All along the west side of Lakeside Shopping Center in Jefferson Parish, the largest and busiest mall in the Greater New Orleans region, sits approximately 100 acres of land in Jefferson Parish known as “Fat City.” Its footprint is bordered by Veterans Memorial Boulevard to the south, West Esplanade Avenue to the north, Division Street to the west and Severn Avenue to the east.
In the early 1970s, the plan for this prime location was to transform it into the “French Quarter of Jefferson Parish,” complete with bars, music clubs and restaurants. Unfortunately, by the late 1980s, Fat City was rife with crime and drugs.
From 2009 to 2014, Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng — who was then serving as councilwoman-at-large for Division B, which includes Fat City — made the revitalization of the area her prime focus. She persuaded the city council to adopt a strategic plan for Fat City as part of the parish strategic plan, led rezoning efforts to encourage mixed-use development, set earlier closing times for bars and shut down establishments that were frequently the cause of calls to the police. In 2014, she received an award of excellence for her efforts from the American Planning Association.
In the past 10 years, efforts have continued to move Fat City in a better direction. In 2019, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office spent $6.2 million on the 1st District station at 3620 Hessmer Avenue and the Entergy substation at the intersection of West Esplanade and Edenborn avenues was enhanced. In November 2022, $14 million paid for widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes on Severn Avenue to make it more pedestrian friendly.
This past February, District 5 Councilman Hans Liljeberg appropriated approximately $13 million of Community Development Grant funding to Fat City.
To learn more about what this new funding will mean for Fat City, Biz New Orleans spoke recently with Liljeberg and Dana Pecoraro, chair of the Metairie Business Development District.
Dana, could you talk a bit about the Metairie Business Development District?
Dana: Sure. The Metairie Business Development District was seated about 10 years ago. It’s a nine-member board with appointments from the Jefferson Parish Council, the parish president, the sheriff, the state senator and state representative. Our purpose is to improve the business environment in Fat City from every perspective — from cleanliness to helping businesses reopen, redevelop, and changing the streetscape and the landscape to improve the area.
How is it funded?
Dana: We receive a pinch of the taxes from several of the businesses within the district in order to fund our activities. This year, that’s about $300,000. Previously, we only had a tax associated with the Macy’s, which generated anywhere between $150,000 and $170,000. In the last year and a half, we increased it to include the Michaels, Floor & Décor, and a few other smaller businesses, which should double our income.
What has MBDD been doing with the funds?
Dana: Over the last 10 years, we had accumulated enough funds to begin to acquire property on the corner of Hessmer Avenue and 18th Street with the purpose of developing a corner-to-corner park. The thought and guidance from many urban planners is that creating green space leads to the redevelopment of everything around it. That has been our mission for the last 10 years — to acquire property to develop it into green space.
You own a business in Fat City. What attracted you to the area?
Dana: When I moved my business to Fat City in 2008 no one thought it was a good idea because it was deplorable. Across the street was a bar that had lost its liquor license and then reopened as a teen club. The building that I bought — the back door was missing, there was a mattress in one of the rooms with someone sleeping on it. The yard was full of junk. It was a former engineering firm that was no longer open. I had to renovate the entire building.
What attracted you to the property then?
Dana: My company’s an outdoor advertising company, and the goal for me was to find a location that was central for not only my maintenance people, but for my employees. I wanted a spot that we could easily hop on the interstate and get to any location within the city within 15 minutes, and that’s what Fat City allows us to do.
Have you seen things improve since 2008?
Dana: It’s light years different. I guess because I’ve been here so long, the change is so gradual that you don’t appreciate it as much. But when you look back at the photos of what it looked like and you look at it now, it’s just unbelievable. Most of the seedier bars that were here are now engineering firms, architectural firms. It’s quite different. We have a long way to go, but we’re getting there.
What does Fat City look like now?
Dana: Half of the area is mostly apartments, and the other half is comprised currently of businesses. We’ve got restaurants, architectural firms, engineering firms. I’m an advertising business. We’ve got a school uniform supply warehouse, an Orange Theory across the street from my business.
We’re also close to where the sheriff built his new substation a couple of years back, which is beautiful. It’s a multiuse building with the sheriff occupying the top half and two businesses at the bottom.
The idea is to create kind of like what you would find in New Orleans’ Warehouse District — a place where you can just walk right out your front door and find a multitude of restaurants and shops and such.
What do you consider to be the biggest problems with Fat City now? Is it a lack of green space?
