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Broadmoor resident Brian Sennett hadn't paid much attention to his neighborhood association. The New Orleans firefighter said he and his wife, Rosalind, a St. Augustine High School financial officer, mostly left that sort of thing to others. Advertisement

But that was before Katrina, before Sennett used a personal watercraft to rescue his wife, 16-year-old son and others from the family's South Dupre Street two-story, its bottom floor awash in 5 feet of water. And it was before residents of this diverse slice of New Orleans concluded that the city's official recovery process was useless if not downright destructive, and that they had to close ranks if they were to survive.

On the evening of May 15, the Sennetts were among more than 150 people who gathered in an upstairs meeting hall of the First Presbyterian Church on South Claiborne Avenue. The gathering, one of about 60 planning meetings called recently by the Broadmoor Improvement Association, heard dozens of ideas about land-use changes and community upgrades.

As the couple headed to their car, parked on a side street dotted with house-gutting debris, they weren't sure what would come of the brainstorming.

They are both hopeful about the future and impatient with people whose conditioned response to the onset of the coming hurricane season is to wring their hands and worry that the city's flood barriers aren't fully repaired.

"The longer you sit around and wait for somebody to do something for you, the longer you will be displaced," said Brian Sennett, 46. "Get your neighborhood up and running."

Self-sufficiency

A fend-for-yourself spirit is evident these days in Broadmoor, an architecturally rich triangle of 150 square blocks on the traditionally flood-prone, lake side of South Claiborne. Home to more than 7,000 residents before Katrina, its current population is anybody's guess. The determined mindset has propelled a grass-roots planning effort that is extraordinary in its scope and detail. Among other things, it calls for creating social-service centers in a corridor of idle homes, restoring a branch library and public school, and incentives for police and firefighters to buy homes.

The group even wants to open an interpretive center at the pump station at the intersection of Washington Avenue and South Broad Street, to educate the public about the critical importance of drainage to life in New Orleans.

Broadmoor's planning took off in January, when Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission released a map placing a large green dot over Broadmoor, suggesting to many that a forced conversion of homes to green space lay ahead.

"People felt threatened when they saw the green dot," said association President LaToya Cantrell. "All hell broke loose."

Signs popped up on lawns: "Broadmoor Lives."

Nagin hastened to say that the green dot marked the area for more park space, not the expropriation of homes, but the episode left many leery of City Hall's intentions, and adamant about charting their own future, Cantrell said. That doesn't preclude joining in the citywide neighborhood planning process, now months behind schedule because of financing obstacles, Cantrell said. Indeed, planning consultants working for the City Council are beginning talks with Broadmoor leaders.

Outgoing Councilwoman Reneé Gill Pratt sees only good coming of Broadmoor's early work. "Before this plan is submitted, the neighborhoods are going to get together and talk about how their plans can integrate," she said. "They don't need our consultants' help as much as someone else."

Tapping all sources

Broadmoor residents also are banking on help from federal grants and local government in carrying out myriad land-use plans, but they will seek private donations as well, said J.C. Carroll, a resident and intern architect who wrote the district's urban design plan.

Membership in the BIA, as the neighborhood group is known, has jumped from about 200 to 600 since Katrina, even though more than a third of Broadmoor's property owners are still out of touch. Response was lively earlier this month at a community design workshop in a trailer at the Church of the Annunciation on South Claiborne. Illustrations of ideas for redesigning Broadmoor were posted daily, and the workshop culminated May 20 in a potluck dinner and meeting back at First Presbyterian, attended by about 80 people. Those present endorsed the ideas that were crafted in recent weeks, displaying especially strong backing for restoration of Wilson Elementary on Gen. Pershing Street, a beloved landmark, if the floodwaters didn't render it structurally unsound, Carroll said.

Finishing touches on the land-use plan should be complete in a week or so, and residents are anxious to know what it will take to bring ideas to life.

"What's the likelihood of this happening?" Harold Sheets, a still-displaced Broadmoor resident, asked one recent evening in the BIA's church trailer as he and his wife, Ladd, scanned maps pinpointing ideas for new projects.

"Future funding?" Ladd Sheets chimed in.

"I don't think it's a dream," responded Wendy Kerrigan, representing the architectural firm providing the illustrations, Eskew, Dumez and Ripple. The ideas, Kerrigan said, are "very concrete."

As they left, the Sheetses, both in their 60s, said they are renovating their Octavia Street home and are determined to see Broadmoor revive.

"It's not only a commitment to the neighborhood, it's a commitment to the city," said Harold Sheets, chairman of Newman School's history department.

"The storm made me want to defend the city," he said.

