Port considers other sites for Cold Storage

By Deon Roberts, Online Editor

Following months of outcries from residents concerned about the proposed new home for New Orleans Cold Storage, the Port of New Orleans is looking at other sites for the company to relocate to.

The company has to find a new home, after losing access to the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which the federal government closed after the channel was blamed for massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina.

Plans had called for Cold Storage to move to the Gov. Nicholls Street Wharf. But residents concerned about health and traffic impacts oppose that location and have shown it through yard signs planted throughout their neighborhoods.

“Nothing is a done deal,” Gary LaGrange, port president and CEO, said in a July 17 CityBusiness story. “We are considering alternatives. No sites have been determined either upriver or downriver. Until another site has been determined, nothing has changed.”

Here are some excerpts from a wwltv.com story yesterday:

“As far as Cold Storage is concerned, there’s no specific site that has been determined,” said LaGrange. “Alternatives are being considered in lieu of Governor Nick.”

LaGrange said the Napoleon Avenue wharf is not one of the options, as some have suggested.

So why the apparent about face? LaGrange admitted the chorus of voices and community groups against the move made a difference.

“We don’t agree necessarily with them, but we hear them,” said LaGrange. “If they’re concerned, we’re going to look for alternatives and that’s what we’re doing right now.”

So far, the port has only raised about half of the money needed to build the new Cold Storage facility.

Port officials admit it’s much easier to line up the rest of the funding with community support.

Here’s what The Times-Picayune reported today:

Port administrators are asking tenants along the Mississippi River if they could make room on their property for the company, which the port fears will leave New Orleans without a new headquarters. New Orleans Cold Storage is the port’s second-largest customer.

“They’ve made it very clear that they’re going to continue to oppose this, and we’re going to see what the other alternatives are,” port spokesman Chris Bonura said of residents in the French Quarter, Marigny and Bywater. Signs emblazoned with the message ‘Poison Port’ can be seen posted throughout the neighborhoods.

There are no guarantees that the port will find another home for New Orleans Cold Storage, Bonura said, and the company may very well end up on the Gov. Nicholls Street and Esplanade Avenue wharves as planned.•