English Turn

English Turn

A LAND USE HISTORY OF LOWER COAST ALGIERS

Most of the land in lower coast was used for farming going all the way back to the Native-American tribes who lived here 3,000 years ago. Another longstanding albeit more recent use has been military / government usage. From the beachhead on the coast guard property it is possible to view downriver almost to the mouth. The Coast Guard now maintains this land and has several air/sea radio receivers located on the property. The plantation era also began in earnest about 1812 with the arrival of the steamboat used to transport goods upriver. Grown on these plantations were sugarcane, cotton and tobacco, to name a few. After the civil war the plantations began to decline and many were dismantled to make way for smaller homes and farms. The Riverside/ 406 development, while not always named this, has certainly been here a long time. It has been called a “paper subdivision” because the lots were sold and developed prior to the adoption of the City of New Orleans Subdivision Regulations in 1950. (These regulations call for basic services to be installed prior to development.) According to the 1980 U.S. Census the population of lower coast was 315 persons with only 20% of the land in use. The single family residential usage was here along with the smaller farms but didn’t really blossom until about 1985 when the intercoastal-canal high-rise bridge was built . The English Turn gated community was also begun after this time. English Turn Parkway was originally supposed to have cut straight down to the Wilderness Park but it seems as if those plans are on hold until more development has occurred further on. More recently, smaller plots of land were being sold and developed without any real planning. A moratorium on development of land under three acres has recently been put into place while the city works on their new land use plan. The issues involved in the land use plan are many and diverse. Some of these are: planning to allow for growth while still maintaining a rural quality of life; planning with regard for the natural surroundings so as to disturb the natural fauna and flora as little as possible; the property rights of individual owners to do with their land as they see fit; and foresight of the shifting drainage patterns as new developments are built. As these and other issues are worked out , we will add to our already colorful land use history in Lower Coast Algiers.