BATON ROUGE, La. - The state of Louisiana has approved $4.5 million for repairs and improvements at the historic Pontchartrain Park Golf Course, grounds and First Tee facility, allowing the New Orleans Office of Recovery and Development Administration to access federal Community Development Block Grant funds needed to implement the project.
The funding comes from the Long Term Community Recovery Program, a $700 million pool of federal disaster-recovery money set aside by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and Office of Community Development to help local governments rebuild and implement long-term recovery plans.
Built during the era of racial segregation after World War II, PontchartrainPark was one of the first subdivisions developed by and for middle-class African-Americans. The Pontchartrain Park Golf Course, central to the subdivision, was designed by the nation's first African-American golf-course architect, Joseph Bartholomew, Sr.
The golf course always maintained accessibility to low- and moderate-income families by charging the lowest greens fees in the city. It also served as home to First Tee New Orleans, a youth development program that uses golf to teach life skills and character development to youth.
After Hurricane Katrina, both the subdivision and its golf course were submerged in up to 10 feet of floodwaters.
The $4.5 million in disaster recovery funds will be used for grassing, grubbing, grading and shaping the features of the golf course; creating a new walkway along the lakeside; building a new play ground and new little league-sized baseball field; and the construction of a new facility for the First Tee program. In addition, the CDBG money will be used to ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act in a manner that enhances the park's overall value to the city and the Pontilly area.
LRA Executive Director Paul Rainwater said, "While the goal of this project is to return affordable recreational activities to low- and moderate-income residents of New Orleans, these improvements also use the proven strategy of redeveloping urban recreational facilities in blighted areas to serve as a recovery magnet for returning citizens and businesses."
The state's LTCR program supports implementation of local governments' long-term recovery plans in the most heavily impacted communities in the state. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved LRA's request to reallocate $500 million in CDBG dollars to the program, bringing to $700 million the total amount of long-term recovery funding available to the parishes. Funds are distributed among the parishes through the LRA/Office of Community Development according to a formula based on estimated housing and infrastructure damages inflicted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Louisiana Unemployment Claims
The latest Unemployment Insurance (UI) Claims files for week ending June 27, 2009: Initial claims decreased to 4,655 for the week ending June 27, 2009, from 6,113 for the week ending June 20, 2009. UI continued weeks claimed increased to 59,504 for the week ending June 27, 2009, from 57,408 for the prior week. The Transportation Equipment industry sector had the largest increase in continued claims for the week ending June 27, 2009.
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On Thursday, July 9, 2009, United States Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Chair Mary Landrieu, D-La., will lead a Committee roundtable in Washington DC entitled “Healthcare Reform: The Concerns and Priorities from the Perspective of Small Businesses.” The roundtable will provide an opportunity to gain insight from small business owners and key groups on their ideas for healthcare reform and ways to help small businesses cope with their healthcare challenges.
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According to the Center for Media Research, “A recent comScore report says that nearly 55 million Americans visited an entertainment news site in May 2009, representing a 7% increase versus the previous year. Online video has also become an increasingly important channel for content in the category, with the number of videos viewed growing 53% in the past year.”
