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October 30, 2007
The Voodoo That Da Park Do
(cross-posted from YatPundit)
Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park
This weekend's Voodoo Experience presents an interesting problem for the City of New Orleans: is it possible that the city's private sector is coming back too fast? Can the problem-plagued city government keep up with events like Voodoo that are growing in popularity?
If you read Da Paper's account of the festival, reporter David Hammer depicts the fest as a rousing success. Unfortunately, he decided to cross the bayou and interview people almost totally unaffected by the noise coming from over at Tad Gormley. Who knows, maybe he took the streetcar to the park and didn't know where Tad Gormley was. By the standards of both City Park and the fest's producer, Stephen Rehage, last weekend was a resounding success, with massive crowds coming to Tad Gormley Stadium to hear Rage Against The Machine on Friday night and Smashing Pumpkins on Saturday. (Memo to Rehage: City Park ain't in Bywater, cap. If you're going to act like a New Orleanian, go get Chase's book, or another easy-to-read history of the city.)
What Hammer's story doesn't discuss is the very serious problem that Voodoo has revealed: The private sector of New Orleans is coming back much faster than the public infrastructure can handle. Consider Voodoo. When this festival started in 1999, it was a low-rent headbanger experience held at Marconi Meadows, the site of the park's old golf driving range. This venue is on the northern side of I-160, in a part of the park that's all golf courses, athletic fields, "Scout Island," and an arboretum. The more populated part of City Park is south of I-610, which is where the stadium, "Storyland" and the childrens' rides, along with other park attractions, are located. While City Park is big, it's not on the same scale as Central Park in New York. When a big event is held at the south end of City Park, the surrounding neighborhoods feel the crunch.
The inconvenience of big events is something neighbors have to accept, however, if you want a facility like City Park to be your recreational green space the rest of the year. Tad Gormley Stadium has been around since 1937, having been built as one of the many WPA projects in the park. It's used almost every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night in the fall for high school football games. The stadium hosted The Beatles in 1964, Pope Paul VI in 1965, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Alice Cooper in the 1970s. Given that I attended the latter two events on that list, as well as all too many high school football and soccer games at Tad Gormley, Park Place neighbors who have a problem with events at the stadium don't get a lot of sympathy from me. After all, unless you owned your house in prior to 1937, you pretty much had to be aware of the stadium's impact on the neighborhood across the street.
But 70,000+ people on two successive nights is a but much for any neighborhood. If Hammer's numbers in Da Paper are accurate (and the fluffy-puffy feel of the piece does give one pause), that's double the official record crowd for an event in the stadium (34,345 for the Jesuit-Holy Cross football game in 1940). The official capacity listed on the stadium's webpage is 26,500 seats. While not all those people were in the stadium proper, surely both the Park and Rehage knew that putting a crowd of double that in the south-of-610 portion of the park would stress the neighborhoods.
In terms of contractural responsibility, I've no doubt that both City Park and Rehage did everything that anyone would expect of them. What neither the Park nor Rehage factored in was the below-standard support their event received from the City of New Orleans. For events like the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival or Carnival parades, the city support services are usually out in full force. Tow trucks haul cars away from the streets of Faubourg St. John and Gentilly at JazzFest time as fast as they can be illegally parked. Same goes for the Garden District on parade nights. Frankly, given the ruthlessness of parking enforcement at JazzFest time, I'm surprised the city missed the opportunity to tow away cars from Park Place this past weekend. Perhaps the residents of this neighborhood are too quiet, and city officials think the area is still just a bunch of gutted houses?
Overall security in the neighborhoods surrounding Da Park were an issue as well. We're talking about neighborhoods where NOPD presence is still well below pre-storm levels. Police patrols in most of Lakeview and Gentilly are provided by Military Police teams from the Louisiana National Guard. Given the low staffing levels in the NOPD 3rd District, it's no surprise that there was no "neighborhood policing" going on to prevent that vandalism, public urination, and general disturbing the peace that invariably happens when the crowds from a large event invade the area.
