Gentilly (north) end, and the New Marigny Historic District toward the St. Claude end (south). Despite the federal designation, National Register Districts are mostly honorary; they do not ensure against demolition, and their main power comes in the form of tax credits for historical renovation and special consideration vis-a-via federally funded projects.

It is the other type of designation, Local Historic Districts, which actually has “teeth” in city planning and land-use decisions. Overseen by the Historic Districts Landmarks Commission (HDLC), Local Historic District designation means the securing of a demolition permit is much more difficult, and special considerations are placed on new construction and renovation. Currently, only the buildings facing St. Claude Avenue, plus those across St. Bernard Avenue from the study area, are within Local Historic Districts (Faubourg Marigny and Faubourg Tremé, respectively), although it is likely that sometime in the not-too-distant future, Local Historic Districts might extended nearly to the I-10 corridor or even Florida Avenue.

ASSET/GAP: AFFORDABILITY, RISING COSTS OF LIVING

Data on median rent from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey show that the two census tracts at the heart of the study area had rents around $546-563 per month, plus or minus $104-$122, while most other tracts ranged between $650-$750 per month.26 This is roughly half the median rent of the CBD, Warehouse District, and Lower Garden District, and substantially cheaper than Tremé, Marigny, and Bywater—all of which have experienced gentrification and heightened increases in the cost of living in the five or so years since these data were collected. The Seventh and Eighth wards have experienced only a fraction of this rise, though rent here too consumes an increasingly large portion of residents’ monthly income, especially near St. Claude.

It is difficult to ascertain precisely how much house prices have changed in our study area because these data are aggregated by ZIP codes, of which there are four in our study area. Generally speaking, home prices here were roughly $80-

26 “Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks” online GIS of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data from 2008-2012, http://www.richblockspoorblocks.com/index.php , visited July 8, 2015.

90 per square foot prior to Katrina, versus $100-$120 in 2013 and $115-$130 in 2014. Said one informant who opened a business on St. Claude Avenue, “The prices of houses in the neighborhood have doubled. My sister bought a nice double here for $80,000 in 2009 and now it’s worth $250,000.” (His own business, not coincidentally, grew proportionally, so much so he increased his staff from two to 16 employees in one year.)27 While real estate values are definitely rising, and along with them tax appraisals and city property taxes, one could still buy a home in the study area for half the price of a comparable structure in the adjacent Faubourg Marigny, whose prices easily top $270/square foot.28

In terms of housing affordability, another asset boasted by the study area is its relatively large stock of Section-8 units, a house-based alternative for lower-income renters to living in a housing project. Maps by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center show that the highest concentration of two- and three-bedroom rentals that accept Section-8 vouchers for federally subsidized rents are located squarely within the study area, especially between St. Claude and Claiborne.29 However, there are relatively few opportunities for the other two forms of affordable housing: there are no Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) housing projects within the study area (although up to five are located within a one-mile radius), nor is there a substantial number of Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units. Those multi-family structures are mostly located along Tulane Avenue, Jefferson Davis Parkway, and other arteries.

Affordable real estate affects the health of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in two ways: it allows employees to live closer to work, and it means lower commercial real estate values and taxes, which reduces costs and increases profit margins. But these lower land values also attract developers and renovators, not to mention outside entrepreneurs, and while such investors bring ample benefits with them, they are also prone to instigating the very neighborhood upheaval this effort aims to avoid.

ASSET/GAP: FLOOD ZONES AND URBAN RISK

The study area benefits from an unexpected asset: despite being mostly below sea level—only the area between St. Claude and North Claiborne plus Gentilly Boulevard are above sea level—it mostly occupies the lower-risk FEMA “B” flood zone, which has a 0.2 percent chance of flooding in any given year. “A” zones, on the other hand, have a 1.0% chance of

27 Interview, anonymous, by Summer Suleiman, July 31, 2015. 28 Prices only include buildings repaired or undamaged by the flood. Katherine Sayre, “New Orleans Metro Area Home Prices Still Climbing,” NOLA.com|The Times-Picayune, February 25, 2015. 29 Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, “2009 Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) Opportunity Mapping Project,” http://www.gnofairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/NOLA_Section8_2bedroom1.jpg , visited July 8, 2015.

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flooding, and buildings in “A” zones must lie above a specified Base Flood Elevation and be certified by a surveyor before they are eligible for coverage in the National Flood Insurance Program and thus fundable for a mortgage by most lenders. Properties in “B” zones do not need elevation certificates to qualify for flood insurance, which adds not only to their safety but their value and marketability.

By no means does this imply that the study area is free of risk in terms of either Katrina-like surge deluges or rainwater inundations; nearly the entire area flooded in 2005, and its streets are prone to the same ankle-deep nuisance flooding that can occur anywhere depending on local drainage conditions. The hundred or so blocks straddling Florida around the Franklin intersection, which flooded deeply, are all within higher-risk “A” zones and lie three to five feet below sea level. What is unusual is that this area is one of the larger expanses of below-sea-level terrain in the metropolis that is nevertheless mostly in a more favorable “B” zone.30

ASSET/GAP: DILLARD UNIVERSITY AS ANCHOR INSTITUTION

It is clear from the maps in this report that the educational attainment of the resident population inhibits a key element of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, as it curtails the number and range of potential businesses that can be established locally and can find local workforces. Metro-wide, an “inadequately educated/trained general workforce” ranked as a serious obstacle to business success among minority business enterprises, with more than one out of every three respondents in a recent study describing it as a “moderate” or “major” obstacle, the highest of all measured.31

A key asset for fostering entrepreneurship in the study area is Dillard University. This Historically Black College or University (HBCU) was the product of a 1920s merger of two predecessor institutions of the Methodist tradition, one of which dated to the early postbellum era. Trustees moved the institution to its present-day 55-acre campus on Gentilly Boulevard in 1931 and proceeded to build gracious Classical-style buildings amid green lawns and live oak trees. Dillard today has an enrollment of 1200 undergraduates in four schools: College of General Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Business, and the School of Nursing, and the most popular majors include, in descending order, Biology, Public Health, Pre-Nursing, Nursing, Business Administration, Psychology, Mass Communication, Sociology, Music, and Political Science. The university “ranked No. 13 among all HBCUs in 2014 U.S. News and World Report's Best

30 For precise boundaries of FEMA flood zones in the city, see FEMA Risk Maps, http://maps.riskmap6.com/LA/Orleans/ 31 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

College Rankings, [and] ranked in the top 60 among all liberal arts colleges by Washington Monthly in 2013.”32

Dillard has the potential to serve as an anchor institution and pipeline for young local college-educated entrepreneurs to incubate business ideas on campus and launch them into the adjacent neighborhood. University President Walter Kimbrough speaks of “signature programs in physics and film,” the latter of which could serve as a pipeline into the state’s burgeoning digital media marketplace.33 Dillard can also serve as a landlord for innovation centers or laboratories that need the human resources and infrastructure of a four-year accredited institution of higher learning. Dillard, however, is primarily missioned for teaching, and does not have a graduate program. Without the technical facilities associated with a research-missioned university and the specialized skillsets and career focus of graduate students, an institution of higher learning is limited in its ability to be a local entrepreneurial catalyst.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina and during an earlier school administration, Dillard cast its eyes toward the surrounding neighborhoods, and at one point considered making land acquisitions in the nearby commercial district at Gentilly Boulevard/Elysian Fields, possibly for small business development. But the 2005 flood understandably shifted its focus back to the sustainability of the institution and the needs of its student body. Dillard nonetheless remains engaged with its neighbors: the university runs an Office of Community Relations funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), although it mostly focuses on community organizing, homeowner capacitation, housing issues and job training rather than entrepreneurship and small business development. Dillard also ran a community development corporation, and while its signage can be seen in and around the adjacent neighborhoods, the CDC is not currently active.34

It is worth noting that Dillard’s peer institutions, including Delgado Community College, Loyola University, and the other local private HBCU, Xavier University, operate a collaborative partnership funded by the Small Business Administration called the Louisiana Small Business Development Center—Greater New Orleans and Bayou Region. LSBD provides assistance in writing business plans, acquiring financing, sales and marketing, management, taxes and insurance, among other services, and although based in Metairie, the organization extends its services to the study area and could benefit from a relationship with Dillard.35

32 Dillard University, http://www.dillard.edu/, visited July 8, 2015. 33 Walter Kimbrough, featured in article Jed Lipinski, “Leaders Offer Campus Forecasts, Times-Picayune, September 25, 2015, page A-4. 34 Interview, Dr. Robert Collins, professor of urban planning at Dillard University, conducted by Richard Campanella, May 18, 2015. 35 “Welcome to LSBDC Greater New Orleans Region,” http://www.lsbdc.org/gnor/ , visited July 24, 2015

