Wal-Marti Gras

Residents of New Orleans are still fighting over a Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for the site of a former housing project, but it looks like things are going Wal-Mart’s way despite “No Sprawl-Mart” signs sprouting all over the city.

The $15 million, 203,000-SF Supercenter will anchor a $318 million mixed-use development planned for a 50-acre site on Tchoupitoulas Street.

The site was previously home to the St. Thomas Housing Development. A former New Orleans EMT told us St. Thomas was generally considered the most dangerous spot in one of the most dangerous cities in America. He said criminals would come down from Detroit and hole up in St. Thomas for as long as they wanted because they knew that even the police wouldn’t go into the project to look for them.

A big, desolate area near the Mississippi River is about to be converted into a Wal-Mart that looks like an old warehouse. But residents of the historic Uptown area don’t like the idea of a Wal-Mart nearby, no matter what it looks like. They claim the store will degrade the area, but from the looks of things, we have to disagree. The St. Thomas site looks like a bomb has detonated there and nobody has gotten around to cleaning up the mess yet. We figure even a Wal-Mart store will look better than that.