Who is to blame for that lack of external support/security? Clearly city government isn't much help. Given the crisis that the city's justice system finds itself in, nobody really expects much from this mayor for the rest of his term. City agencies like NOPD who rely exclusively on govermental funding won't be able to rise to the challenge of large events like last weekend, either. That puts the burden on those hosting/sponsoring/promoting the event. They're making the money, they should be the ones spending a bit more of it to be good neighbors. In this regard, City Park's and Rehage's reliance on support from the city has created a bit of bad blood with the neighborhoods.
The neighborhoods aren't blameless, either. There's a lot of complaints, in letters to the editor of Da Paper, on blogs, and in online neighborhood forums about the noise in particular. I'm having a hard time buying these complaints. The lineup for Voodoo Fest was no secret, and it's no secret that bands like RATM, Smashing Pumpkins, and Fallout Boy are loud.
In terms of parking, I've seen a couple of people write about how fest-goers moved the garbage cans they put out in front of their homes! Oh, the shock! When people near parade routes want to block off street parking for guests, they're out there monitoring the situation. To expect that folks coming to the Park from other parts of the city and the burbs to honor your "reservation" is naiive at best. If the neighborhood wants to prevent blocked driveways and fire hydrants (legitimate concerns), I suggest purchasing a box of Avery 5165 labels. These are the full-sheet (8.5x11) labels. Print "YOU ARE ILLEGALLY PARKED" on these labels and stick them on the front windshield of every car illegally parked. This works for office buildings with garages, it should work for you.
The time to file a complaint isn't during or after the performances; perhaps working with the Park and the producer beforehand might have been a better idea. Frankly, I'm surprised that the Park Place neighborhood don't already have some sort of neighborhood liaison with City Park. After all, the Park doen't put on just Voodoo, but all those football games, Celebration in the Oaks, and other events. Both sides of this issue should learn from last weekend and establish some sort of permanent line of communication.
And communication is the key here. There are a number of people on Teh Internets talking about how City Park is a "bad neighbor." I'm not so sure about that. I took some of the complaints registered by members of one online forum for Lakeview and forwarded them to folks at City Park. It's not all that hard to do, you know--I went to the Park's website, looked up the "contact" page, and found e-mail addresses for the key players. Within an hour or so of e-mailing Da Park, I got a response from the CEO, Mr. Bob Becker. Mr. Becker not only gave me the courtesy of a reply, but he provided me with clear answers to several issues:
Noise: Mr. Becker conceded that the sound from some of the stages was poorly directed. His ultimate solution is the plan by the park to move Voodoo (and all other similar major events held in the park) to the South Golf Course (see map). Part of the City Park's Master Plan is to convert one of the four golf courses (North, South, East, and West), into a festival ground. The South course is on the opposite side of the park from the stadium, and Bayou St. John separates it from the neighbors.
Parking: Voodoo's on-site entrance to the park was from Wisner Blvd., similar to the set-up used for Celebration in the Oaks. Of course, many people who knew they were going to see an act in the Stadium would be likely to bypass the on-site parking and park in the neighborhood. I do this for my football games when my son plays in the Brother Martin High School band. We park along Marconi Drive rather than in the stadium parking lot. The problem here was that the city didn't take their usual stance, that such events are great revenue generators for them in terms of traffic tickets and towing fees. When you think back on some of the stunts the city's parking control people have pulled over the years with Carnival and JazzFest, I'm willing to cut the Park a break on this.
Wither the future of Voodoo? Mr. Becker feels (and I concur) that Voodoo can be successfully held on the South golf course. Given the population decline of the city post-storm, cutting back from four golf courses in the park to three is a wise re-allocation of resources. In fact, converting the South course to a festival area should be considered a prudent move, not only for Voodoo, but because it provides a publicly-owned alternative to the Fair Grounds should something ever happen to the relationship between that venue and the JazzFest folks. (Not that I'm saying such a thing would happen, mind you, but having a viable alternative is nonehteless a prudent move.)
Is City Park a bad neighbor? Overall, I'd have to say no. I'd like to think that anyone representing LCIA, FSJNA, or MCNO would receive at least as fast an e-mail response from Mr. Becker or one of his people as I did, and I'm sure they'd be willing to meet with neighborhood representatives as well. Given that the specific venues in the park for this year's Voodoo are temporary, it should be easy for both sides to move forward from here.
Posted by YatPundit at October 30, 2007 10:17 AM
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