The Times-Picayune (4/4/16) — At the intersection of Esplanade Avenue and North Rampart Street sits a vacant gasoline station. The canopy is rusted and crumbling, the lot surrounded by a chain link fence. This is how the property has looked for decades, abandoned and largely forgotten in a corner of New Orleans‘ most famous neighborhood.
Recently, however, there were signs that it would be brought back to life. A year ago the City Council OK’d plans for Cafe Habana, a New York-based Cuban eatery owned by Sean Meenan. The project called for the restaurant to occupy the gas station at 1040 Esplanade, in a corner of the French Quarter, and the first floor of an adjacent building at 1036 Esplanade. Meenan bought the properties, both already zoned for commercial use and approved for a restaurant, for $1.25 million.
In voting to move Cafe Habana forward, Councilwoman Nadine Ramsey said it would “infuse energy and commerce into an area that has long been neglected.”
But since that day nothing has changed. The restaurant remains little more than a dream on paper, the gas station a blighted building. Two weeks after the council voted 4-2 in favor of Cafe Habana, a group of French Quarter residents opposed to the restaurant sued the City Council and the Planning Commission, seeking to overturn the vote. And that’s where the project has been for the past year, trapped in the courts.
The dispute illustrates the hoops through which businesses must jump to operate in a protected historic district – Meenan spent three years on the project before it ever reached the City Council – as well as the dogged determination of French Quarter interests in defending the character of their neighborhood.
The opponents’ lawsuit details a host of alleged procedural problems with the Cafe Habana application, but the main complaint is that the council’s approval violated its “constitutional mandate to prevent detrimental effects to the Vieux Carre’s quaint and distinctive character; to preserve the Vieux Carre as an historic living neighborhood; and to protect its status as a national treasure.”
The plaintiffs contend that Cafe Habana, which they call an “open-air fast food restaurant and entertainment venue,” is too large and doesn’t fit the historic atmosphere of the neighborhood. If allowed to open, it would permanently disfigure “one of the last remaining residential areas of the historic French Quarter” by attracting hundreds of people who would generate excessive noise, traffic and trash, according to a plaintiffs’ brief in the court case.
“Cafe Habana will drive residents from their homes and unravel (their) quality of life, the very fabric that holds this neighborhood together,” Carol Gniady, executive director of French Quarter Citizens, said at a January 2015 Planning Commission meeting.
A month earlier, at a Vieux Carre Commission hearing, Susan Guillot, also a member of French Quarter Citizens, took on the assertion that “anything at this location is better than nothing at all.”
“A strip joint would not be better at this location,” she said. “A chicken rendering plant would not be better at this location. Championship Square would not be better at this location, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s opening an event venue that will ruin the neighborhood.”
‘This is fear-mongering’
That a lawsuit was filed is not a surprise. After the Vieux Carre Commission approved Cafe Habana in January 2015, opposition attorney Stuart Smith told the commissioners: “Mr. Meenan is going to end up paying his lawyers all the way up to the Supreme Court because that’s where this case is headed. The court is going to throw your decision out on the street, and you’re going to be embarrassed when that happens.”
Smith, along with Lloyd “Sonny” Shields, represents the plaintiffs: Charles Garber, Rodney Villarreal, Rene Fransen, Edward Bonin, Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates, French Quarter Citizens and Louisiana Landmarks Society.
Their suit requests that the Orleans Parish Civil District Court overturn the council’s approval of the project. It also seeks “such other relief as the circumstances dictate, all at defendant’s costs.”
The defendants fired back in a March 22 brief in which Chief Deputy City Attorney Adam Swensek described the plaintiffs’ characterizations of Cafe Habana as “comical” and “unrealistic.” The area where the restaurant would be located is not an “idyllic sanctuary tucked deep within a residential pocket of the Vieux Carre,” as the plaintiffs contend, the brief stated. In fact, it is one of the French Quarter’s “busiest intersections.”
“North Rampart Street – a four-lane divided highway with a streetcar traversing the center – houses a diverse mix of gas stations, hotels, bars, restaurants, churches, condominium complexes, television stations, and parking lots,” Swensek wrote. “Esplanade Avenue – while more residential – contains several large condominiums, hotels, and restaurants like Port of Call and Buffa’s.”
