Cartier Geo

Waggonner and other city officials held a meeting at Arthur Ashe Charter School on Saturday, August 5 to update residents on the project. (Zach Brien, GentillyMessenger.com)Leaders in the Mirabeau Water Garden project gathered community members at the Arthur Ashe Community School on Aug. 5 to update them on progress, hear their concerns, and ask for their input on the second phase of the project.The garden will be built on 25 acres of land donated to the City of New Orleans by the Congregation of St. Joseph “on the condition that it be used to enhance and protect the neighborhood”, according to the City. This plot of land, bounded by St. Bernard Avenue, Mirabeau Avenue, Owens Street and Cartier Street, is bigger than Jackson Square and the land the Superdome sits on.The project is funded by a $12.5 million grant from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Program and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Disaster Resilience Competition, according to the City of New Orleans.(Courtesy of City of New Orleans)Charles Allen III, Resilience Outreach Director, says the purpose of the garden is to change how people look at water.“Look at challenges and problems, how we live within our environment,” Allen said. “Look differently at how we manage water [and] rain water going forward.”The garden will be built in Gentilly’s Paris Oaks neighborhood. Walterine Griffin, a resident of Paris Oaks, believes this can serve a duel purpose for this community. On top of helping to prevent flooding, it could give the community a sense of identity.“In my community of Paris Oaks, we didn’t really have anything to rally around,” Griffin said. “There’s no school. We don’t have a church.”One of the garden’s designers, David Waggonner of Waggonner and Ball Architects, emphasized that it is dangerous to rely on the pumping stations, so people need to rethink how to deal with storm water.“If we double the capacity of this giant drainage system we have–60,000 cubic feet per second–we’d fix 40% of t... (Gentilly Messenger)