Planning a comeback

NEW ORLEANS -- Marcie Courtney is 56, an outspoken math teacher who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Isaac Wohl , an easygoing 27-year-old, just finished his first year at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The middle-aged mother and the lanky graduate student may seem like unlikely partners, but they have a common goal this summer: Rebuilding Courtney's beloved but badly damaged neighborhood.

Five graduate students from Harvard arrived in New Orleans last month to help rebuild Broadmoor, a neighborhood reduced by Hurricane Katrina to blocks of empty houses and debris-lined sidewalks. Curious and ambitious, armed with a year of study in planning and public policy, the students hoped to see measurable progress in 10 weeks.

Their assignments were daunting. Wohl would help residents trying to reopen their elementary school and public library. Tim Coates would seek private donors to help pay for Broadmoor's restoration. Two other students planned to tackle a massive inventory: Keatra Fuller would determine how many Broadmoor residents planned to come back, while Pi-na Wu assessed the damage to every house. Finally, Rebecca Hummel would document the rebuilding process as it happened, creating a detailed blueprint for recovery that other hard-hit New Orleans neighborhoods could follow.

The Harvard students are part of a growing experiment in New Orleans, where neighborhoods have increasingly advocated for the power to chart their own futures. Acknowledging the important role of neighborhoods in the recovery, Mayor Ray Nagin announced earlier this month that the city would hire consultants to collaborate with neighborhoods on plans for rebuilding.

Doug Ahlers , a Kennedy School research fellow and part-time New Orleans resident, brokered the partnership between Broadmoor and Harvard after realizing early this year that individual neighborhoods would take the lead in the recovery.

``Ultimately, it's going to take place business by business, house by house, block by block," he said. ``Planning needed to be at a neighborhood level."

In Broadmoor, the patchwork nature of the city's comeback is clearly visible. A handful of porches boast lush window boxes, and power saws buzz inside some houses. Hopeful green-and-white ``Broadmoor Lives" signs decorate front yards. But on many streets, rows of houses sit abandoned, and chirping birds make the only sounds.

A compact triangle of 2,900 homes, Broadmoor was built in the late 1800s on former marshland near the low-lying center of New Orleans. Like a bowl, the neighborhood filled with 6 to 10 feet of water in August after the storm surged through the city's levees. The 7,000 residents of Broadmoor, two-thirds of them black, scattered. More than three-quarters of homes in the neighborhood remain empty.

Many of those who are back are living in trailers in their front yards while struggling to balance jobs and rebuilding projects. Eager for help, they welcomed the students when they arrived June 5. Within days of meeting Wohl, Courtney nicknamed him ``Harvard."

Still, some gaps between natives and newcomers cannot be bridged, said Hal Roark .

``We see the neighborhood differently," said Roark, 42, a native of Warwick, R.I., who moved to New Orleans 17 years ago. ``They see the blight, and we see what will be -- the gardens and palm trees that will come back. That's our reality."

Roark is one of a core group of neighborhood leaders who organized residents after the hurricane. They were shocked into action by a threat to Broadmoor's future: In an early reconstruction plan, released in January, an ominous green dot floated over the neighborhood. Convinced it meant their homes would be razed for parkland, angry residents set out to prove the viability of the neighborhood. They held rallies, contacted missing neighbors, and began work on a detailed plan for their future.

As the Harvard students arrived last month, residents were pushing to complete the Broadmoor Plan. The document, the product of months of meetings and research, would make Broadmoor the first neighborhood in the city with a comprehensive blueprint for rebuilding. Residents needed the plan to show city leaders their vision, but also to encourage more families to return, and to persuade private funders to help them rebuild.

The students fell into a hard-driving routine, learning about their new neighborhood as they polished the plan and embarked on separate tasks. Roark provided them with a freshly renovated house to live in, a few doors down from his own, but the students often scattered with their laptops to the Tulane University library or the coffee shops on trendy Magazine Street.

