P.O. Box 24378 New Orleans, LA 70184 504.324.2270
The building is a 30,000 sq. ft. office building that will house DOTD and the Regional Planning Commission. The main purpose of the building is to monitor traffic across the metro area, including ST. Tammany, St. John and St. Charles Parish. The remaining part of the building will be offices, with 40 – 50 employees coming here on a daily basis. There will also be 2 conference rooms that can be used by the neighbor associations. The conference room will be used once a month for the Planning Commission which will have 100 people at the building for lunch.
The building has a large outdoor courtyard on the West End side of the site. This courtyard will be surrounded by a green screen which is a fence that allows vines to grow up the fence. So in a few years you will not see a fence but a solid wall of vines. The site will have several earth berms and completely landscaped with an irrigation system.
We have an old rendering but are working on a new one which will be finished next week. I can send it over when it is complete.
Below is an article from the Times Picayune on the building that you can get more information on the project if you want. I am also sending a PDF from another article on the building that was written on Nov 23, 2007
I hope this answers your
questions.
$12.4M traffic ops center going up
on West End median
By Autumn C. Giusti Associate Editor
NEW ORLEANS — Crews will begin construction in February on a $12.4-million
traffic operations center on West End Boulevard in New Orleans.
The 30,000-square-foot, two-story center will monitor 150 traffic cameras along
the interstates circling Lake Pontchartrain, said Brendan Rush, public
information officer for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and
Development. The cameras will cover Interstate 55 in Hammond, 1-12 from Hammond
to Slidell, 1-10 from LaPlace to Slidell, I-610 in New Orleans, I-310 in St.
Charles Parish and the U.S. Highway 90 business route throughout the New Orleans
area.
The center will take over the responsibilities of a similar facility the DOTD
has in Baton Rouge, which now monitors New Orleans-area cameras.
The DOTD will share the facility with the New Orleans Regional Planning
Commission, which helped develop the traffic monitoring plans. The center will
house 35 to 40 employees, said Walter Brooks, RPC executive director.
“We think it will be a good marriage,” he said.
The center will control the Intelligent Traffic Systems program in the New
Orleans area, which includes interstate cameras, traffic reports, contraflow,
digital message boards and “anything that looks at traffic and the best way to
move traffic,” Rush said.
For instance, if an 18-wheeler breaks down on Interstate 10, officials at the
center would monitor the accident via traffic cameras and relay information to
police, Hazmat crews, local government and other agencies, Brooks said.
“It will help with this whole idea of getting information out to the public,” he
said.
“Its intent is day-to-day traffic operations. If it works as well as we
anticipate, we could eventually pick up other major state routes like U.S.
Highway 61. Right now it’s going to focus on interstates.”
Officials had begun planning the center in 2005 but Hurricane Katrina delayed
plans, Rush said.
Construction is scheduled for completion in mid-2009. The Shaw Group of Baton
Rouge is project contractor. The facility will be on the median of West End
Boulevard at Veterans Boulevard, across from the Interstate 10 off-ramps. It
will be elevated to avoid flooding, Brooks said