Notes From the Road: New Orleans

Enviro-maxxing in the Crescent City

Far from Bourbon Street, past the Bywater bohemian art district on the banks of Violet Canal in St. Bernard Parish, I met James Karst, director of communications with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. You may recognize him from gigs on America’s Most Wanted, Louisiana Coastal Cooking and a Popeyes commercial, but this journalist turned environmental spokesperson is working in the New Orleans sun to get the word out about how together we can restore the wetlands in a sensitive ecosystem.

CRCL, as it is affectionately known in hospitality circles, works with restaurants to return as much as 1,500 tons of shucked oyster shells to the state’s eroding coast annually. Shells are sun-bleached and packed in nets by volunteers to build artificial reefs that disrupt wave energy and reduce shore erosion by up to 50%.

On the day I arrived to the soundtrack of buzzing cicadas, students from Brother Martin High School were drilling holes in shells for organic dock strings residents can hang to create oyster habitat. The site is also home to a native plants program, growing cypress trees and other native greenery with help from CSR groups to anchor sediment and return the coastal forest to equilibrium.

A Refillable Glass

But wait, that is not the extent of the partnership between hospitality and stewardship. Over in St. Bernard Parish’s Chalmette, Franziska Trautmann and Max Steitz, co-founders of Glass Half Full, love telling the story of how they were drinking wine as seniors at Tulane University and mused about what would happen to the empty bottle.

That led to a single bottle pulverizing machine in a fraternity house and over six years grew into an industrial processing facility at scale that takes miniature rainbow mountains of glimmering glass, cleans, sorts, crushes and turns it back into sand that can be used to shore up the shoreline, along with cullet to make new bottles. To date, more than 12 million bottles have been recycled via collection spots and restaurant partnerships.

Read More: Healthy World: Rethinking Recycling

Trautmann shakes the magenta streaks in her hair and marvels at how far the mission has come.

As the company name implies, she is optimistic by nature and prone to proactive initiatives with help from friends. Meeting professionals can feel good that by working with the venue, the bottles served at the open bar are diverted from the landfill and turned into containers for next year’s spirits.

Bigger Memories

Also expanding quickly to fill a gap is The National WWII Museum, where a $300 million Victory’s Promise campaign is expanding the D-Day exhibit from two galleries to four with new immersive and interactive features. The reopening is planned for 2027.

I was in town for the first stop on the Sail250 international maritime celebration to mark the semiquincentennial of the United States. New Orleans was the first of four stops for the flotilla of tall ships and a fleet of ships carrying the world’s hopes for cooperation over the next 250 years.

Read More: America250: America Began With a Meeting

Mayor Helena Moreno noted that the 300-year-old city has been shaped by its port as commerce, music and diverse cultural influences entered from the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River.

“Global connectivity remains one of our greatest strengths,” she said.

The sailing schooners docked at Audubon Riverfront Park in front of an expanded Audubon Aquarium. It is all part of a $763 million Ernest N. Morial Convention Center renovation that looks to build a new River District mixed-use neighborhood that complements a $2.5 billion medical district in the works with BioInnovation Center, Louisiana Cancer Research Center, New Orleans VA Medical Center and University Medical Center New Orleans.

Rest Easy

Many of the hotel properties in the city have embraced the creative reuse mindset. I stayed at Kimpton Hotel Fontenot, which is a reimagining of an 1844 building on the corner of Poydras and Tchoupitoulas. It is sprinkled with nods to the city’s music and art scene. King Brasserie honors all the monarchs from Elvis to B.B. and Billy Jean. Peacock Room is a lush, velvety lounge worthy of its namesake Creole fiddle player Canray Fontenot.