No one disputes that the Audubon Nature Institute has completed some marvelous projects in New Orleans. But at what cost? In each and every case, there was a not-so-pretty side to the story that is only remembered when the inevitable next controversy erupts.

Some of the Institute's projects have been controversial on their own merits. But many have simply become controversial because of the way the Audubon Institute and Audubon Commission conduct business.

In the history of Audubon Institute controversies over the past 25 years, the people have changed, but the issues have not. Commercial expansion, decreased open green space, zoning violations, lack of public input and accountability, lack of a Master Plan for the park-- all are issues that have come up over and over again as public concerns. But whenever the Audubon Institute starts on a new project, these concerns are ignored yet again.

This must change. Where the Audubon Institute versus the public is concerned, history should not keep repeating itself.

1972

11/72 Voters approve a city referendum to impose a fifth-mill property tax to upgrade the zoo.

1974

12/5/74 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Audubon Park 'Disappearing'"
"...the full impact of the zoo expansion program will be hitting many among the public."
"Much criticism has been leveled at the proposal to put a restaurant and parking lot on the park batture because it will use up seven acres of open space. But the zoo is expanding into 36 acres now used by the public.
"The impact or natural consequence of the zoo expansion should have occurred to park planners at the time of the program's adoption and been a major concern of theirs ever since. Taking away parkland devoted to casual public use means that other land must be provided for it. But all one can now see in the future is a park made up a zoo (with entrance fee), a parking lot, bare playing fields and a golf course.
"The inescapable conclusion seems to us to be that the front part of the park will have to be redesigned for traditional park use. Audubon Park [is] small to begin with, and what will be left after all the new incursions will be too valuable to devote to a golf course's low-intensity use.
"A master plan for the whole park should have been part of the zoo planning so that redevelopment of all parts of the park could proceed in tandem. It is late to start now, but it must be done."

1975

2/8/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Audubon Park--Fix It!"
Expansion of zoo "may force city and park officials to do what they should have done long ago: make plans for the absorption of the zoo plan's impact on the rest of this park.
"Questions were raised at the time [of tax initiative] about the impact of the plan. Could the park and the neighborhood take the volume of visitors projected to use the new zoo? Where would simple park-goers go when almost half the park was given over to a zoo and the other half already occupied by a golf course? Zoo funding was carefully put together, but what about the cost of re-fitting the rest of the park to the new requirements?
"These questions received no answers and no noticeable attention. The zoo work may be irreversible by now, but planning for the rest of the park, which should have been part of the original deliberations, seems not to have begun.
"Audubon Park is small, but its clientele is vast, coming not only from the city outside the uptown area but from parishes even beyond the immediate metropolitan area. The New Orleans area is park-poor to begin with, so city officials should get to work at once deciding how the park can be redesigned to provide the traditional amenities already lost through fencing off the area of heaviest casual use for animals in a paid-admission zoo."

3/5/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Park Rides, Public Trust"
At a Board of Zoning Adjustments meeting, critics of Audubon Park rearrangement "were there to charge the Audubon Commission with violating the zoning regulations, but the commission's attorney made their case for them -- he admitted that the commission knew it was violating the rules when it applied for a building permit and let construction begin.
"What we find extraordinary and unacceptable is this kind of action from a public board -- deliberately, and apparently very quietly, violating an ordinance to play the classic gambit, "Get it started and they can't make us undo it or stop."

3/15/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Audubon Park Perspective"
"The basic argument of the opposition seems to be that the new park plans are swiftly chipping away at the pure park green space available to the casual park-goer. Their target is not only the MAgazine rides site but also the proposal for a restaurant and parking lot on the batture.
"The park commission could help get all this in more ample, less friction-producing perspective by immediately undertaking a study of the front section of the park to decide how it can be redesigned to accommodate the impact of the expansion of the zoo, which will absorb almost all of the river end of the park, the prime picnicking area.
"The zoo plan, a model within its own frame of reference, was from the first only half a plan, for it was apparently put together with no hard facts of what effect it would inevitably have on the park as a whole. Claiming that so much footage on the new batture development compensates for the area taken away by the zoo ignores the fact that the batture is a sun- and wind-swept plain that will be virtually treeless for a generation, while the new zoo area is an old section of massive oaks, lagoons and hills.
"The remedy of the green space problem is clearly to open the front end of the park to greater public use. It is now taken up primarily by a golf course, but the course is far less of a treeless plain than the batture, and imaginative landscaping could make it a pleasurable setting for casual respite.
"New Orleans is park poor to begin with, and a park of Audubon's middling size and at its location handy to a heavily populated city area and to direct approaches from upriver parishes (which dispatch school-bus convoys in high season) must be used to the fullest now that more and more people are looking for regular relaxed contact with nature after daily work and play in a big-city setting."

