Suturing closed the BUS90 Uptown / Downtown Divide
Just five dismal underpasses split the urban experience between the Lower Garden District and Downtown.
Thirteen streets at Jackson Avenue compress down as the river bends to connect the LGD and Warehouse District at five points; St. Charles Avenue, Camp Street, Magazine Street, Annunciation, and Tchoupitoulas. For pedestrians and cyclists, all five are awful.
Commuting locals say those underpasses and the immediate streetscape surrounding them are the worst part of their commute. People strolling down Magazine Street abruptly stop and look around like they must be lost, then turn around. Tourists call rideshares to go a few blocks and feel they must split their vacation between two different cities. The problem is apparent and addressable in a way that will elevate these urban nodes from dismal to delightful.
A Three-Part Solution
Groundwork
The underpasses are under the control of the LaDOTD, who have allowed us to access the original construction plans. There is a state program to upgrade the existing lighting to LEDs, but there is also a lot of complexity around work on the bridge. It will take political will to enact change.
Therefore, our campaign builds from established roots, with the adjacent streets and streetscape. Stormwater management, walkability, ADA conformance, and street plantings are all already part of the collective conversation. We’ll create a consortium of local leaders, businesses, and established non-profits to replicate and extend the work that Groundwork NOLA has already done on the 1700 block of Prytania.
Competition and Engagement
With tangible public work started, it will be easy to bring people together. Margaret Place, Courtyard Brewery, and others will lead the charge resuming the successful pre-pandemic series of cleanup days and driving interest through public events adjacent to the underpasses.
This energy will be transferred into political will and into applications from local creatives to compete to design the final phases.
Lights and Celebration
The final phase is to leverage the talents of the event production, film, theatrical, and architectural designers who work with lighting to create five unique and dynamic underpass lighting schemes. These lighting schemes, coupled with work from visual artists and more mundane ground-level walkability improvements, would transform these spaces.
This project is not about transposing an external solution but about shaping the existing talent on display at events like the Arts Council’s Luna Fete into permanent public placemaking. Each of the five underpasses has a unique character shaped by the bridge’s slope, the division of its roadways, the resulting columns, and then the width and nature of the ground-level streetscape. Seen uniformly, they are bland, but taken apart and celebrated as distinctive individual spaces, they are ripe with potential. Whether it be lights reacting as if dancing to the passing high school marching bands at the St. Charles Avenue underpass, chasing up the towering heights of the Tchoupitoulas underpass, or sequencing across the divergent angles and depth of the Magazine underpass, each becomes a show.
Existing Conditions
Precedents
And beyond.
Any project must be limited in its initial scope, but there are many more opportunities to improve placemaking through the strategies developed here. Parasite (see precedents) would urgently benefit from lighting, as would the underpasses lakeside of St. Charles Avenue, at Causeway and Old Metairie Road, or out into the east. Lincoln Beach, Euphrosine and Broad, Lakefront Trail at Causeway, and others. We start where the most can be done the fastest, but perhaps we don’t stop there.
Thank you for your interest
Trenton Gauthier, AIA NCARB
Owner Operator – Margaret Place
M.Arch I, Tulane School of Architecture, Class of 2014
Former Zoning Chair, Lower Garden District Association
Former Designer, StudioWTA