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ASSET/GAP: CREOLE CULINARY HERITAGE, CULINARY OFFERINGS

The study area’s Creole heritage, tracing its origins to the francophone Franco- Hispano- Caribbean- African- American population of the 1700s-1800s and particularly to the gens de colouer libre of antebellum times, manifests itself in various ways today, one of which includes food and foodways. At a time when increasingly sophisticated visitors are craving “authentic” local experiences and insider perspectives found off the track beaten by millions of other tourists, the Seventh and Eighth wards appear to be missing out on a major opportunity in marketing their culinary heritage—especially given the growing locavore and slow-foods (“foodie”) movements. I made this point in 2003 while researching and writing a chapter on Creole New Orleans for my book Geographies of New Orleans, published in 2006. It reads in part,

While French Quarter restaurants and merchants exploit the enchanting term “Creole” to authenticate their offerings, the genuine Creole community and its businesses endure in relative obscurity in Seventh Ward neighborhoods, unbeknownst to and unvisited by the millions of Creole-curious tourists exploring the Creole City annually. Only during Jazz Fest do visitors come en masse to the Seventh Ward, yet most festival-goers, though deeply appreciative of local culture, do not realize they are in the modern-day heart of Creole New Orleans.36

To be sure, the study area has no shortage of eateries; categorized by NAIC codes, there are 33 drinking places, 27 sit-down restaurants, and 19 other eateries without table service, not to mention 11 groceries and 7 food trucks. In all, roughly 1 of every 6 businesses in the study area deals in food and drink, mostly prepared food.

This is an asset to be promoted and an entrepreneurial sector to be developed, and, at least at the rapidly gentrifying St. Claude-end of the study area, it is already happening through market forces aided by government-aided historic-renovation tax credits. The recent opening of the St. Roch Market, an “Eataly”-style food court of gourmet stalls and a common seating area set within a beautifully renovated circa-1875 municipal market pavilion, has been drawing rave reviews as well as criticism—even vandalism—for catering to moneyed leisure diners rather than the everyday grocery needs of the local working-class populace.

Thus, food business is both an asset and a gap, and an opportunity and a risk. An ideal scenario for entrepreneurs might entail local people with roots in the Creole heritage of

36 Richard Campanella, Geographies of New Orleans: Urban Fabrics Before the Storm. Lafayette: University of Louisiana Press, 2006.

the neighborhood establishing businesses specializing in local foods, sans the pretensions and prices of the bistro scene. Examples might include the well-loved Vaucresson's Sausage Company and the very popular Buttermilk Drop Bakery, both on or near St. Bernard Avenue. Another example outside the study area is Dauphine Café, in the Holy Cross section of the Lower Ninth Ward. Opened in 2012 by a local family drawing upon their own traditions, Dauphine Café today is the only white-tablecloth restaurant in the neighborhood hit hardest by the Katrina flood. The restaurant has become popular with diners and well-regarded by food critics—a fine example of local entrepreneurship drawing upon local culture for local benefit, as evidenced in the charmingly earnest words of its owners:

[Our] menu features southern cuisine, while the atmosphere vibes a casual chic ambiance. Our goal is to provide you with the same quality food, superior hospitality, and unique atmosphere that you’d expect to find in the more notable locales of New Orleans restaurants, acknowledged for their outstanding southern cuisine and culturally rich surroundings. More importantly, we would like you to know, "our meals will perpetually be prepared with love and passion!”37

ASSET/GAP: VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND THE SKILLED TRADES HERITAGE

Another legacy of Creolism is its craft tradition. Skilled building trades have long been associated with the black Creole community of New Orleans, from colonial and antebellum times to today. Using the patronizing language of the day, the Daily Picayune wrote in 1859,

Some of our best mechanics and artisans are to be found among the free colored [class]; they form the great majority of our…masons, bricklayers, builders, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, &c, [and are also] excellent musicians, jewelers, goldsmiths, tradesmen and merchants. As a general rule, the free colored people of Louisiana, and especially of New Orleans—the “creole colored people,” as they style themselves—are a sober, industrious and moral class.38

Ironworking, lathing, plastering, tile-setting, bricklaying, carpentry and painting are among the professional crafts that Creoles have handed down for generations, probably since Spanish colonial times. These lines of work availed to gens de colouer libre (to whom the doors of many other professions were closed) a level of independence, steady work, outlets for creativity, and a sense of accomplishment. Their labors have permanently enriched the physical culture of New

37 Dauphine Café, “About Us,” dauphinecafe.com, visited July 23, 2015 38 “Hayti [Haiti] and Immigration Thither,” Daily Picayune, July 16, 1859, page 5, column 2.

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Orleans, and much of the city’s spectacular architecture stands as a monument to their efforts. Tracking the residential patterns of these tight-knit tradition-bound artisans provides clues to the geography of Creole New Orleans, and it shines a special light on our study area. “This 7th ward here was full of trade people,” recollected the late Mardi Gras Indian Chief Allison “Tootie” Montana, himself a skilled lather with deep Seventh Ward roots. “You can build a house, really didn’t have to spend no money at all. You knew plasterers, you knew lathers. You knew carpenters. You knew plumbers…” 39 The U.S. Census tabulated numbers for nonwhite “craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers” at the census-track level in 1940, and it showed a large cluster of African-American craftsmen living in the Seventh Ward and adjacent areas, precisely our study area.40

According to president of the New Orleans Master Craft Guild Jonn Hankins, the heyday of the Seventh Ward master craftsmen was the 1920s through 1960s, when a generation of local men found their skillsets, taught in the apprentice-journeyman-master tradition, to be in high demand for the 20th-century expansion and modernization of the city. Some were unionized; others worked independently; still others were free-lancers who pieced together successful careers as jacks-of-all-trades; all were innovators and entrepreneurs.41

Sadly, this heritage has largely faded, in part due to broader cultural and social changes but also on account of the closure of vocational educational programs, the subtle stigmatization of blue-collar professions, and the well-intentioned but sometimes misguided prioritization of college preparation and white-collar professions above all else. Hankins estimates that this sector is at most one-third of its size during its mid-century apex, and it lacks a pipeline of youth to keep it from shrinking further.42

Given the city’s vast inventory of historical structures and increasing demand for renovation work and construction skills, the revival of this beautiful tradition represents an entrepreneurial opportunity of the first order.

Adding to the potential of this neighborhood for a building-trades revival is the fact that, upon mapping area businesses, a little-known cluster of construction-related businesses appears in the vicinity of the 2800 block of Frenchmen Street, west of Elysian Fields Avenue and along Agriculture Street and the Back Belt Railroad paralleling Florida Avenue. This

39 Allison Montana, as quoted by Spitzer, in Raised to the Trade: Creole Building Arts of New Orleans, edited by Jonn Ethan Hankins and Steven Maklansky, New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 2002. 40 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Population and Housing Statistics for Census Tracts, New Orleans, La.-1940. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942, pages 46-53. 41 Interview, Jonn Hankins, president of the New Orleans Master Craft Guild, by Richard Campanella, July 2, 2015. 42 Interview, Jonn Hankins, president of the New Orleans Master Craft Guild, by Richard Campanella, July 2, 2015.

area, zoned for commerce and industry and accessible by trucks and trains as well as buses and cars, is home to a cluster of fairly large construction-related enterprises, including a trade contractor, a wrecking and demolition firm, two industrial and construction supply wholesalers, a metal fabricator, and a large concrete plant. This area is home to the largest concentration of the 70 or so construction-related businesses among the 612 total study-area enterprises. However, only a fraction of these firms comprise the sort of old-line traditional skilled trades for which this neighborhood became famous; most are generally comparable to the construction sector that would be found in any large city.

