State OKs first 75 'Katrina cottages'

La. OKs first 75 'Katrina cottages'

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

By Bill Barrow

Capital bureau

BATON ROUGE -- The state housing board has cleared the way for construction of 75 "Louisiana cottages" at Jackson Barracks, the first site for a long-planned pilot project financed by a $75 million federal grant to develop alternatives to emergency travel trailers.

But the first round of Louisiana cottages, the name given to modular units commonly called "Katrina cottages," will not be available to the general public. They are reserved for civilian and uniformed employees of the state military department, a restriction in a little-noticed agreement forged months ago between the military and the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Jackson Barracks is headquarters for the Louisiana National Guard.

It remains unclear when any of the other planned 530 cottages will be available to victims of the 2005 hurricanes. Two other sites, in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, have been approved but await federal environmental inspections before construction can begin.

Mississippi, which was awarded a $281 million grant as part of the same program, started placing residents in June and earlier this month surpassed 200 cottages.

Construction in 30 days?

Louisiana Housing Finance Agency President Milton Bailey said construction could begin at Jackson Barracks in 30 days, provided lingering contract negotiations are completed with builders and a third-party construction monitor.

Maj. Gen. Hunt Downer said the restriction for military employees is necessary because of security restrictions at the 100-acre base, which was inundated with 10 feet of water in post-Katrina flooding. He also said the plan is a vital part of rebuilding the installation and the surrounding 9th Ward in New Orleans.

State Treasurer John Kennedy and other housing agency commissioners said they understood Downer's explanation, but said they were surprised that the detail had not surfaced in previous discussions of the Alternative Housing Pilot Program.

Kennedy pressured officials from the LRA, which originally collected proposals for the federal grant program, into admitting that the military department had an agreement with Gov. Kathleen Blanco's office when the state first submitted its proposal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

An Oct. 17, 2006, letter from Downer to LRA Chairman Norman Francis suggests that the terms of Jackson Barracks' participation has long been a matter of public record available to the housing board. "It should be understood that the military department reserves the exclusive right to determine who will occupy such housing," Downer wrote.

The letter is included in the project proposal compiled by the Cypress Group, a consortium that will build the structures, and submitted to FEMA last fall, three months before the federal agency announced the disbursement of $388 million in housing grants to the Gulf Coast states.

Downer said Monday that the new units are key in moving Jackson Barracks back toward the 650 full-time employees it had before the storm, with about 100 living on base. There are about 50 employees working there now, Downer said.

Ben Dupuy, a Cypress spokesman, was less optimistic than Bailey about when construction might begin at the barracks. Dupuy noted that Cypress cannot begin its work until the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency signs the formal agreement with landowners, in this case the military department. "We expect it will take several weeks to assess each site for potential challenges and develop a projected construction timeline."

California hire

The agency also must continue to negotiate Cypress' deals with its construction subcontractor, the Shaw Group. The firm sought approval during Monday's meeting, but board members refused, saying they had only received the proposed document late Friday. The full board authorized two of its members to approve a final version in the coming days.

Board members also balked at a proposed $900,000 deal with a California company that would serve essentially as a third-party monitor of the project. "I don't think you award a $900,000 contract to a California company . . . without giving everyone a shot," Kennedy said, before winning approval to seek bids for the job before the Nov. 14 board meeting.

The firm, Luster National Inc., was already hired without board approval to help negotiate the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency contract with Cypress. After some board members expressed anger over that move by agency staff, they approved paying the outfit $93,000 for its services.

Luster also will be able to bid for the monitoring contract.