Swensek then took the plaintiffs to task for describing Cafe Habana as an “event center” and “beach party.” “These overblown characterizations, while provocative, are unsupported by the record,” he wrote. “Habana intends to operate as a ‘standard restaurant,’ which is permitted by right. Mr. Meenan has repeatedly affirmed … that he intends to open only a restaurant, not a music venue or nightclub. Plaintiffs simply disbelieve him.”
Furthermore, the Cafe Habana plans don’t call for changes to the exterior structures of the buildings. “Minus the graffiti and blight, the proposed new restaurant design looks almost identical to the current layout.” It’s not as if the developer wants to transform the “Ursuline Convent into a Taco Bell drive-thru restaurant,” Swensek wrote.
Meenan, in a February 2015 Planning Commission meeting, drove this point home, saying, “I won’t have dancing girls. I won’t have gambling, and I won’t have live music. This is fear-mongering. The French Quarter has survived fire, floods and yellow fever. I’m certainly not going to destroy the French Quarter.”
Cafe Habana purports to be a family-friendly, Latin-themed restaurant that would operate from noon to midnight except on the weekends, when it would open at 9 a.m. to serve brunch Entrees would range in price from $10 to $15. There are currently five Cafe Habana locations: three in New York, one in Malibu, Calif. and another in Dubai. Meenan is one of the founders of Etsy.com.
An ‘atrocious’ process
When the City Council voted to approve the project, several council members took the opportunity to apologize to Meenan for the almost three-year bureaucratic nightmare he had to endure. Meenan first submitted plans for Cafe Habana in June 2012 then tried to secure approval, bouncing back and forth from committee to committee, submitting and resubmitting multiple iterations of his architectural designs, until they met the required qualifications.
The Vieux Carre Commission approved his plans in January 2015. A month later, the Planning Commission endorsed it. The City Council then rejected an appeal by the group of French Quarter residents to overturn the earlier rulings, which prompted the current legal action.
Councilman Jason Williams called the process “atrocious” and said he feared it would scare away other companies that might be considering a move to New Orleans. Councilwoman Stacy Head, who voted against Cafe Habana, nonetheless said that what Meenan experienced was “completely unacceptable. We owe you an apology for that.”
Since that day, another year has passed, making it four years since Meenan first submitted plans. And it appears as if he is no closer to making that dream a reality.
Judge Regina Woods, who had overseen the lawsuit since it was filed, was set to hear the case last week, but she recused herself at the last minute. The plaintiffs had filed a motion March 23 to remove Woods. They said it had recently come to their attention that Smith, one of their own attorneys, represents her husband in another matter: Jimmie Woods, Glenn Woods and Metro Disposal vs. Chevron USA. In a March 7 letter to Woods requesting her recusal, attorney Justin Winch said that while “Smith is winding down his law practice … we are being cautious considering ethical considerations.”
The court approved the recusal motion and realloted the case to Judge Piper Griffin. A new hearing date has yet to be scheduled.
On a recent Thursday, several construction workers sat underneath the canopy of the blighted gas station eating lunch. They were taking a break from their work on the streetcar line that will soon open along North Rampart and St. Claude Avenue, transporting hundreds of locals and tourists past the Cafe Habana site every day.
Affixed to the porch railing of an adjacent property was an anti-Cafe Habana sign that was first posted in 2012, when the restaurant was to be named Habana Outpost. The sign’s letters were peeling and faded. The neighboring home had five such signs, three in the windows and two posted in the front garden. The properties belong to two of the plaintiffs, Garber and Fransen, who show no signs of relenting in their battle against Meenan and City Hall, and their ongoing fight to stop Cafe Habana.
As for Meenan, who moved with his family to New Orleans in 2012, he said he has no intention of abandoning his dream. “My commitment to, and love for, this beautiful city remains steadfast,” he said. “I respect the legal process and those involved, and I look forward to the day when I can open my doors and share my love, work, and restaurant with the community.”