“We’re going to attempt to, if the city will allow us to,” said Danny Rogers, president and chief executive of the company, Southern Star Amusement, based in Baton Rouge, La.

Six Flags New Orleans has been closed since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One of the world’s largest theme parks companies, with 19 parks across the country, Six Flags does not plan to reopen the park, claiming in a recent report that the park did not make money even before Katrina.

“That’s incorrect. We saw the books ourselves,” said Rogers. “The park has always made money.”

Rogers plans to expand the park, opening it year-round and offering more rides and a sports complex while combining a water park and amusement park.

“Six Flags is seasonal and we’re more year round,” Rogers said.

“It will basically be the first of its type in the nation, because it combines the water park literally within the comprising amusement park itself, instead of separate. We’re adding the water elements all the way around the internal park where you can ride the rides and stay wet all day if that’s what you like to do.”

Southern Star has also conducted research to see what local residents and tourists want.

Though the city is talking to more than one company about operating the theme park, Southern Star still expects to buy and rebuild the park soon, not wanting to lease.

“They’re still arguing with Six Flags,” Rogers said.

Six Flags, a New York-based company, signed a contract with the city of New Orleans in 2002 to lease the park. According to park officials, Six Flags New Orleans sustained approximately $150 million in damage from flooding.

Rogers said he believed the damage was closer to $35 million to $40 million, “which is still substantial,” he said.

The theme park was originally opened in 2000 under the name Jazzland and was owned by Alfa Smartparks, a company based in Jacksonville, Fla. It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002.

That same year, Six Flags bought the theme park out of bankruptcy, investing approximately $30 million and operating it until Katrina struck.

As for Southern Star Amusement, Rogers is confident that the park will do well under the new management.

“We’re willing to risk $50 to $60 million,” Rogers said.

So after a hurricane killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana in 2005, it was natural that local and state authorities would turn to the Dutch for advice.

“We have some good technologies in the U.S.; we have some good technologies in the Netherlands.  Working together we are trying to provide the most appropriate technologies to the work that’s being done in New Orleans,” said Dennis Kamber, vice president of Arcadis, a multinational engineering company that was founded in the Netherlands.

“When Katrina hit New Orleans,  the Dutch had a lot to offer in a way of expertise and a long history of building structures and developing national programs that would reduce risk and protect people from those kinds of threats,” said Ed Link, senior research engineer with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The Dutch have been part of many studies in New Orleans and have helped analyze what occurred during Katrina, making recommendations to assist in the development of new structures that are being built in New Orleans, according to Link.

Although the technologies used in the Netherlands and in New Orleans are similar, the biggest difference between the two is that New Orleans projects are financed individually while the Dutch have funded an entire system.

“One of the things the Netherlands have is a national commitment to make a long-term effort to reduce their flood risk,” Link said.

“We have incremental funding;  we’ll fund a piece of it and then we’ll fund another piece of it,” he said.

The Dutch “have a model for management that is integrated from the local community all the way up through their national government,” Link said.

“In our case, we sometimes have conflicting authorities and conflicting priorities between the national levels and the local level.”

Though the Netherlands is approximately 45 times the size of New Orleans,  both have  large percentages of their areas below sea level and both are threatened by coastal flooding.

New Orleans is primarily threatened by hurricanes, while the Netherlands is threatened by large storms.

“Well over 60 percent of the Netherlands is significantly below sea level, and in fact that’s pretty much the case in New Orleans. A very large percent of New Orleans is below sea level,” Link said.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3  hurricane in southeast Louisiana. In more than 50 places, the flood protection system failed. Nearly 80 percent of the city was flooded and more than 1,300 lives were lost, making the hurricane the fifth-deadliest and sixth-strongest in the history of the United States.

In 1953 in the Netherlands, a storm surge from the North Sea created a catastrophe in Zealand and Holland in the Netherlands. Dutch officials said 1,835 people were killed and 5,000 buildings destroyed.

“A number of their levees breached and were overtopped and eroded,” Link said.  “It was much more extensive in area than Katrina, but roughly the same number of people, the same number of fatalities.”

Weeks later, the Dutch formulated a plan to prevent such a disaster from ever occurring again.

“The Dutch made a national commitment to strengthen their levee systems and coastal protection to reduce their risk. They decided they were not going to allow that to happen again,” Link said.

