Day 67 – 10/27/05, Mid-City business owners want category-5 levees before rebuilding

Business owners in the devastated area of Mid-City say they’d like to reopen but can’t commit to doing so until levees are rebuilt to withstand a category-5 hurricane.

Several of the owners have returned and are gutting the insides of their buildings, which were filled with floodwaters.

“I miss my customers and I miss my neighbors,” said a tearful Joan Malter, co-owner of Central Perk, a Mid-City coffeehouse. “I feel stupid if I would think that it wouldn’t happen again. Sooner or later it’s going to happen again.”

Currently the levees are slated to be rebuilt to pre-Katrina levels, and those levels were only to protect the city from a category-3 storm. The Mid-City business owners say that is not good enough for them to risk returning.

“We’ve got to have some guarantees that they are going to work for a category-5 system because if they don’t it doesn’t make sense to consider rebuilding,” said Gregg Collins, co-owner of City Perk. [Link]