Given its size, zoning, and access, the Frenchmen-Elysian Fields-Agriculture area has potential for the ever-growing demand for artisanal or craft consumables, including locally brewed spirits and beer. One journalist, speaking to national trends, described “the growing artisanal spirits movement” as forming, along with urban agriculture and tech incubators, “the holy trinity of New Urbanism.” 43 One such entrepreneurial firm, New Orleans Rum Distillery, has established itself in the heart of this nameless district, at 2815 Frenchmen Street, and does a brisk business selling locally produced rum made from Louisiana sugar cane as well as offering hourly guided tours and tastings for $10 per person, a good example of the sort of food-based, locally placed, culturally emphatic entrepreneurial innovation envisioned by this project. Note the lexicon of its promotional copy, with its accent on localism and hand-wrought authenticity:

Old New Orleans Rum comes out of the back streets of our legendary Ninth Ward, [where founder James Michalopoulos] got together artists, brewmasters, and a couple of clever engineers to create a locally-produced masterpiece…. We source our molasses locally and our barrels are American Oak, charred and used only once before by fine whiskey-makers. Our rum is created batch-by-batch in a 150-year old cotton warehouse. We are committed to an extraordinary customer experience, supporting our local economy, and creating a rum worthy of the celebration that is New Orleans.44

Similarly, a craft micro-brewery named NOLA Brewing has set up shop on a comparable large-scale, appropriately zoned, well-accessed and conveniently located spot along gritty Tchoupitoulas Street, while a craft vodka distillery named Bootleg Spirits is planning to open in an industrial area along Tulane Avenue in Mid City. 45 Our study area offers an

43 Alexander Nazaryan, “Return to Fort Apache: No Longer Burning, the Bronx Is Suddenly Hot,” Newsweek, July 3, 2015. 44 “Old New Orleans Louisiana Rum,” http://oldneworleansrum.com/about-old-new-orleans-rum/ visited July 9, 2015 45 Ian McNulty, “Homegrown Vodka Brand Will Pursue a New Generation of Drinkers,” The New Orleans Advocate, July 9, 2015, http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/12843996-123/at-a-new-mid-city-distillery

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abundance of perfect spaces for this brand of entrepreneurial activity, which has the added benefit of being basic-sector: that is, it brings outside dollars into the neighborhood.

Ameliorating the above gaps vis-à-vis the associated assets is the subject of the next section.

POTENTIAL INTERVENTIONS FOR FOSTERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE STUDY AREA

CO-LOCATION OF “FOOD, FOOD, FOOD”

When asked to identify one cultural attribute of our study area with the potential to become a key entrepreneurial niche, one informant did not hesitate to cite three: “food, food, food.”46 The success of the recently reopened St. Roch Market speaks to the popularity of boutique eateries, and while some have criticized St. Roch on the grounds of gentrification and cultural appropriation, its “foodie-court” model set in an historical ambience could be replicated by local entrepreneurs on their own terms in the heart of our study area, in the heart of the city’s (and nation’s) Creole cultural core zone. One prototype of such a co-located cluster strategy can be found in the Roux Carré Market currently under construction at 2000 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, which describes itself as “The Food Port of New Orleans,”

an outdoor food court and gathering place that celebrates the African American, Caribbean, and Latin American traditions with culinary offerings and performances. The [Roux Carré] will include six enclosed vendor stalls, a commercial kitchen, covered outdoor seating and gathering space, a cooking demonstration area, and a performance stage. Parking will be provided on site.47

The organization behind the Roux Carré is the 501(c)3 nonprofit community development corporation (CDC) Good Work Network, which is missioned to provide services to minority- and women-owned businesses in southeastern Louisiana. Funded by the Community Economic Development federal grant program, the Roux Carré strives to foster minority entrepreneurism “by providing a low-cost, low-overhead means of market entry for aspiring food service businesses” while also “bringing vacant property in a low-

46 Interview, Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, professor of English at Dillard University, conducted by Richard Campanella, May 18, 2015. 47 “Food Court at 2000 OC Haley Blvd.,” Good Work Network, http://www.goodworknetwork.org/foodcourt

income neighborhood back into commerce in a way that honors its culturally and historically rich location.”48

With all due respect to O. C. Haley Boulevard, the Seventh and Eighth wards have more than their share of culinary heritage, and could deploy a similar centralized market or food court specializing in Creole foods and with the same emphasis on culture, community, and minority entrepreneurism. The experience of Fund17, a local nonprofit headquartered near the study area which focused on legitimizing the informal economy, suggests that numerous food businesses operate out of people’s home kitchens, and may have an opportunity to come out of the shadow economy through a low-capital, easy-entry mechanism such as a stall-based share food space or court. Locating such a “Creole Foodcourt” away from the gentrification pressure of St. Claude Avenue would help minimize the potentially deleterious impacts of such an operation, as has been insinuated about the St. Roch Market, while also forming something our study area desperately needs: a visitable destination.

CLUSTER STRATEGY: CREATION OF A VISITABLE DESTINATION

The Creole Foodcourt could form the nucleus of a feature sorely lacking in our study area: a visitable destination with multiple things to see and do. Such a node, particularly if it boasted a distinguishing iconography (such as the WWII Museum in the heart of the city’s museum district), could bring new demand to entrepreneurial businesses as well as infuse outside dollars into local coffers, precisely the sort of basic-sector economic activity lacking in this area.

Currently there is little reason for visitors to come to the central part of our study area: there are no museums or tour houses, no A-list historic sites, no large urban parks, and no streetcar lines (although a new line being installed on North Rampart and St. Claude to Elysian Fields will come close—and most of that traffic will go to the St. Roch Market). Even inquisitive visitors seeking things to appreciate might be pressed to spend money here, as the distinctive culture of this area largely plays out behind closed doors, in private space, without a storefront. A closer look uncovers some possible destination clusters:

48 “Food Court at 2000 OC Haley Blvd.,” Good Work Network, http://www.goodworknetwork.org/foodcourt

Food Enterprise in the Study AreaPhotographs by Richard Campanella May 2015

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• Gentilly Ridge One visitable destination could be coalesced along the oak-lined Gentilly Boulevard corridor (following the historic Gentilly topographic ridge) connecting the Dillard University campus and its scenic lagoon (a remnant of the historic Bayou Gentilly), plus four historic cemeteries (the above-ground Mt. Olivet and the Jewish below-ground burial places of Ahaves Shalom, Anshe Sfard, and Beth Israel), with the bustling commercial intersection with Elysian Fields Avenue. Here could be located the aforementioned Creole Foodcourt along with other neighborhood-themed enterprises. Just a few blocks north of the intersection, by Brother Martin High School, lies the site of a Civil War fortification that is entirely unmarked and unremembered. That intersection lies three rectilinear miles south by bus, car, or bike to the French Market, and two miles straight north to the University of New Orleans and the Lake Pontchartrain shore, where plans are in motion to recreate the famed Pontchartrain Beach swimming area.49 One can envision a time when visitors and residents alike travel Elysian Fields between the historic districts by the river and the recreational facilities by the lake, cutting straight across our study area, and with the option of stopping by at the Gentilly intersection for cultural sightseeing and a memorable lunch.

“The new streetcar line coming down Rampart [is] going to really boost our walk-in sales, and allow a lot of people to come in visiting this part of town. The festival culture of New Orleans really impacts our business in a big way. It’s the volume of people that come in to visit and spend money…. The Medical Center is going to be huge. Not just the patients, but all those employees.” --informant on St. Claude Avenue, on the roles played by amenities, accessibility, anchor institutions, and visitable destinations in entrepreneurial ecosystems, major elements of which are missing in most of our study area. Interviewed by Summer Suleiman, August 3, 2015.

• St. Bernard Circle For nearly a century, the intersection of St. Bernard Avenue and oak-lined North Claiborne formed a beautifully landscaped traffic circle amid hundreds of black-owned businesses, a local entrepreneurial ecosystem if ever there was one. Starting in 1966, the trees were felled, the I-10 overpass

49 It is worth noting that, from 1831 to 1932, a well-known urban rail line known as the Pontchartrain Railroad traversed this route bringing residents to the lake and visitors to the city. Perhaps someday a streetcar line can be reestablished along Elysian Fields.

was installed on North Claiborne, the traffic circle was eradicated, and, due also to the social transformations ongoing at the time, the business cluster largely disintegrated amid a milieu of divestment and decay. But some key enterprises hung on, chief among them St. Bernard Circle Market, a local grocer inside a picturesque circa-1920s Spanish Revival municipal market. The Katrina flood led to more destruction, but, aided by grants and a spirited revival of the Tremé community, the market reopened in 2013 and the potential now exists to use it as the nucleus for something akin to the Creole Foodcourt as well as other small-scale artisan food processing business, such as Vaucresson's Sausage and Bachemin Meat Market (“Home of the Original Creole Hot Sausage”). The benefit of this locale is its relative proximity to the downtown tourism circuit, yet distance from the trendy St. Claude corridor. Creole foods businesses established here by neighborhood entrepreneurs would preserve and monetize local traditions while bringing inquisitive visitors into the heart of the Creole Seventh Ward. It could also be proximate to churches such as Corpus Christi, with their after-mass lunch crowds, and social institutions such as the Autocrat Club, as well as the spontaneous street events and second-lines that occur on St. Bernard Avenue on weekend afternoons.