Wu , 28, a jazz fan from Taiwan, spent part of each day on the steamy streets of Broadmoor, supervising 18 Bard College undergraduates who had volunteered to inspect every house in the neighborhood. Their survey, including any signs of returning owners, would become part of a data-rich, computerized map of the neighborhood to be used, in the short term, to match volunteers with cleanup projects.

Fuller , meanwhile, picked her way through a pile of paper as thick as a phone book -- completed surveys sent back by 1,500 displaced Broadmoor residents living in Texas, Mississippi, and elsewhere. Fuller, 27, is a former Westwood student of the METCO program, which sends city students to other communities . She has labored to expunge duplicates and count responses, aiming for a more accurate tally of those planning to return.

To neighborhood leaders, the students' steady progress was a breakthrough.

``We all have full-time jobs," said LaToya Cantrell , 34, the president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association. ``They stay engaged, and keep it going, while we're at work."

Often, the students worked into the evening, catching up with residents after they came home from work.

On a sticky Monday night last month, Coates and his classmate Hummel spent four hours combing through a draft of the neighborhood plan with Cantrell. Sitting at their cluttered dining room table, the students pointed out that the latest draft included two different timelines for Broadmoor's recovery -- one covering 10 years, and another stretching to 20.

Hummel looked across the table at Cantrell. ``What are people thinking?" asked the 25-year-old, who wears a silver fleur-de-lis, a popular symbol of New Orleans, on a chain around her neck.

Cantrell hesitated, seemingly torn between optimism and gritty reality. ``At least three to 10 years," she answered.

``You could say 10 to 15," Coates suggested. ``Really, it's going to take that long."

Area leaders say the reconstruction is an opportunity to improve their neighborhood. ``Broadmoor, better than before," is one of their slogans. Even before Katrina, they were striving to reduce crime and reclaim abandoned properties. Now, when they talk about reopening their elementary school, they go beyond removing mold in the dingy, pink stucco building, to a vision of a sleek, high-performing charter school.

Wohl, who arrived at Harvard after completing a Peace Corps assignment in Africa, said he tries to strike a delicate balance in such conversations, ``getting people to dream big, to get the fire going -- but not so high that they end up disappointed."

A native of West Virginia, Wohl said he was drawn to the sense of raw opportunity in New Orleans. Students from MIT, Wellesley, and other New England schools also are aiding the recovery this summer.

``New Orleans is at a unique point in time, and it's never going to be like this again," said Wohl. ``There's a lot of possibility, with everything in flux. . . . It will be cool to say I was here."

At a meeting of Broadmoor's education committee last month, Wohl listened quietly as residents expressed shock at a new government estimate for repairs at the library. The estimate was much higher than expected, $3.7 million, though the building seemed relatively unscathed.

Broadmoor resident Susan Ratterree , her voice tense with frustration, described a meeting with city library leaders, who she said seemed pessimistic about reopening the Broadmoor branch. ``They're telling us we should just give up," she said.

Wohl stepped in, introducing the idea of a temporary library housed in a trailer.

``Maybe we should do our own assessment of the building, to see if we come up with a different figure?" he added.

As the students came to understand the losses suffered in Broadmoor, they marveled at the neighborhood's progress. At Harvard, professors sometimes underestimate average citizens, said Coates, 26.

Six weeks after the Harvard students' arrival, the Broadmoor Plan was polished and ready. The document, now 300 pages, was formally unveiled two weeks ago at a neighborhood meeting attended by Nagin and more than 300 residents.

The students also helped in other ways. Coates had set up meetings with foundations that might offer funding, and after weeks of trying, Wohl had gained access to the local school, and found it less damaged than expected. Wu had completed the housing inventory, and postponed her departure from New Orleans. ``It would be hard to walk away," she said.

As they prepared to immerse themselves in implementing the plan, the students felt more a part of the neighborhood than ever. They had attended a neighbor's crab boils and established a weekly outing to hear live trumpet music; they had even grown used to the infrequent trash collection.

In some ways, familiarity had bred despair. ``The longer you stay, the more real the situation becomes, and the fact that it isn't going away," Hummel said.

But the neighborhood's energy had shown no sign of flagging.

``No one's stopping," Coates said. ``People are moving on because they have to."

Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.