With demolition off the table for Ted’s Frostop in Uptown, developers are still looking to transform the site surrounding it.
At Thursday’s city council meeting, Councilmember Aimee McCarron gave the green light to demolish two nearby vacant buildings, a pizzeria and a drive-thru bank. In order to go through with these demolitions, developers will have to meet certain criteria during the planning process.
“I wanted to make sure that before those two could be taken down, there was a good faith effort by neighbors and the developers to come up with a good neighbor agreement, as well as the plans need to be submitted and approved by Safety and Permits before anything can happen,” McCarron said.
Neighbors at the meeting showed support for the demolitions, as long as Frostop is protected in the process.
“That property, I didn’t use a ruler, but it’s something like nine or 10 feet from Ted’s Frostop; my concern is that when the demolition happens, perhaps damage would happen to the Frostop,” one neighbor said.
Developers have yet to create a new plan for the site, but McCarron expects it to include a smaller residential project that incorporates the Frostop.
“The next steps will be that the developers are going to have to work with plans, were going to get together with the developers as well as neighbors in the next couple weeks to kind of figure out what our cadence is going to be,” McCarron said. “I’m going to be meeting with them regularly to make sure that everyone is negotiating in good faith on that good neighbor agreement.”
Some neighbors chimed in on what they would like to see at the site.
“We would prefer to see a non-housing commercial venture in what is now a vacant bank drive-thru and pizza place, that will be financially beneficial for the city and the surrounding neighborhoods that we can vigorously support in its planning and operations,” another neighbor said.
The original project would have demolished all three buildings to make room for Tulane student housing, but the demolition of Ted’s Frostop was blocked by the Historic District Landmarks Commission following pushback from the community. The developers filed an appeal to this decision, but withdrew it earlier this week.
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