• New Orleans Master Crafts Guild Given the study area’s ample light-industrial zoning as well as its building-craft heritage, an opportunity exists to create an alternative visitable space where the skilled trades and crafts are taught, demonstrated, practiced, and base-camped. This idea is detailed in the next section.

NEW ORLEANS MASTER CRAFTS GUILD

The New Orleans Master Crafts Guild is the brainchild of Jonn Hankins, former Executive Director of the New Orleans African American Museum as well as a development director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Foundation, Jazz Orchestra, and Museum of Art (NOMA). Mr. Hankins has been an advocate for a building-trades revival ever since he directed the award-winning Raised to the Trade exhibit at NOMA in 2003 and co-edited its accompanying book. Hankins, who is also a partner with the social innovation initiative Propeller, notes that “by 2020, the demand for skilled building trades craftsmen—in masonry, plaster, carpentry, and ironwork—is expected to increase by 14%, yet vocational training programs in New Orleans are in decline.

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The Guild provides training with some of the best craftsmen in the area to fill this gap.”50

“An Idea Village for the skilled trades!” —Jonn Hankins on his vision for the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild, interviewed by author, July 2015

In an interview for this investigation, Hankins, whose guild is currently operating out of provisional space, expressed a high degree of interest in creating a permanent visitable workspace for the building trades where young people can be apprenticed, where local people can take classes, and where visitors can watch demonstrations and buy hand-crafted products made in New Orleans right before their eyes. He thinks of it as sort of “Idea Village for the skilled trades,” or a Propeller-style maker-space dedicated to reviving entrepreneurism in sorely needed trades of carpentry, masonry, bricklaying, lathing, plastering, iron-working, electricians, tailoring, and beading. Part institute, part workshop, part demonstration and destination, the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild could be located in the Frenchmen-Elysian Fields-Agriculture area where the New Orleans Rum Distillery currently operates and conducts tours, giving twice the reason for people to visit. The space and the mission could also be expanded to include other crafts, such as the manufacture of handmade carnival throws and trinkets (increasingly in vogue) and Mardi Gras Indian suites. In the same way Blain Kern Studios has turned the production of parade floats into a year-long visitable destination—Mardi Gras World in the Lower Garden District—the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild can turn the skilled-trades heritage into an educational institution and must-see destination in the heart of the Seventh and Eighth wards.

CLUSTER STRATEGY FOR LIGHT INDUSTRY, ARTISAN PRODUCT MANUFACTURING, AND B2B BUSINESSES

While New Orleans, a port and mercantilist city, has never been a major manufacturing center, it has had more industry than commonly thought (especially during World War II) and retains industrial potential, with a steady stream of raw materials arriving at its docks and unsurpassed access to national and world markets. Our study area is too removed from the river for heavy industry, but, with its unique inventory of spacious and accessible light-industrial zones,

50 “New Orleans Master Crafts Guild—The Pitch: Jonn Hankins,” Propeller, http://gopropeller.org/ventures/new-orleans-master-crafts-guild/ visited July 27, 2015.

has the potential to attract entrepreneurs in the emerging market of sustainable or artisanal products. These might include craft distilleries or breweries; coffee-bean roasting; food processing for local foodstuffs such as pepper sauces, spices, sausages, wild meats, and po-boy bread; and hand-crafted furniture. Such products benefit—in terms of quality, cost, marketing, and perception—from being manufactured in New Orleans, especially among younger demographics who tend to fetishize localism, authenticity, and sustainability. The New Orleans Rum Distillery is a premier example of such an enterprise already established in the study area, and there is space for more. An opportunity exists to encourage such enterprises through tax-incentivized zones or overlay districts (see next section) in clustered spaces such as the Frenchmen-Elysian Fields-Agriculture industrial zone along the railroad tracks. This area also has the right attributes for “B2B Businesses”—that is, business-to-business enterprises, whose main customers are other firms or organizations rather than consumers. Some are already here, including Hotard Buses, which, through its headquarters on Touro Street, operates a fleet of 40 buses and employs 150 reporting to that location. The area is also home to Volunteers of America (VOA), which has interacted beneficially with its neighbor. Stated an informant with the bus company, “Hotard uses some VOA resources to wash buses; they think other businesses may be able to work with VOA also if they knew what was available.”51 The uptown crowd is coming [to St. Claude] because it’s cool. Some of the most trendy and innovative restaurants in the city are over here now. This is where the thriving art community is. It’s here. It’s not Julia Street. —entrepreneur on St. Claude Avenue, August 2015. Can the same occur in the rest of our study area?—and if it did, will gentrification necessarily follow?

OVERLAY DISTRICTS

An overlay district is a zoning technique designed to encourage or discourage certain land uses in a specified area already under a larger zoning ordinance. The term comes from the visual of “laying over” a patch upon a typical land-use map and effectively revising a portion of it. Critics hold that overlay districts represent a sort of sanctioned spot zoning, in which previously agreed-upon principles are set aside for a particular area. But so long as the modifications go through the proper civic and legal processes, overlay districts can accurately reflect local values and priorities and can be effective in improving or preserving arteries, neighborhoods, and sites of particular historical and environmental value.

51 Interview, Hotard representative, interviewed by Louis David via email, July 2, 2015.

Commercial and Industrial Zoning in 2800 Frenchmen-

Elysian Fields-Ag Area, along Back

Belt RailroadPhotographs by Richard Campanella

May 2015

“In the same way Blain Kern Studios has turned theproduction of Mardi Gras parade floats into a year-long visitable destination in the Lower GardenDistrict, the New Orleans Master Crafts Guild canturn the skilled-trades heritage of the CreoleSeventh Ward into an educational institution andmust-see destination in the heart of the study area.”

Planning and zoning as entrepreneurial catalysts

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New Orleans’ recently adopted Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance details the city’s specialized zoning districts, among them Urban Corridor (UC) Overlay Districts along arteries such as Gen. De Gaulle and Chef Menteur Highway, which aim to prohibit certain nuisance land uses, and Residential Diversity Overlay (RDO) Districts, which attempt to return the archetypal corner grocery and other small local storefront businesses to blocks previously zoned exclusively for residential.

One of the most dramatic examples of the effectiveness of an overlay district is the Arts and Culture (AC) district on Freret Street between Jefferson and Napoleon avenues in uptown New Orleans. Like the historic arteries in our downtown study area, Freret bustled from the early 1900s through the 1970s but suffered divestment and decay over subsequent decades. It retained its potential, however, courtesy its structural historicity and walkability as well as its convenience to prosperous uptown neighborhoods and nearby Loyola and Tulane universities. After Katrina, which inundated the street with shallow floodwaters, the area was ripe for revival.

In 2007, the City Council and City Planning Commission approved the Freret Street Arts and Cultural District, which “seeks to preserve the area's small to medium-scale commercial uses, encourage a balance of daytime and nighttime uses, and foster development of arts-related uses.”52 The overlay expanded the permitting for restaurants, cocktail lounges, coffee shops, art galleries and studios, theaters and performance venues, all of which would be approved to operate well into the evening. It also prohibiting liquor stores and go-cups. The Freret AC created space for new nighttime businesses in a post-Katrina era that coincided with the emerging resurgence of civic spirit.

The change was dramatic. “In 2009,” wrote a local journalist, six coffee shops and specialty eateries “opened their doors; by 2011, restaurants were on nearly every block and the whole city was talking about the Freret renaissance.” Creative entrepreneurs in the private sector deserve the credit for bringing about Freret’s transformation, but they were enabled by the overlay to the zoning code brought about by City Hall. As a result, a deteriorating artery with “a single restaurant” had within four years boasted “14 blocks of highly-lauded cuisine, new entertainment venues and businesses ranging from a dog-groomer to a craft-cocktail lounge.”53

52 Article 10 - Overlay Zoning Districts, Miscellaneous Zoning Districts, Planned Development Districts and Design Review Districts, New Orleans Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, https://www.municode.com/library/la/new_orleans/codes/zoning?nodeId=ART10OVZODIMIZODIPLDEDIDEREDI , visited July 25, 2015. 53 Robert Morris, Good Neighbors: Freret’s Revival Has Largely Avoided the Issues That Often Accompany Gentrification,” The Uptown Messenger, August 12, 2013.

Today, Freret is a new mini-Magazine Street, and with that success have also come inexorable concerns about commercial and possibly residential gentrification, as the handful of pre-existing local retailers have been largely squeezed out. Since then, St. Claude Avenue has also been designated an AC overlay district and has been experiencing a comparable transformation (including along our study area), although the impacts of gentrification in Bywater and St. Roch have been more intense than in the vicinity of Freret, whose abutting residential blocks were generally more prosperous to begin with.

