Trust none
of what you hear, and less of what you see.
-
Bruce Springsteen
I’m sure it breaks some “Writer’s Rule” to start a post with
two quotes but, like Yogi Berra said, in
Kenner “it’s déjà vu all over again.”
10 days ago we wrote about more stores leaving the Esplanade Mall. District 4 Councilwoman Maria DeFrancesch, who is term-limited and
seeking a promotion to Councilman-At-Large, reached into her bag of tricks and
pulled out a familiar card and promised more large retailers would soon be
coming to Kenner.
“(Stores) like Belk’s and others,” DeFrancesch said.
Mayor Yenni and DeFrancesch had pulled a similar trick on
voters during the election campaign in 2010 when they touted their hard work in
bringing a Kohl’s Department Store to Kenner.
The Kohl’s never materialized and, after repeated questions
from Kenner shoppers, DeFrancesch took the fall and admitted that a Kenner Kohl’s
was not forthcoming due to “personnel changes” at Kohl’s.
In my post 10 days ago, I wrote that it was similarly
unlikely that Belk’s would be coming to Kenner either.
“Belk’s has one South Louisiana location in Covington. Their
only other Louisiana locations are in Shreveport and Monroe. The Covington
location sits adjacent to I-12 and near other Belk locations on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast, making distributions costs significantly less than shipping
products and incurring significant marketing costs for a standalone Kenner
location.”
Since that post, ClickJefferson.com has confirmed that
Kenner isn’t on Belk’s radar.
“Conceptual Drawings”
The graphics for the 2030 Plan show many things that WON’T
happen in Kenner including underground power lines on Williams Blvd.
Many new subdivisions and emerging cities boast of
underground power lines.
For an existing, older city like Kenner, the cost of
underground power lines is cost prohibitive.
But that didn’t stop Mayor Yenni from trying to get the people of
Kenner to buy into his flawed “vision”.
Of course, when the work is done on the 2030 Plan, Mayor
Yenni will be long gone. He won’t need to face the fallout from Kenner
taxpayers who are paying for his 2030 Plan until, well, 2033 to be exact and
were sold a bill of goods with pretty “concept drawings” that don’t reflect
reality.
And Yenni's campaign contributors will have raked in Millions.
Not content to stop with fudging about retailers, at
yesterday’s “State of the City Address”, which every year was held in November
but this year was changed to January to generate some buzz about Mayor Yenni’s
2030 Plan before qualifying for the Spring election occurs in 3 weeks, the
Mayor told another huge whopper.
Mixed in with several smaller lies about Mayor Yenni’s
successes (cutting 135 “government jobs” when the bulk of that was tour guides
at Rivertown museums; “strategic savings by eliminating or significantly
reducing subsidies to the Pontchartrain Center – yet to be seen, and by using
JEDCO for economic development and the Jefferson Convention & Visitor’s
Bureau for tourism when both are receiving the same funding), was more “concept
drawings” for Laketown.
Here's a link to the Mayor's slide show. See how many lies you can count.
Laketown which, with the exception of Coconut Beach Volleyball, has languished during Yenni’s almost 8 years at the top of Kenner
City Government, is finally a point of emphasis for the Mayor.
Yenni envisions breaking ground in 2016 on an “entertainment
district” in Laketown.
“Yenni also touted a Laketown boardwalk. Behind his lecturn, he showed the luncheon audience an architectural rendering of what could be built there: proposed broad plazas, an amusement area sporting a Ferris wheel and lake-view cafes stippled with umbrellas. He said in an interview that his administration has finished drafting a request that developers propose specific improvements.
"We want a hotel. We're looking for condos. We're looking for high-end restaurants," Yenni said. He compared the proposed development to Beau Rivage, which sits on the Gulf of Mexico at Biloxi, Miss., or to Fisherman's Wharf, which peeks over San Francisco Bay.”
“City officials are in discussions with Boyd Gaming, which owns the
Treasure Chest, to determine how the lake-based casino would fit into the
larger plan. The city has also crafted a request for proposals to seek
developers interested in building the project.”
According to The Advocate, Yenni also compared his vision of
Laketown to L’Auberge du Lac in Lake Charles.
The only problem is, Beau Rivage and L’Auberge du Lac are
owned by competitors of Boyd Gaming and the Treasure Chest’s owner might not
take kindly to a Mayor promoting other properties and comparing them to Kenner’s
only casino.
In addition, the Beau is land-based and L’Auberge had plenty
of land to expand, neither of which the Treasure Chest can claim.
The “conceptual drawings” for Yenni’s Laketown “vision” also
included a giant Ferris Wheel.
A giant Ferris Wheel?
Perhaps we can also get a rollercoaster from Jazzland. It might be a little rusty but, city workers are good at rehabbing old relics although normally from Jefferson Parish and not Orleans.
A giant Ferris Wheel?
Perhaps we can also get a rollercoaster from Jazzland. It might be a little rusty but, city workers are good at rehabbing old relics although normally from Jefferson Parish and not Orleans.
“I’d love to see that concept become a reality,” Yenni said.
We all would Mayor Yenni. We all would.
The problem is, it’s just a fancy drawing that is fake as
were the drawings in your 2030 Plan.
From my April 11th 2013 post:
“One of
the biggest revelations was the fact that, in Mayor Yenni’s package and on his
video presentation for the projects,
Mayor Yenni used “doctored photographs” that are not realistic
portrayals of what the actual intersections will look like.
In
the Mayor’s video presentation, Williams Blvd. is shown to have 8 driving lanes
(4 lanes North and South), a median, a turning lane and bike paths along both
sides of the street. It is portrayed to have underground power lines and other
amenities that the City of Kenner has no funding for.
“I want to be for this project, I really do,” Kenner resident Stacey Allesandro said, “But it is not right to show ‘Photoshoped’ pictures and say ‘This is how it will look’ when it won’t look like that at all.”
“I want to be for this project, I really do,” Kenner resident Stacey Allesandro said, “But it is not right to show ‘Photoshoped’ pictures and say ‘This is how it will look’ when it won’t look like that at all.”
Mayor
Yenni replied that these are “conceptual
drawings”. The City’s Landscape Architect Greg Cantrell added that “Some
of these things we might not have money for and we may need to move money from
one project to another.”
So, instead of letting the Public
decide on the projects that they want and getting their input from the
beginning, the Mayor is asking the people to pay a bill for the next 20 years
based upon “concepts” and, it is conceivable that, this money can be moved to
other projects that the people of Kenner don’t want and aren’t even aware of.”
And, the groundbreaking for anything in Laketown won’t occur
until 2016. I guess Mayor Yenni hopes that “conceptual drawings” that are
subject to change are enough to persuade Kenner voters to re-elect him.
I wonder what role the lead sponsor of yesterday's "State of the City Address", Greg Buisson of Buisson Creative Strategies Mayor Yenni's political campaign manager and the man who handles advertising for the Jefferson Convention & Visitor's Bureau, will have in Laketown?
Like I said, stop me if you've heard this one before...