John Grieshaber, geotechnical engineer and execution support chief for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hurricane Protection Office in New Orleans, said the Dutch “ended up turning a tremendous amount of their natural resources financially over to putting together a system to protect an entire country.”

The Netherlands spend, on average, $1.5 billion a year to maintain and improve the system that keeps the country from flooding. U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., toured the system as part of a congressional delegation in May.

According to Link, hurricane protection for the New Orleans area is still incomplete after initially being authorized as long ago as 1965.

“When Katrina hit, there was still areas where the levees had not been built, mostly and fortunately, on the West Bank, where the storm didn’t do a lot of damage,” Link said.

“We have been much more short term, much more into an election-cycle mode instead of a life-cycle mode – that’s the big difference,” between the Dutch and Americans, he said. “They are approaching it in a much more effective way.”

The Dutch flood-protection system provides the country with about a 10,000-a-year flood protection.

The Corps in New Orleans has produced the same design, but with only a 100-year system, because Congress authorized the construction of a system only up to that level.

The “years” represent “a statistical average,” said Kamber, of Arcadis. “What it means is that in New Orleans, at any given year there is about a 1 percent, or 1 in 100, probability of having a storm that would exceed that level of protection.”

But, Link said, “It doesn’t mean that once it occurs there’s 100 more years made available to wait for the next one. It really means that each and every year there’s a 1 percent chance of that storm occurring,” he said. “It indicates both how severe it might be and how often it might occur.”

“It is very rare for that to happen if it occurs this year it has an equal chance of occurring next year. Every time the calendar flips over, you’ve got a 1 percent chance of that size event occurring,” Link said. “The 100-year designation is just a measurement of severity and rarity.”

According to the Army Corps’ Grieshaber, “If you look at the United States of America there are areas that lie below sea level, so what we’re doing is we are trying to convince a country, United States of America, to expand its dollars on a flood control system.”

The oldest black church in New Orleans, the First Street Peck Wesley Methodist Church, is celebrating its 176th anniversary. (Ray Tyler/NYT Institute)

The oldest black church in New Orleans, founded before the Civil War as the Lafayette Mission, celebrated its 176th anniversary on Sunday, gathering its members under the theme  ”Giving Our Best.”

“So many positive things have happened to the church, we just want to give our best to him,” said the Rev. B. Lance Eden, senior pastor of the church, now known as First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church.

Over the years, the church has survived several name changes, and more recently, a three-way merger after Katrina, which ultimately led to a larger congregation.

Members began the celebrations on Friday with a banquet and fashion show in the multipurpose building of the church,  at 2309 Dryades St. During the festivities, congregants were divided into four “generations”:   builders, boomers, busters and bridgers.

“We are multigenerational church feeding the needs of all and many,” Eden said.

With 14 tables of seven apiece, the builders, those born prior to 1946; boomers, those born from 1946 to 1965; busters, those born from 1965 to 1983; and bridgers, those born from 1983 and thereafter, conducted a “generational celebration” in which the groups were asked to dance the way they used to, to the songs that came out during that time period.

“I love the closeness of the church,” said Caroline Bowers, a   ”boomer” who is president of United Methodist Women in the New Orleans district, before dancing to The Temptation’s “My Girl.”

During the banquet, prepared by church members, an appetizer of tossed salad and gumbo was followed by baked chicken, rice pilaf, seafood pasta, green beans and assorted dinner rolls. An array of cakes finished off the meal.

The fashion show, with members of the church as models, was divided into three categories: sportswear, “Sunday’s best” and formal gowns. Styles ranged from two-piece bathing suits and tennis whites to coordinated family ensembles and colorful full-length dresses.

During a break in the show, Amina Woods, a “bridger,” performed an inspirational dance in a flowing white gown.

The weekend’s celebrations honored a long history of a resilient congregation in New Orleans.

In 1833, the church was begun as the Lafayette Mission. By 1848, it became known as the Winans Chapel, named after the Rev. William Winans, the pastor at the time. The church became the First Street Methodist Episcopal Church in 1865.

In 1866, First Street became the home of the Thomson Biblical Institute. It later became part of Thomson University and merged with Straight University.  In 1873, it became New Orleans University, which later became part of Dillard University.