“We got a liquor license immediately as soon as we applied for it, and other businesses had tried before us and did not get licenses…. With city-sanctioned gentrification, [they’re] allowing a lot of things happen that they weren’t letting happen before.” —entrepreneur on St. Claude Avenue, July 2015

There is another type of “cultural district,” derived from a state law rather than city ordinance, and of the 22 cultural districts within New Orleans, some are (confusingly) also city-level AC overlay districts. But the state cultural districts are more modestly missioned, to encourage the sale of art and restoration of historic architecture through tax breaks, rather than to transform commercial arteries through zoning and land use changes. Among them is the recently expanded and renamed Tremé/7th Ward (previously Bayou Road and African American Heritage) Cultural District, which covers the entire eastern (upriver) side of our study area, as well as the St. Claude AC on the riverside flank.54

The newly approved Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance of 2015 further distinguishes among four types of Arts and Cultural overlay districts, labelled AC-1, AC-2, AC-3, and AC-4, each specifying slight variations in what is permitted, especially in regard to potentially contentious live music venues.55 Freret Street is in the AC-2 category, and given its dramatic turnabout, offers a prototype for our study area.

Should the Tremé/7th Ward Arts and Culture Overlay District be retooled to affect Freret-like change? Would such a transformation breathe new life into the fading Creole-influenced businesses and eateries along St. Bernard Avenue, or would it bring in bistros and art galleries and trigger the familiar gentrification cycle already occurring on St. Claude?

In fact, nearly all of the commercial arteries in our study area—St. Bernard, Gentilly, Elysian Fields, Claiborne, St.

54 Resolution No. R-15-72, New Orleans City Council, February 26, 2015, Councilmember Ramsey. 55 Article 18, Overlay Zoning Districts, Adopted Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance Effective August 12, 2015, http://www.nola.gov/city-planning/adopted-comprehensive-zoning-ordinance-effective/ visited July 26, 2015.

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Claude—are in some form of overlay district in the new 2015 Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, either Arts and Culture, Historic Urban Corridor (HUC), Residential Diversity (RDO), Enhancement Corridor (EC), Corridor Transformation (CT), or a Character Preservation Corridor (CPC), and sometimes more than one. The result is a rather confusing inventory of barely distinguishable interventions that will likely have little street-level impacts. But this should not remove from the table the potential power of an incentivizing, well-crafted overlay district. Perhaps one may be designed to encourage light industry and the skilled trades rather than the entertainment and service sector. Consider, for example, the previously described Frenchmen-Elysian Fields-Agriculture area, where an overlay might be established to zone-in and incentivize the establishment of artisan workshops, building-trade base stations, shared-spaced facilities with specialized equipment, and other forms of light industry. Other opportunities exist in other parts of the study area, including along Gentilly Boulevard, for overlay districts with just enough “teeth” to effect positive transformation, but without the “bite” of neighborhood upheaval.

LIVE/WORK ZONING

Some cities in the United States have created “live/work” zoning to permit a building or space to be used jointly for both residency and commerce. This may seem novel today, states the American Planning Association, “but it was the norm until the early decades of the twentieth century. Storekeepers, trades people, doctors, lawyers, and others commonly lived upstairs from or adjacent to their shops or offices.”56 Indeed, the phrase “born above the store” draws proudly from this historical intermixing of land uses, and such convenient arrangements saved those who practiced it substantial amounts of time and money. They also led to conflicts with neighbors, which in turn affected property values and caused litigation. These factors, plus auto-accessibility and suburbanization, drove planners away from mix-use cityscapes and toward single-use (Euclidean) zoning, which aimed to spatially disassociate residential and commercial land use.

The idea of strictly segregating land use began to be challenged with the rise of preservation and the rediscovery of the inner city, which brought with it a renewed appreciation for light commerce intermixed within residential areas. The 1970s also saw deindustrialization and the closure of old factories in inner cities; many were demolished, but others, prized by artists as ideal studios as well as cheap and convenient residences, were converted to lofts with both living and working space. “By the late 1980s,” writes the APA, “a number of cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and

56“Model Live/Work Ordinance,” Model Smart Land Development Regulations, American Planning Association, March 2006.

San Francisco, began to legalize the live/work concept by adapting building and zoning regulations to accommodate them.”57

The building stock of our study area does not really lend itself to loft-style mixed-use. But it may allow for legally permitted live/work zoning in one- and two-family houses, which could foster homegrown entrepreneurship in a convenient and cost-effective manner. Windshield surveys of the study area already reveal an extraordinary number of houses repurposed for commerce—day care centers, barber shops, professional offices, even auto repair—and while it is unclear if residences also still exist inside these edifices, the adaptive utilization of these buildings testifies to the creative entrepreneurism of the local population. Permitting live/work zoning could dramatically reduce the entry capital needed to start a small business, and could bring out of the shadows the uncounted but likely large number of informal “cottage” businesses that operate off-the-books in people’s houses.

Of course, regulations would have to be in place to ensure one person’s commercial life does not interfere with a neighbor’s residential life. Live/work zoning might be best suited to allow quiet, indoor, low-traffic types of businesses, such as personal or professional services, crafting, hobbies, computer and online work.

One informant noted the recent trend of owners of large houses seeking zoning variances to convert their structures to rentable meeting halls.58 Such conversions may be viewed as an entrepreneurial adaptation toward the relatively higher demand of the commercial market (for banquets, parties, public and private meetings, etc.) and away from the lower demand for a residency in a particular area. Alternately, they may disrupt the quality of life of immediate neighbors, create parking and noise conflicts, and represent intrusions into otherwise stable residential areas. This particular case study illustrates that one person’s local entrepreneurship may be another person’s neighborhood nuisance, and that balance must be struck.

SHORT-TERM RENTALS, AIRBNB, AND THE SHARING ECONOMY

“The sharing economy is a prime example of social innovation,” posited a writer in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “At a basic level, sharing [is] economically efficient, environmentally sustainable, and community-oriented.” 59

57“Model Live/Work Ordinance,” Model Smart Land Development Regulations, American Planning Association, March 2006. 58 Interview, Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy, professor of English at Dillard University, conducted by Richard Campanella, May 18, 2015. 59 April Rinne, “The Sharing Economy, Through a Broader Lens,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, February 2015, http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/the_sharing_economy_through_a_broader_lens , visited July 28, 2015.

Residences and Commerce, Residences as Commerce

Photographs by Richard Campanella May 2015

“Live/work zoning could dramatically reduce the entry capitalneeded to start a small business.”

“The sharing economy is a prime example of social innovation,” posited the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “ [It is] economically efficient, environmentally sustainable, and community-oriented.” The premier sharing sector that could offer an opportunity for home-based entrepreneurship in the study area is AirBnB—although it too could come at a community cost.”

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The premier sharing sector that could offer an opportunity for home-based entrepreneurship in the study area is AirBnB—although it too could come at a community cost.

On AirBnb.com, people offer extra rooms or houses for rent on a short-term basis to visitors seeking a lower-cost and more interesting alternative to staying at hotels and traditional bed-and-breakfasts. A system of mutual reviews keeps everyone honest, and by flying beneath the radar of taxes, licenses, and codes, listers turn extra rooms into cash and guests get a superior experience at a lower price. Over 100,000 guests spent time in such arrangements in New Orleans each year, and the practice has transformed, for better or worse, certain neighborhoods. “Proponents of short-term rental services, wrote Kevin Allman and Alex Woodward in a recent Gambit article, “praise how easy they are to use, how they give travelers a chance to see how [locals] really live, and their competitive cost[;] detractors say services like Airbnb…take up apartments that otherwise would be rented by locals, turn traditionally residential neighborhoods into tourist zones, and leave hotel and motel rooms empty (and not paying occupancy taxes).”60

An analysis of the spatial distribution of recent AirBnB listings shows a rather predictable pattern: the vast majority are offered within or near the historical districts closer to the Mississippi River, clustered in the French Quarter and the trendy downtown “renaissance” neighborhoods of the Faubourg Marigny and Bywater. These areas are, generally speaking, older, more famous, economically more vibrant, wealthier and racially more white, higher in elevation, and host to the overwhelming majority of the city’s nearly ten million annual visitors. Those few listings on the fringes of this geographical pattern tended to get lower scores from guests on the appeal of their hosts’ locations.

Within our study area, we see the same pattern at a microscale: blocks closest to gentrifying St. Claude Avenue had the most AirBnB offerings and the highest ratings, while all other areas, covering three times the acreage, had but one-tenth the number of listings.