Technical help is being provided to the BIA at a reduced fee by Eskew, Dumez and Ripple and at no charge by professors and graduate students from Harvard University. But the advisers are quick to note they are playing support roles.

"They are a fiercely self-determinant neighborhood. What they're calling us is the graphic communicators," said Allen Eskew, a partner in the architectural firm.

Doug Ahlers, a senior fellow with the Harvard group, representing several academic specialties, is struck by how thorough Broadmoor's planning has been. The discussions have attracted a diverse set of residents.

"It's a rare thing to see people just kind of come together in a collective to really tackle a project like this," he said. "Most planning efforts tend to be top-down."

Ahlers, a restaurateur who owns Muriel's in the French Quarter, said his work with Broadmoor stemmed from his service on the economic development committee of Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission.

Solid housing stock

Harvard business and government graduate students initially came to New Orleans to help with the commission's research, but Ahlers and others quickly realized that neighborhood planning was essential. A consulting relationship with Broadmoor was cemented just before Mardi Gras, largely because Broadmoor's demographics -- 68 percent African-American, an owner-occupied housing rate of 48 percent, to cite two examples -- closely mirrored those of the city at large before Katrina, and it was believed Broadmoor could serve as a planning model. Several Harvard University interns will provide technical help to the group this summer.

While the "green dot" episode propelled Broadmoor to the cutting edge of recovery planning -- Lakeview and Gentilly have comparably sophisticated efforts under way -- other influences have been critical. One, many say, is Broadmoor's location, near minimally damaged Uptown sections that bustled with activity when evacuation orders were lifted. Another is its stock of buildings that are both strong and architecturally significant. Houses in Bungalow, Craftsman and Colonial Revival styles were erected in the early 20th century after new pumping technology opened a back-of-town swamp to development.

Eskew also sees a "clear sequence of leadership" in the BIA, an organization founded more than 75 years ago, and an elaborate BIA structure in which committees and block captains allow for close attention to issues. Others say the revival effort benefits, at no cost, from Broadmoor's ample professional class of engineers, planners, architects and educators.

And they cite impassioned leadership by Cantrell, manager of the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation and a Xavier University graduate who moved to Broadmoor in 2000. Within weeks of Katrina, from her place of evacuation in Houston, Cantrell, 34, was tracking down BIA leaders by phone, making plans.

For Broadmoor residents, recovery is grounded in hard work: knocking on doors, phone calls, computer research, night meetings.

For Matt McBride, a mechanical engineer, and Joe Thompson, an eye doctor, it has meant a bit of investigative work. As co-chairmen of a BIA subcommittee on urban planning, McBride, 33, and Thompson, 42, wanted answers to what Katrina's surge did to massive Sewerage & Water Board pumps.

Going to the source

So they went beyond top brass at the water board and talked directly with pump station operators and staff engineers, as well as to members of an Army Corps of Engineers investigative team. What they discovered was alarming. A string of major pumps around the city, vital to storm drainage, sustained major damage from being submerged in saltwater for weeks after Katrina, damage that caused three pumps to burn up during a modest rainstorm on April 26.

The pair stirred controversy by calling a meeting with a variety of neighborhood groups and city officials to bluntly convey their findings. Water board officials called the pump system fundamentally sound, but conceded that major repairs are pending.

"It's kind of the bedrock of all the planning that we're doing in our neighborhood: We have to stay dry," said McBride, who noted that he and Thompson have spent virtually all their free time since late March on the ad hoc inquiry.

For Kelli Wright, chairwoman of the BIA's Repopulation Committee, a central task was collecting hard data on how many owners plan to return. To that end, they used house-by-house surveys, Internet contacts and even tables set up near city polling places on election day. So far, Wright has determined that people plan to return to about 1,100 of the district's 2,300 residential properties. Roughly 200 property owners aren't returning and plan to sell, while 100 are undecided. The committee has no word yet on about 900 property owners.

But as Wright and others have gone about counting heads, their interaction has led to a broader effort at mutual assistance. Tips about rebuilding or house-gutting are being relayed to people hundreds of miles away. Details are collected on school-age children whose needs will help the BIA try to persuade education officials to reopen a flood-damaged elementary school. Residents are informally sharing advice on what contractors to hire.

Now a real estate agent because Katrina wiped out her former corporate job, Wright, 47, said she is interacting with other Broadmoor folks like never before, whether they are calling from a faraway temporary home or living in a gutted house.

"Now when I stand out in front of my house, I know my neighbors," she said. "I know hundreds of people when they drive by. It's a wonderful thing."

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Coleman Warner can be reached at cwarner@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3311.