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09.03.09

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By Sally-Ann Roberts / Eyewitness News
Tuesday, August 25, 2009

NEW ORLEANS – On a recent weekday, there were just a handful of stops for one U.S. Mail truck on the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Before Hurricane Katrina, John Mullen's home was part of the route.
That's not the case anymore, but that doesn't seem to upset the retired school teacher.

“I sit here every day and I cut grass. I enjoy the breeze,” said Mullen, who has lived in the area since he was a child.

“I remember wooden houses, ditches and canals, you know, not really expensive houses, just simple houses for plain ordinary people.”

He was home during Katrina when floodwaters from levee breaches ripped through his neighborhood. He climbed through an attic vent to escape. Days later a boat rescued him and 17 others.

Now Mullen commutes every morning from his temporary home on the West Bank to his house on Winthrop Street in the Lower Nine. His focus is rebuilding his home and his community, where only 20 percent of the 13,000 pre-Katrina residents have returned.

“All this is my little creation. My neighbors think I'm possessed,” he joked.

Mullen cuts the four blocks of grass around his house. He said it's one of the most important things that needs to be done. But keeping grass cut isn't the only way to lure neighbors back.

“Our civic center still is not rebuilt. We have a fire station and police substation that still need to be rebuilt,” explains Tom Pepper, operations director for Common Ground Relief, the non-profit organization that has been on the ground in New Orleans since a few days after Katrina.

“Our immediate goal was to provide initial relief for the city,” Pepper said.

That turned into four years of helping rebuild lives. The group has gutted about 3,000 houses since the storm and completely rebuilt about 40 homes over the past year.

With every stroke of a paint brush and strike of a hammer, the future for the Ninth Ward seems a little brighter.

“This is going to be a fantastic place to live. A lot of new initiative ideas have been going on with energy efficiency and urban farming and with the schools,” Pepper said. “This would be a really great community once it's all finished.”

You can find that same spirit of recovery in New Orleans East, where a pair of restaurant owners saw Katrina's devastation as an open door.

“We took that as an opportunity to come set up shop, put our flag in the dirt and say ‘Hey, we are here. Let us support each other,’” explains Earl Mackie. “Let the community support community-based restaurants and businesses and let's do it ourselves.”

About two months ago, Mackie and partner Larry Lee opened their restaurant, Big Momma's Chicken & Waffles, which sits on Crowder Boulevard near the Interstate 10. It is a corridor that was booming with businesses before Katrina. Now that same area creeps back to life, without the help of many national retailers.

“I think the mom and pop shops have aspirations now that, you know, anything is possible in New Orleans East at this particular time,” Lee said.

That attitude is catching on throughout New Orleans East.

“Within the next few years, I really think New Orleans East is going to be thriving,” said resident Jason Wynne Hughes. “I think we're going to have very vibrant parks, I think we're going to have a massive influx of retail outlets and restaurants and it’s really going to be the place that residents from the city are going to want to migrate towards.”

Hughes is confident his neighborhood will rebound bigger and better, especially if major projects go through like a new theme park where the shuttered Six Flags amusement park still sits. But many agree some critical pieces to the recovery are still missing.

With 75 percent of residents now back, according to population estimates, the shell of what used to be a hospital still sits vacant in New Orleans East. Where busy grocery stores and large retailers stood, empty lots now sit.

But although the wish lists are long, both New Orleans East and the Lower Nine are coming back to life with the same Big Easy charm.

"I'm not completely finished,” Mullen said, “But when I do, I'm going to have a party, with catfish po-boys. Y’all are welcome to come back!”