Jessica Walker and David Demsey
Principals and Co-Founders
workshopWDXL
What are you most excited about in the coming year?
We are working on an adaptive reuse of a historic corner store in the Lower Ninth Ward into an early childhood education center, which is a complicated project that involves pursuing multiple funding sources, including federal and state historic tax credits. While pursuing this grant, we became technical advisors to support other ECE grant applications around the city.
We believe New Orleans is a fantastic place to visit, and our approach to hospitality is to create beautiful, unique, and financially viable projects where they elevate and preserve the fabric of New Orleans. We have three hospitality developments in the pipeline, including adaptive reuse of a historic warehouse, adaptive reuse of a historic hospital and an urban infill new construction project where we are pursuing a number of strategies including historic tax credits, opportunity zone funding, new market tax credits, restoration tax abatement and leveraging bonus depreciation.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry today?
We are pursuing developing affordable housing in New Orleans and advocating for affordable housing reform to the zoning with the City Council. While great steps have been taken by the city, more support and creativity is needed to unlock this project type. This is due to a confluence of factors that impede small commercial projects of all types and especially small housing projects which are classified by code as commercial structures. High interest rates, high construction costs, and high insurance costs continue to plague real estate development in New Orleans.
Founded in 2019, workshopWDXL is a multidisciplinary real estate development and architecture firm with a focus on placemaking, storytelling and transforming overlooked sites and buildings into vibrant spaces that connect people. This is exemplified by the firm’s urban infill boutique hospitality project, The Syd, the recipient of an American Institute of Architects’ National Small Project Award in 2025.
