Jay Batt Sure Has Impeccable Timing

Dammit. A power surge just caused me to lose an entire posting . . . The cliff note version:

Batt Announces Store He Promised in today's Times-Picayune.

Basically, the point of my now zapped post, was that the timing of this Walgreen's/Robert Mart announcement sure is impeccable--three days before the City Council District A Runoff Election against Shelly Midura. Batt was getting burned on this Carrollton grocery store issue as he gave his "I won't run again unless a grocery is built in Carrollton" speech over three years ago. For the past two years he has tried to say that the Sav-A-Lot on South Carrollton and Palmetto "counted" when everyone knows what he meant when he made the speech on the abandoned South Carrollton/South Claiborne site. So meanwhile, the abandoned buildings continued to be an eyesore and a public safety hazard--and this is even before the buildings got flooded in August 2005. Now they're funkified by the flooding as well.

I think Batt is likely going to get re-elected--probably by at least 10%. Check out the geographic results from the Council District A Primary. Lakeview/Forman Uptown to Batt. Carrollton to Midura. And Mid-City split to the both of them. The grocery store issue, the Stuart Hall expansion issue, and the Bruno's The Sequel issue are all the causes for the anti-Batt sentiment in Carrollton. I live in Carrollton, so you can guess where my vote is going . . . .

You got to hand it to Batt for the timing on this announcement . . . .


The result of the new Walgreen's on this site is that the Walgreen's at South Carrollton and Earhart will not be reopened (never reopened from the flooding). So, we just traded one abandoned building for another one.