NYT,pg1: Failed Shops and Faded Charm Are Dual Worry in New Orleans

[DeepModem Mom]

New Orleans Shops Struggle to Survive
By LESLIE EATON
Published: August 25, 2006


(Cheryl Gerber for New York Times)
Baumer Foods, which produces preserves and hot sauce, will move it facility out of New Orleans, after suffering much damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

....Even before the storm, New Orleans’s economic ship was powered not by a couple of whales, but by a school of minnows. The city estimates that 95 percent of the 22,000 businesses here before Hurricane Katrina employed fewer than 100 workers (fewer than 25, in most cases). These included not just shops, but also the artists and manufacturers and wholesalers that supplied them, and the accountants and lawyers and cleaning companies that served them.

About 60 percent of the businesses within the city limits have probably not reopened, according to a recent study by Louisiana State University, which tried to call about 8,500 of the 10,000 businesses registered with the state. At about 5,000 of the businesses, the phone had been disconnected or was not answered after five calls.

Long term, more than 40 percent of those businesses are likely to disappear, said Timothy P. Ryan, an economist who is chancellor of the University of New Orleans. As residents return and the city rebuilds, new businesses will eventually open, but Dr. Ryan predicted that they would not be the same kind of businesses as their predecessors. “Many of them may be in Sheetrocking,” he said.

So the fallout will be cultural as well as economic. Or as Dr. Ryan put it, if the city loses the quirky shops and the independent restaurants, “we’ll lose part of the character and charm and culture of the city.”

In recent interviews, many business owners said they were overwhelmed by an environment in which they could not count on electricity, water pressure or, in some parts of town, a feeling of safety. Do not even ask about the cost of insurance....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/us/nationalspecial/25katrina.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. That Fucking SOB Allowed The City I LOVED To Die.

This Country Sucks for letting him get away with this BS.