“Most of our members are Dillard graduates,” said Eden, who is a third-generation graduate of Dillard with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communications and a minor in philosophy.

The present church was constructed in 1894 and was modeled after the Christ Church Cathedral on St. Charles Avenue.  In 1936, a parson house and educational building were constructed.

In 1946, two lots were purchased across the street for expansion and third lot was purchased in 1965.

In 1972, the church was designated as a Historic Landmark Site in the city. The multipurpose building was constructed and the sanctuary was renovated in the mid 1980s.

In 2005, Katrina proved to be turning point for the church.

“After the storm, five congregations worshipped here,” Eden said. He added that while two churches – People’s United Methodist Church and Mount Zion United Methodist Church – wanted to go back a start anew,  two others – Peck United Methodist Church and Wesley United Methodist Church -decided to merge to form First Street Peck Wesley United Methodist Church.

Katrina caused a lot of damage to the other churches, said Eden, whose church received only “minimum damage” and two feet of water. “We saw a need to merge.”

With the merger, Peck brought approximately 70 members while Wesley contributed 15.

First Street has seen a significant increase in membership since the storm, Eden said. Before the hurricane, the church had 75 members; now there are approximately 475.

“We were blessed,” he said. “Our membership tripled.”

The final speaker at the service on Sunday summed up the celebratory weekend. Dr. Percell Church Jr., guest speaker and senior pastor of Zion United Methodist Church, told the assembled crowd – from the builders to the bridgers – that they had been “singled out for glory.”

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Joey Medina, regional vice president of Winn-Dixie, announced the partnership earlier this month. Since Hurricane Katrina, Nagin has called for using modern technology to increase government access a priority.

New Orleans is the only city in Louisiana to have the kiosks, said Ceeon Quiett, the city’s communications director.

“We are looking for other locations,” she said. ” We will be expanding soon.”

Shelton Myers, a project leader in the mayor’s technology office, said the kiosks were placed at these locations:

• Winn-Dixie No. 1408, 4600 Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East.
• Winn-Dixie No. 1426, 3008 Holiday Drive in Chalmette.
• Winn-Dixie No. 1432, 3300 Paris Road in Gentilly.
• Winn-Dixie No. 1430, 5400 Tchoupitoulas.

The express service allows citizens to pay parking tickets, traffic tickets, sales taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes and camera violations using a MasterCard or Visa. It also allows residents to register for the City Assisted Evacuation Plan, in time for the hurricane season starting June 1, explained Robin Miller, director of brand communications for Winn-Dixie.

Using the touch-screen kiosks with built-in keyboards, residents also may view a list of public meetings and recovery project maps, submit an application for or view the status of a permit, locate any department within the city government using the city directory and access city and the state Web sites to view news, press releases and other services offered.

Allen Chastant, regional manager for Winn-Dixie, said, “The kiosks are an extension of City Hall.”

“They are all located in the front of the store. As long as you have a debit or credit card, you can take care of and pay just about anything related to the city,” he added.

Quiett said, “These kiosks were created to be able to help people do things either at home or someplace convenient without having to come in. Winn-Dixie was the first to step up and build a partnership.”

“Of course, people’s needs are a lot greater” since Katrina,” she added.  ”Right after the storm, some City Hall offices were all dispersed -people were in trailers, City Hall wasn’t functional – that made it even more important to have something the people could use online.”

Myers said residents are happy with being able to avoid coming downtown to take care of these chores and having to face the parking situation around City Hall.

“I have already talked to some residents and they were really pleased with our idea. They don’t have to come all the way downtown for something they can do over the kiosks,” he said.

Nagin said in a news release that Winn-Dixie has a special commitment to New Orleans because it was the last major store to close during Hurricane Katrina and the first store to reopen afterward.

Winn-Dixie’s Miller said the chain, which has been in New Orleans since 1956, is “firmly committed to the recovery of this great city and this is one more way for us to show that commitment.”

Other cities have government kiosks, but they are mostly to provide information, according to a survey of six major Louisiana cities.

The city of Baton Rouge has special kiosks only for directory assistance. Alexandria officials said it has parking kiosks but residents must pay fees at the local courthouse or the parish. Officials in Shreveport, Lafayette, Monroe and Bossier City said they have nothing similar.