At its best, AirBnb and other shared short-term rentals turns homeowners and renters into entrepreneurs by providing (in theory) a cash income stream at minimal expense, while bringing outside dollars into the neighborhood and its businesses. They are, in effect, a form of live/work arrangements, in which a home also becomes an income. When the listings get too intensely clustered, however, they start to rob local tenants of rentable real estate, change a neighborhood to a transient space, and put legitimately

60 Kevin Allman and Alex Woodward, “Short-Term Rental Laws in New Orleans, Gambit Weekly, March 9, 2015, http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/kevin-allman-and-alex-woodward-on-short-term-rental-laws-in-new-orleans/Content?oid=2594351 visited July 28, 2015

licensed bed-and-breakfasts at an unfair disadvantage, since they pay the taxes and must abide by the safety codes sidestepped by most AirBnB rentals. Most AirBnB operations are technically illegal according to New Orleans’ short-term rental ordinances, “but the city traditionally has been lax about enforcing the law.”61

How may AirBnB and the short-term rental/sharing economy be made maximally beneficial and minimally intrusive to the study area? One answer is by legalizing them in exchange for regulation, after which they may be nudged to spread out by encouraging them in certain spaces and among hosts meeting certain requirements. For example:

• Reward “stayers”—that is, homeowners who have remained at the same address for an extended period of time—by granting them advantages on legal short-term rentals, either with easier licensing, a lower tax rate, or higher floor above which hosts must pay city taxes.

• Create an overlay district or other incentivized zoning to encourage short-term rentals in areas that have little such activity. Alternately, create similar zones to restrain such activity in areas that have an excess, with the goal of spreading them out and nudging demand into new supply spaces. In a similar way as New Orleans’ Place-Based Planning Districts “focus resources in targeted places [to create] a compounding effect,” and its Direct Homebuyer Assistance Program “provides down payment and closing costs subsidies,” Place-Based Planning Districts may also be used to encourage or discourage short-term rentals toward create an optimal spatial distribution and set of entrepreneurial opportunities.62

• Provide incentives or training to encourage MBEs and DBEs to get into the business, using their own households.

UNBUNDLED PROCUREMENT FOR NEIGHBORHOOD DBES

For disadvantaged enterprises, government procurement contracts can offer a key source of steady business. The City of New Orleans officially recognizes 634 DBEs who quality for such work in the sectors of Professional Services, Construction, and Good and Supplies, and 21 of them are

61 Kevin Allman and Alex Woodward, “Short-Term Rental Laws in New Orleans, Gambit Weekly, March 9, 2015, http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/kevin-allman-and-alex-woodward-on-short-term-rental-laws-in-new-orleans/Content?oid=2594351 visited July 28, 2015 62 City of New Orleans, “Soft Second Mortgage Program” and “Place Based Planning,” http://www.nola.gov/softseconds/ and https://data.nola.gov/Archived/Place-Based-Planning/ssw4-9pg7 , visited July 5, 2015.

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based within our study area.63 Most of these entrepreneurs are small operations with limited work forces, and therein lies a problem: governments and corporations are inclined to “bundle” procurement requirements, because it saves them time and effort to lump together related tasks and negotiate with a single provider for the package deal. But bundling oftentimes excludes DBEs from competing because, while they are able to deliver on some components of a Request for Proposals (RFP), they may be too small to deliver on all of them. A company that advises government contractors offers this example of bundled procurement and its impacts:

Your company provides landscape maintenance services at a local army base. Nine months before the end of your contract, you learn that contracting officers are in the planning stages for a new RFP that will seek one contractor to perform nearly all the base's facilities services, including building maintenance, janitorial, laundry, food and, yes, landscape services. Although you've been a model contractor with a stellar performance record, your company has no chance of winning the contract because it has no experience beyond landscape services.64

DBEs interviewed in a recent study held that that this practice excludes them from competing on many government purchasing opportunities. The authors of the study recommend that procurement be unbundled by contracting officers and set forth in RFPs in an itemized fashion, with the office acting as a primary contractor of sorts.65

ENTREPRENEURIAL OMBUDSMAN

Relatedly, the authors call for the establishment of an entrepreneurial ombudsman, which they liken to the role of the “maven” in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and define as “an individual designated to resolve issues and manage connections between [enterprises] and larger entities…. This ombudsman would both strengthen the connection between MBEs and the various elements of the ecosystem[,] sharing information and facilitating meaningful interactions between otherwise disconnected business folks.”66 One informant corroborated the need for a strategic support person as well as a network of advocates. “A well-rounded mentor [would help],” said the director of a social entrepreneurship nonprofit. “I think having support systems

63 Office of Supplier Diversity, City of New Orleans, http://www.nola.gov/economic-development/supplier-diversity/ , visited July 8, 2015. 64 “Contract Bundling,” FedMarket, https://www.fedmarket.com/contractors/Contract-Bundling- , visited July 24, 2015 65 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015. 66 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

like the Idea village, Propeller, [and] 4.0 Schools that are specifically there to provide whatever support is needed. The more that you can do with that, the better.”67 The notion of an ombudsman or maven facilitating connections between and among elements of the study area’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, including City Hall as well as state, federal, and corporate procurers, warrants further consideration. One entity, Metro New Orleans Sourcelink, was originally designed for this purpose, but, according to the researchers behind the recommendation, is “underfunded and lacks the focus to fulfill its original purpose.”68

RESTRAINED REGULATORY ENVIRONMENTS AND ONE-STOP LICENSING

In addition to leadership and communication, the premier recommendation of the National League of Cities for local authorities to support entrepreneurs was a sensible regulatory environment. Too little regulation, of course, paves the way for corruption, unfairness, and a lower quality of urban life; too much regulation impedes the efficiency and profitability of small businesses while creating uncertainties and barriers for new entrepreneurs. The result: larger companies who have mastered the maze and/or can absorb the hassle end up dominating the marketplace. 69 The representative of a company urged that City Hall “improve responsiveness and flexibility of its permitting;” for example, “to get certain permits for operating in restricted neighborhoods, only some city employees can handle their requests, and if that person is unavailable, we’re not able to get a permit.”70

To its credit, City Hall has implemented a One Stop App to streamline licensing and permits through a single online node (http://www.nola.gov/onestop/). The app allows entrepreneurs to obtain occupational licenses, Certificates of Necessity and Public Convenience, and specialized permits for electrical and mechanical contractors as well as taxi drivers and tour guides. Compared to years prior, New Orleans has succeeded in simplifying these processes, although imperfections certainly remain. Among DBEs in greater New Orleans (not just in Orleans Parish), respondents to a survey ranked regulatory bureaucracy items among the more serious obstacles they encountered, namely business licenses,

67 Interview, Nora Ellertsen, founder of The Funding Seed, by Summer Suleiman, July 31, 2015. 68 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015. 69 J. Katie McConnell, Christiana McFarland, and Brett Common, “Supporting Entrepreneurs and Small Business A Tool Kit for Local Leaders,” National League of Cities/Center for Research and Innovation, 2011 http://www.nlc.org/File%20Library/Find%20City%20Solutions/Research%20Innovation/Economic%20Development/RI_SmallBizToolkit-2012-Web.pdf 70 Interview by Louis David via email, July 2, 2015.

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permits, and the calculation and payment of taxes. 71 Softening these barriers would aid the formation of new small businesses and bring existing ad-hoc enterprises out of the shadows and into the formal economy.

CONCLUSIONS

This Forward Cities report, commenced in late 2014, sought to understand and improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a neighborhood specifically selected for its position at the heart of New Orleans society—but at the margins of the city’s post-Katrina “renaissance.” Through research and data analysis conducted throughout 2015, council members have found substantial assets as well as gaps in the area’s potential for “gentrification-proof” local business development, and have documented ten potential interventions toward that end. We conclude with three specific recommended interventions selected by council members after a field trip, two follow-up meetings, and ongoing discussions with neighborhood representatives in the autumn of 2015. They include:

(1) Formalizing the Informal Economy (a.k.a. “Legitimizing the New Orleans Hustle”) A common theme running through this report is the presence of de facto entrepreneurism flying under the radar of economic statistics because it is unpermitted. A number of the potential interventions cataloged herein can be addressed by focusing on attempts to bring informal businesses out of the shadows and into legitimacy by the easing of permitting processes, simplifying paperwork, tax advice, the greenlighting of residency usage as workplace, and the streamlining of bureaucracy for microbusinesses. Nonprofits headquartered in or near the study area, such as Fund17 (www.fund17.org, whose “theory of change” reads “we believe that by equipping entrepreneurs with an arsenal of skills and resources, we can build capacity within the informal economy [and] help transition entrepreneurs’ hard work into sustainable livelihoods”) could be marshalled and empowered to take Forward Cities’ 2015 research into action in 2016 and 2017.

