Ian Cockburn

Soon, I will just start adding pictures to my blog, because what is happening in New Orleans is so incredibly exciting..with this billion dollars of construction in a zipcode brings an amazing level of growth...activity that almost boggles the mind...from residential, to commercial...and the really big projects have not started yet.

The appears to be a shortage of warehouses...to the point several of us are considering building a few...with some friends from Texas.

So my business partner and me were out early this morning determined to tear out all the plumbing in one of our buildings in 4 hours or less. So with generator, and tools in hand, I crawled under 100 yrs of history making my way past miscellaneous glass, bones, blacksmiths square nails from back in the day, etc and proceeded to cut, while my friend pulled out the cut pieces of galvanized, coppered, lead whatever.

With one more piece of pipe to remove, I looked at the gas line that appeared to be abandoned. Both my friend and my electrician had confirmed with Entergy, (our local monopoly / oh the power of lobbyist..but thats another story....).....anyway, I had a feeling that their may still be gas in the gas line, so I cautiously cut through the pipe.... .

Now to understand why this was so scary was because I used to work in several industrial plants, and one learns to never trust a pipeline unless you can see through to the other end. Well, in the years I learnt that lesson, I lost my sense of smell...so when I smell gas, it is usually too late.

Miraculously, I cut through the pipe with my electric Sawsall, started to smell gas and stopped...crawled at the speed of light backwards, grabbed my friends cell phone...and started calling the police first, while he tried to reach bozo utility company.com.

After a 10 second transfer to the fire department, the fire department sirens were heard LESS THAN 4 minutes later!!!! Incredible!! They were ready to ROLL!

I have lived in many places, but NEVER have I seen such a response!

Yes, part of me was so happy that I didn't blow myself up today, and possibly relocating our investment to the moon....but most importantly I was relieved and further reinforced as I am everyday in one way or another that New Orleans isn't coming back....it is back.

And those doubting Thomas' need to stay away...because the ones who believe in this city are making money...alot of money...those that touch and talk to our neighbours committed to helping us understand what is happening...new people, new attitude. We are blowing the roof off business as usual....3 and a half minutes at a time.

So here I was, bringing electrical materials to one of my projects on Broad Street, and lo and behold I noticed that the Falstaff building located just off Broad and Tulane had all brand new windows.

It is so amazing that the media has not caught on yet, but we are talking about a building that has been in disrepair for over 30 years!! Such a wonderful rejuvanation of yet a piece of Americana, a piece of New Orleans history on it's second life as luxury condominums in an area that had fallen into the hands of scary monstors is now positioned to be a point of light in our great city.

Keep posted for more updates on this neighbourhood.

How amazing it is to see changes everyday in the New Orleans marketplace! More and more people are coming back into our city...educated, skilled and ready to invest.

Such a shift is creating an environment of unprecendented growth we expect to continue into 2008.