4/2?/75 Times-Picayune, Sec. 1, p. 3. Upper Audubon Association opposes portion of expansion plan for zoo which violates zoning codes and nullify purposes for which park was created. The head of Upper Audubon Association said "the public and the Association were not aware of the scope of the zoo's expansion until late 1974 with the construction of an amusement's area on Magazine Street and the erection of zoo boundary fences in violation of the city zoning ordinances." The Park Commission has conceded the illegality of the Magazine Street construction, but asked for and won a zoning variance.
The only areas of expansion the Association specifically opposes, he said, are the losses of green space which give the park the reason for its existence, the once-illegal construction along Magazine Street and the erection of boundary fences which come, he said, impermissably close to residences under the zoning code.

4/5/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "The Now and Future Park"
Opponents of Audubon Park Commission's plans for zoo won ruling that park's contract for amusement rides concession is illegal.
"The question is what kind of park modern Audubon is to be: a basically passive urban retreat with room for picnicking, strolling, cycling and game playing, with a few amusement rides and exhibits; or an active attraction, bidding not only the city and regional market, but nationwide for mass patronage?
"If more people are to come to the park-- and more will, even without new attractions-- more land must be made available to them. And that land clearly lies in the front part of the park, where almost a third of the total park acreage is taken up by a golf course. The 1970 Bureau of Governmental Research Report, on which the zoo expansion was based, recognized this with the note that it would be "appropriate to question whether or not the current usage represents the highest and best use of public land."

5/8/75 Times-Picayune, Sec. 1, p. 3. Park Plan Foes Get Hearing.
"In another Audubon Park related matter, the [City Planning] Commission voted, 6-0, to inform the City Council that it disapproves of a proposed restaurant on the Audubon Park Batture basically on legal grounds.
"Regarding the Audubon Park batture restaurant, [City Planning Commissioner Harold R.] Katner told the commission that Department of Safety and Permits officials have said that a restaurant is not permitted in a park district."

5/10/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Hearing on the Zoo"
Allowing citizen participation by public hearings supported.
"According to the new citizen participation concept, public hearings would have been held early in the development of the zoo plan, and would have both avoided the rude public awakening and devised a plan that would have fulfilled zoo goals and gained general acceptance."

5/15/75 Times-Picayune, Sec. 1, p. 6.
Study by consultants Marks, Lewis Associates, Inc. stated that increased visitation as a result of expanded zoo would create more of a demand for facilities and amenities to serve the public in what it is calling "Audubon Park North." Recommended that a Master Plan be developed to tackle problems in advance of actual impact.
"The golf course is proportionately too large and tends to isolate other areas of the park.
"Three alternative programs for the north section of the park should be designed and tested: (1) Audubon Park as a utilitarian service center for the zoo complex; (2) Audubon Park as a preserved historical landmark; (3) Audubon Park as an area for intensive recreation.

5/17/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Overviewing Audubon Park"
"Opposition pressure has also brought state Atty. Gen. William Guste into the picture with a request that all work stop in the park while he researches the question whether the park commission needs legislative approval for major redesign of the park. The commission has agreed to start no new work for 90 days.
"The basic flaw in park planning in our view has been a lack of overall planning so that the city and the neighborhood could see exactly what was planned and judge it by the twin standards of need and impact."

5/29/75 Times-Picayune, Sec. 1, p. 12.
Audubon Commission makes unanimous decision to work with Bureau of Governmental Research to develop land-use study for front of park.
"One person close to the upcoming study of the park's north end said . . . it seems "very possible" the study will ask for the closing of the golf course."

7/10/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Audubon Zoo--Stop and Look"
"It would be in the best interests of the community, we are convinced, to stop work on the Audubon Park Zoo expansion project and reopen the whole matter for the study and public decision the plan has never gotten."

1/3/75 "Friends of the Zoo" is incorporated.

11/5/75 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Decision Day for the Zoo"
"It is not too late to order the modifications in the master plan necessary to preserve both zoo and park as educational and recreational facilities in the pleasant traditional mold rather than produce a slickly packaged and mass-marketed crowd-attracter in a small park in a dense recreational area."

1976

11/17/76 Times-Picayune Editorial. "Now For The People"
"While the animals will be safe in their new quarters at the zoo-- where will New Orleanians go for the quiet strolls, picnics, bike riding and other activities they enjoyed under the large oaks that will now be off limits inside the zoo? It is time for the Audubon Park Commission to come up with an answer.
"Since the front of the park offers an area for quiet park pleasures similar to the one being taken over by the zoo, the commission should move swiftly to abandon the golf course."

1978

1/25/78 Upper Audubon Association files lawsuit in Federal Court seeking injunction against plans "to construct in Audubon Park about 2.5 miles of new paths and walks, artificial land mounds, a bird sanctuary, and a parking lot."
3/29/78 Compromise and settlement agreement signed between the Audubon Park Commission and the Upper Audubon Association, under which the Commission agrees not to expand the zoo boundaries, not to construct kiddie rides on Magazine Street and to remove the slab built for them, not to use the soccer field next to the bus stop for parking, and not to construct a miniature train running between St. Charles and Magazine Street.

More - The 1980's