(2) Empowering the Dillard University Film Program Forward Cities’ research brought to our attention an academic asset that has garnered little attention citywide: Dillard University’s Film Studies Program. Run by Prof. Keith Alan Morris, this program equips students with technical skills in the making of films as well as the educational background of film studies, at a time when Louisiana’s film industry is burgeoning due to generous tax credits. “The production goes where they can get the most bang for their buck and

71 Richard L. McCline, M. von Nkosi, Adrine Harrell-Carter, and Emily Boness, “Expanding Opportunity for Minority-Owned Businesses in Metro New Orleans,” The New Orleans Index at Ten, July 2015.

Louisiana is the best spot for that,” Morris told New York Times affiliates in 2014. “So if you spend $100 million on your movie, just for shooting in Louisiana and follow all the rules, then you can get $30 million back.”72 Given Dillard’s position in the study area, its mostly local and regional student body, and the entrepreneurial potential of film and digital media, opportunities exist for Forward Cities to collaborate with Dillard and Prof. Morris toward film-based business development in or near the study area.

(3) “Food, Food, Food” There was universal support for promoting food-based enterprises in all the forms described in this report, particularly since many of these operations currently exist in the informal economy and can benefit by becoming legitimate and growing. In this regard, we look forward to collaborating with nonprofits such as Broad Community Connections as well as Fund17 toward creating food-related opportunities in a neighborhood that is—or should be—famous for its culinary heritage.

This selection does not indicate that the other potential interventions do not deserve attention or action, but rather that the Council has recommended starting and focusing with these three. We look forward to moving into an action and implementation phase in the coming years.

72 “Louisiana Takes Top Spot as Movie-Making Capital,” The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, May 28, 2014, http://nola14.nytimes-institute.com/2014/05/28/louisiana-takes-top-spot-as-movie-making-capital/

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APPENDIX: ORGANIZATIONAL INVENTORY

Accion Primary organization contact person: Jarrett Woods Organization website: https://worknola.com/employer/accion-texas-louisiana Organization address: 3330 N. Causeway Blvd – Suite 446 Metairie, LA 70002 Organization phone number and email: [O] 504-270-9081 jwoods@accionlouisiana.org or jhernandez@acciontexas.org What services does the organization provide? “ACCION Texas-Louisiana is a non-profit micro enterprise development program based in San Antonio with operations in Texas and Louisiana (Alexandria, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Shreveport). ACCION is dedicated to increasing incomes and creating jobs in low-income communities by providing micro entrepreneurs with access to credit and business support services not available from the commercial banking sector. We offer a “hand-up” to those striving to support themselves and their families through small business initiatives. Through our loans and services, we help micro entrepreneurs strengthen their businesses, stabilize and increase their incomes, create additional employment and contribute to the economic revitalization of their communities.” Broad Community Connections Primary organization contact person: Jeffrey Schwartz Organization website: http://broadcommunityconnections.org/ Organization address: 300 N Broad Street, Suite 208, New Orleans, LA 70119 Organization phone number and email: 504.722.3628 What services does the organization provide? “Broad Community Connections is a non-profit, community development organization devoted to revitalizing the Broad Street corridor by promoting the economic, residential, and cultural development of its diverse surrounding neighborhoods.” Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? If so, specify. In and near Broad Street, intersecting partially with our study area. Dillard University Film Program Primary organization contact person: Prof. Keith Morris Organization website: http://www.dillard.edu/ Organization address: Dillard University, 2601 Gentilly Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana 70122 Organization phone number and email: (504) 816-4548, kmorris@dillard.edu What services does the organization provide? University-based film program for both technical and theoretic education in the film arts and trades. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Yes; Dillard students and affiliates Fund17 Primary organization contact person: Haley Burns Organization website: http://www.fund17.org/ Organization address: 1000 North Broad Street New Orleans, LA 70119 Organization phone number and email: 504.656.4177 Haley Burns <haley@fund17.org> What services does the organization provide? “Our business services are paired with personal finance advice to help our entrepreneurs plan and save for the future.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? Fund17 targets informal businesses and guides them to become formal enterprises. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? If so, specify. Fund17 works in all 17 wards of New Orleans (hence the name) but is based on Broad Street, near our study area. Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program Primary organization contact person: unclear Organization website: http://www.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000-small-businesses/US/ Organization address: Delgado Community College. Organization phone number and email: unclear

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What services does the organization provide? “Small business owners who participate in the 10,000 Small Businesses program gain valuable skills and experiences which help them to grow their revenue and create jobs at a higher rate than the national average, even 18 months after graduating.” In New Orleans it is headquartered in Delgado Community College. Good Work Network Primary organization contact person: Phyllis Cassidy Organization website: http://www.goodworknetwork.org/ Organization address: 2028 OC Haley Blvd New Orleans, LA 70113 Organization phone number and email: 504.309.2073 What services does the organization provide? “Good Work Network is a 501(c)3 organization that provides business development services to minority- and women-owned businesses throughout a 15-parish region in Southeast Louisiana. We aspire to help minority- and women-owned businesses start, grow, and succeed. We envision a community where the economy is diverse and inclusive and where all dedicated and competent entrepreneurs have access to the resources they need to succeed. Good Work Network strengthens small businesses by developing members’ skills, enabling them to realize their full potential. We work to increase market connections so small business owners may become active participants in the local economy. Read more about programs we offer or contact our staff, who are dedicated to improving economic inclusion and who are responsive to the specific needs of each member.” Junior Achievement of New Orleans Primary organization contact person: Gail Smith Organization website: www.juniorachievement.org Organization address: 5100 Orleans Ave. New Orleans, LA 70124 Organization phone number and email: 504.569.8650 gail@jagno.org What services does the organization provide? “Junior Achievement has been promoting business education since 1919, first through an after-school secondary program, and later through in-school partnerships with educators. Students who participate demonstrate a significant understanding of economics and business concepts, particularly those who participate in programs at consecutive grade levels, according to independent evaluators.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? “Junior Achievement starts in the classroom. Our unique delivery system provides the training, materials, and support necessary to bolster the chances for student success. At your invitation, we help arrange for business people and local community leaders to visit your classroom a few times or throughout the semester. They volunteer to share their workforce experience with your students, all while teaching sound economic principles and reinforcing your class curricula.” Louisiana Small Business Development Center Primary organization contact person: Carmen Sunda Organization website: https://www.lsbdc.org/ Organization address: 330 N. Causeway Blvd. Suite 447 Metairie, LA 70002 Organization phone number and email: 504.831.3730 lsbdc.gnor@lsbdc.org What services does the organization provide? “LSBDC offers many different services to help you grow your business, including Business Plans, Financing, Financial Analysis, Sales & Marketing, Management, Taxes & Accounting, Human Resources, International Trade, Risk Management, Technology Commercialization, Supplier & Economic, and Gardening.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? Initial idea. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. New Corp Business Assistance Center Primary organization contact person: Vaughn R. Fauria Organization website: http://www.newcorpinc.com/ Organization address: 2924 St Bernard Ave, New Orleans, LA 70119 Organization phone number and email: (504) 208-1700 info@newcorpinc.com What services does the organization provide? “NewCorp Inc. is a 501(c) (3) organization whose mission is to be an economic development catalyst by providing technical and financial assistance to small and emerging businesses to improve their basic business capabilities by way of training, counseling, planning and financial products and services.”

