The two most important developments to get New Orleans East back on track

I doubt the east will ever get back to the glory days of the 70's when the place was growing like Metairie, but there's no reason to think the east can't be viable again. Re-doing the Six Flags park is a must, but re-doing the old Humana Hospital is much more important.

The city of New Orleans is once again in hot pursuit of just about any viable investor who wants to do something - anything - with the old shuttered 6 Flags site at I-10 and I-510 in New Orleans East. The former amusement park is anything but amusing.

Since Katrina, the park has sat dormant, except for a few illegally shot videos. Now the city is once again trying to find a developer, and that's a good thing. 

The old Six Flags site should be developed into something we can all enjoy, but right down the street there is arguably a bigger eyesore - and one that has to get back into commerce even more urgently than Six Flags'.  I'm talking about the old Humana Hospital at Bullard and I-10. 

The old hospital and the half dozen or so significant buildings that make up it's campus are ripe for redevelopment. Not as a hospital, but as something else. Like a Delgado eastern campus or possibly a corporate headquarters or even a laboratory for research. 

It's time to reach out to corporate America and let them know about this prime piece of real estate right on the interstate, in New Orleans' suburbs, just 15 minutes from downtown and the French Quarter. Could you imagine a corporate headquarters with hundreds of well-paying white collar jobs in the east? Could you imagine what that would do to the I-10 corridor in the east?