Dana: There has been no green space in Fat City, but now we have a contiguous piece of property that is 42,900 square feet, that is anchored by the new sheriff’s station. That will be the park.
The 42,000-square-feet of open space, what was that previously?
Dana: This is one of my proud points: Fourteen different property owners sold their properties to us for this to come together for the sheriff’s building and for the park property.
Here I must give a plug to Jeffrey Feil, who owns Lakeside Mall. He wrote us a check for $300,000 to give us the seed money to help us start buying the property to develop the park. We did a presentation, and he wrote us a check and said, ‘There’s more money where this came from. Once you make some progress, come back and see me.’
Tell us about the park, what’s it going to be like?
Dana: The current idea is for it simply be a leisure park, something like Lafayette Square, where people can just enjoy it or come to whatever we decide to program, whether it be free music, free movies, you know, free children’s events.
The first step is to hire the landscape architect, who can collaborate with the Jefferson Parish District 5 Council, Cynthia Lee Sheng and the board and the community to figure out what’s the best and highest use and how we design that.
Hans, why did you choose to appropriate $13 million in Community Development Block Grant funds for Fat City?
Hans: It’s money that must be used for disadvantaged areas, and Fat City is one of the few areas in District 5 qualifies. But also, I grew up not too far from Fat City, about eight blocks east of Causeway Boulevard, so I’ve watched how it changed through the years… I really do think we can turn it around… It’s close to the lake, close to the airport. You have North Shore access; you have the city of New Orleans next door. It’s got the bones to be something really special.
Dana: We’ve already had one developer come to us and propose a multiuse building on the opposite corner of 18th and Hessmer because he knows we’re going to develop a park across the street.
Hans: Dana has been visiting and researching a lot of parks.
What parks have impressed you?
Dana: I love Klyde Warren Park in Dallas. It’s an enormous park that’s built over an interstate but components of it would fit very nicely in Fat City. There’s Sunnylands Park in Ranch Mirage, California — that design, I think, would work great in our space because it has a center, flat ground space that is surrounded by trees, and then sub gardens surrounding that initial ring of trees. The park that we have is big enough for a walking path to go around it.
In addition to being used to build the leisure park, the CDBG funds will also help make street and drainage improvements. What specifically are you looking at?
Dana: We’re hoping to add parking. And with parking, we’ll do some bump outs that will include green space to define the parking area on the side streets. Beneath that bump out, we’ll be able to add small drainage retention ponds. The goal is to widen sidewalks and add trees and on-street parking.
Can you talk about the 17th Street beautification project?
Hans: We’re spending $200,000 there to beautify that area with better landscaping, and I think it’s just going to make it a nicer entranceway to Fat City.
Is that being done as part of the $13 million?
Dana: No. Hans gave us an additional $200,000 this spring to make those improvements out of his district funds.
What will that look like?
Dana: There are currently no trees on that street. Lakeside Shopping Center is condensing some parking spots so that we can add larger trees on their property. As you enter from Causeway Boulevard, that entire first island you see right now is grass that’s going to be re-landscaped, and trees are going to be added and landscaping and at some point. We’ll also have a piece of sculpture art.
If you go a little bit further, there is a turn lane that leads to the post office, which is not needed. We’re going to use that to create additional green space, and that will also be planted with trees and landscaping. It’s going to completely change the look of 17th Street.
You mentioned Lakeside Mall. How are they connected to the project?
Brian Lade [regional manager at the Feil Organization] is the vice chair of the Metairie Business Development District. I’m the chair this year. Tommy Cvitanovich [owner of Drago’s Seafood Restaurant] was the former chair for the last few years.
What about housing? Jefferson Parish struggles with an older housing stock, particularly when it comes to luring younger residents.
Dana: Tampa has a park called Hyde Park not far from the waterfront. That does what I think most of us are hoping we can eventually do in Fat City, which is have a multiuse building where you’ve got retail at the bottom and maybe apartments or condos on top, directly adjacent to the park.
Hans: The idea is to create kind of like what you would find in New Orleans’ Warehouse District — a place where you can just walk right out your front door and find a multitude of restaurants and shops and such.
What’s the timeline for all of this?
Dana: As I understand it, the funds from the parish level are approved, and they are now in the hands of the state. The first phase of the funds should be in our hands, either the Metairie Business Development District or Jefferson Parish, within the next six months. That would enable us to start construction on the park. The other funds will probably flow through within the next year to 18 months.