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At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? All. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Entire city. New Orleans BioInnovation Center Primary organization contact person: Kris Kahlil Organization website: www.neworleansbio.com Organization address: 1441 Canal St. New Orleans, LA 70112 Organization phone number and email: 504.680.2973 info@neworleansbio.com What services does the organization provide? “NOBC is a nonprofit business incubator dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship and supporting Louisiana innovators as they develop life-saving new technologies. Tenants and clients supported by our program teams include startups developing innovative new medical devices, therapeutics, diagnostics, digital health platforms, clean technologies, and more. All promising to improve global health, these technologies range from cancer and diabetes treatments to urban farming and water remediation solutions.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? Specialized biomedicine efforts already with business plans and initial resources. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. New Orleans Business Resource & Entrepreneurship Center Primary organization contact person: Organization website: http://www.neworleansec.com/ Organization address: Business & Entrepreneurship Center of GNO, 2115 Carondelet Street Second Floor New Orelans, LA 70130Organization phone number and email: 504-620-9647 What services does the organization provide? “The Business Resource & Entrepreneurship Center (BREC) partners with private, public and nonprofit resources to build strong, sustainable and successful businesses in New Orleans and surrounding parishes. Small businesses create wealth, develop new and higher paying jobs and contribute to Louisiana's economic health. The BREC offers free or low-cost assistance and business training under one roof. An assistance center for the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, Capital One Bank Small Business and Louisiana Economic Development. BREC also helps businesses qualify and participate in the state's Small & Emerging Business Development (SEBD) program. Technical Assistance often refers to what most people consider standard business assistance. At the Business Resource & Entrepreneurship Center there is a variety mentoring and assistance available through one-on-one consulting, group classes and referrals to tailored programs. Programs for established owners may be focused in improving or expanding their business.” New Orleans Master Crafts Guild Primary organization contact person: John Hankins Organization website: http://neworleanscraftsmen.org/ Organization address: New Orleans Master Crafts Guild PO Box 50601 New Orleans, LA 70150 Organization phone number and email: Jonn Hankins jonn@nomcg.org What services does the organization provide? “Established in 2012, the Guild was set up to address the growing need for a class of skilled laborers to maintain New Orleans’ historic building stock. Building on local craftsmen traditions, including apprenticeship training and ground-level networks, the Guild seeks to revive the building trades for a new generation of builders.” New Orleans (City of) Office of Supplier Diversity Organization website: http://www.nola.gov/economic-development/supplier-diversity/ Organization address: Office of Supplier Diversity, 1340 Poydras Street, Suite 1000, New Orleans, LA 70112 Organization phone number and email: (504) 658-4200 What services does the organization provide? “The Office of Supplier Diversity is the City's department that oversees certification, compliance, training, outreach and capacity building for local, small and disadvantaged businesses in the City of New Orleans. The office was created to help mitigate the effects of past and present social and economic discrimination by increasing the utilization of certified disadvantaged business enterprises in the procurement of goods and services by the City of New Orleans.” New Orleans Startup Fund

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Primary organization contact person: Organization website: neworleansstartupfund.org/ Organization address: 1100 Poydras Street, Suite 3475, New Orleans, LA 70163 Organization phone number and email: 504-527-6900 What services does the organization provide? “Are you an entrepreneur with a promising idea but are struggling to raise necessary funding? The New Orleans Startup Fund provides capital to early-stage ventures located in the Greater New Orleans area. We are seeking to invest in high-growth companies with viable business plans that project growth of at least $20 million in five years. Investment sizes range between $25,000 and $100,000. In addition to providing seed capital, The Startup Fund offers expert technical assistance to its portfolio companies and will connect you to our network of angel investors and venture capitalists for follow-on investment.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? “The Fund exists to accelerate the growth of early-stage, pre-revenue companies looking for proof-of-concept capital.” Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? “The New Orleans Startup Fund is a nonprofit venture fund focused on business creation and innovation in the 10-parish Greater New Orleans region. Operation Hope Primary organization contact person: Bill Norris Organization website: http://www.operationhope.org/neworleansla#sthash.EG8IeX6W.dpuf Organization address: 1215 Prytania Street, Suite 103, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130 Organization phone number and email: 504-309-6153 x4. bill.norris@operationhope.org What services does the organization provide? “The New Orleans HOPE Financial Dignity Center provides on-the-ground, in-person support to people looking to take back their lives by getting their financial house in order. We are there every step of the way as renters become homeowners, small business dreamers become small business owners and the hope-less become the hopeful. Here at the HOPE Center, you will receive one-on-one counseling to remove whatever challenges you face in your goal to get your credit back on track, buy a home, stave off a foreclosure, grow your small business and more.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? Initial idea. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. PowerMoves.NOLA Primary organization contact person: Leslie Jacobs Organization website: www.powermovesnola.org/ Organization address: Organization phone number and email: 504-408-1038 info@powermovesnola.org What services does the organization provide? “PowerMoves.NOLA is a national initiative to deploy innovative ideas, fresh approaches, and an overall commitment to equity and diversity as a growth strategy to address the generational obstacles that prevent minority entrepreneurship. Leveraging the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, resources, and culture of New Orleans, PowerMoves.NOLA’s mission is to increase the number of venture-backed minority-founded companies locally and nationally. Through its fellowship program, pitch competitions, and boot camp, PowerMoves.NOLA acts as a catalyst, providing early-stage and high-growth minority entrepreneurs with access to capital, advisors, and the support they need to succeed.” Propeller Primary organization contact person: Julia Stewart Organization website: http://gopropeller.org Organization address: 4035 Washington Ave. New Orleans, LA 70125 Organization phone number and email: 504.345.9946 jstewart@gopropeller.org What services does the organization provide? “Propeller is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting social innovation in New Orleans… by incubating ventures that have the potential to solve our city’s most pressing issues. Our vision is to build a critical mass of entrepreneurs tackling key challenges in our issue areas of food security, water management, healthcare, and educational equity in order to make significant change for underserved individuals.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? “At the heart of Propeller’s mission and impact lies our Impact Accelerator, designed to support social entrepreneurs throughout the business lifecycle—from idea, to beta, to growth. Since June 2011, Propeller has accelerated 90 new ventures, including a

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health-focused School Food Authority, Louisiana’s first regional food hub, a wetland mitigation bank, and a maternal health collective.” Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. St. Claude Main Street Primary organization contact person: Gee Lauder Organization website: http://stclaude.org/ Organization address: St. Claude Main Street, 3700 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117 Organization phone number and email: What services does the organization provide? “St. Claude Main Street promotes and supports an economically thriving and culturally rich crossroads of historic communities in New Orleans including the neighborhoods of St. Roch, Bunny Friend, St. Claude, Bywater, and the Faubourg Marigny. We work within the larger St. Claude Cultural District, with specific focus on the development of St. Claude Avenue from Elysian Fields to Poland Ave.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? All, though not specifically focused on entrepreneurship. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? See above. St. Roch Community Development Corporation Primary organization contact person: Ben Mcleish Organization website: http://strochcdc.org/ Organization address: 2025 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, LA 70116 Organization phone number and email: 504-564-7739 JFL@StRochCDC.org What services does the organization provide? “Our mission is to serve as a catalyst to help lift people out of material and asset poverty and wholistically restore our community. St. Roch CDC is a 501(c)3 Christian organization which partners with local churches and other like-minded organizations to empower individuals and revitalize the St. Roch neighborhood and similar under-resourced New Orleans communities…. We seek to equip people with training and resources to improve their lives & community and connect people with a broader network of people who will help champion their efforts so that dignity, families and our community is restored.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? “We do this by: equipping individuals & families for success with their personal finances; providing soft skill jobs training to help people obtain gainful employment; empowering entrepreneurs to launch or grow small business enterprises; connecting people to allies who will champion their efforts; developing affordable housing; building family, community and cultural assets; advocating for justice and equity.” Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Greater St. Roch, including parts of our study area. The Idea Village Primary organization contact person: Jon Lindquist Organization website: www.ideavillage.org Organization address: 515 Girod St. New Orleans, LA 70130 Organization phone number and email: 504.304.3284 innovation@ideavillage.org What services does the organization provide? “The Idea Village is an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization with a mission to identify, support, and retain entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? All, but particularly those en route with specific ideas. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. 52 Businesses Primary organization contact person: Jason Seidman Organization website: www.52businesses.com Organization address: s 70119, 324 S Pierce St, New Orleans, LA 70119 Organization phone number and email: info@52businesses.com What services does the organization provide? “52businesses helps would-be entrepreneurs start a new business (for or non-profit)…. It’s similar to an accelerator/bootcamp, which immerses that week’s entrepreneur in all things business,

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using a unique curriculum…. Utilizing our network and support system, we’re able to provide a week’s worth of mentors, meetings, deliverables, and “homework” with everyone from accountants and lawyers to marketers and investors. Using this pro-bono network allows our team to operate with almost no overhead….” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? From the initial idea. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide. 4.0 Primary organization contact person: Raphael Gang Organization website: 4pt0.org Organization address: 643 Magazine St. Suite 206 New Orleans, LA 70130 Organization phone number and email: info@4pt0.org What services does the organization provide? “Driving innovation in American education – a place that’s resisted change for decades – takes a diverse set of people who take the work seriously without taking themselves too seriously. We’ve built charter schools. We’ve run EdTech companies. We’ve built houses and organized communities. We do as much as we can with as small of a team as possible.” At what stage(s) of business development does the organization help entrepreneurs? Specialized education start-ups. Does the organization serve a defined geography, population, and/or industry? Citywide.