NEW ORLEANS — David Baird owns one of the oldest buildings in New Orleans, Le Citron Bistro on Religious Street.
He’s gotten used to the towering monstrosity across Tchoupitoulas and along the riverfront, the abandoned Market Street Power Plant, with its broken windows, graffiti and crumbling façade.
But he was concerned when he saw black smoke coming from one of the massive smokestacks on the afternoon of Nov. 21, and again this Tuesday, Dec. 3.
“I think I and many other residents here should be worried about what is in fact being burned through that stack,” Baird said.
There’s nothing to be alarmed about, said Peter Aamodt, part of the development team on the property owned by Joe Jaeger since 2015.
“Trespassers entered the property and apparently created a contained fire in a barrel to stay warm,” Aamodt said. “The fire was extinguished and the site was promptly secured.”
WWL-TV saw a worker securing a broken fence on Thursday morning, and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality went to the site to investigate, spokesman Greg Langley said.
“One of our staff members subsequently spoke with Craig Guidry, asset manager for (Jaeger’s) Victoria Land & Development,” Langley said. “Guidry was aware of the smoke there a couple of times, especially this week, and said they had sent a team there. Guidry said they had determined that the smoke comes from homeless people burning wood in a 55-gallon drum to keep warm.”
But Baird and other neighbors who spoke with WWL-TV are skeptical about how safe the new emissions are.
“I’ve been made aware this is a brownfield site,” Baird said. “It’s loaded with asbestos and other types of contaminants, including PCBs,” man-made oily chemicals that were banned by the U.S. government in 1979.
The DEQ issued permits to remove asbestos from the site in 2014 and 2015, but not since then. Aamodt said Jaeger’s team hasn’t begun to clean up the site because they are still trying to come up with a redevelopment plan.
The century-old power plant looms over the city’s skyline upriver from downtown, in more ways than one. It was a prime electricity generation station for the city’s electric utility, New Orleans Public Service Inc., until 1973, when it became a backup source. It was officially closed in 1985, but cited for numerous environmental violations.
An environmental assessment in 2005 identified hazardous waste on the property.
It was sold to private developers in December 2006, with big plans to make it the centerpiece of a mixed-use retail and residential development. But it soon became embroiled in corruption. The developers, led by Michael Samuel, paid former Mayor Ray Nagin more than $100,000 in consulting fees.
Nagin was later convicted of bribery for taking those payments in exchange for supporting the project when he was mayor.
Another team of developers arrived, claiming they would save the project from bankruptcy, but a series of stories by WWL-TV uncovered that they were closely tied to Samuel. Jaeger had provided them with financing, but they defaulted on the loan. Following the foreclosure in 2015, Jaeger purchased the property.
He was part of a separate team of developers on the 47-acre tract that sits between the power plant and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. That property is owned by the convention center. But various development plans fell apart over the years, including a hotel and entertainment district, and most recently a proposal for Topgolf to build an indoor golfing and gaming facility.
Jaeger split from his partners on the convention center site, and he said in an interview with The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate in June that he was ready to move forward on the Market Street Power Plant redevelopment with or without the convention center.
Now, it seems going it alone is not going to work.
“We are actively working on a redevelopment plan for this iconic structure,” Aamodt said. “As with any major development, it cannot be planned in isolation but must be developed as part of a master plan that is compatible with the convention center's upriver development.”
Baird said residential development is booming in the area and kids, vagrants and joy-seekers are breaking into the power plant facility regularly. The property has repeatedly been cited by city inspectors for code violations, most recently for demolition by neglect in October.
“It’s virtually impossible to keep trespassers out,” Aamodt said. “We’ve used sheet metal to cover the doors. We try to keep up as much as possible, but sometimes we can’t keep up with the vagrants breaking in.”
The abandoned building has been used from time to time for movie shoots. Baird wonders is if there’s danger of contamination for those on or near the site. Aamodt said Jaeger’s team hasn’t started with any cleanup.
“It doesn’t make sense to clean everything up until you have a project to go along with it,” he said.
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