New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris plans to withdraw a proposed agreement — previously slated for a Thursday (Jan. 4) council vote — that sets the operating terms for the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center’s River District, a $1 billion residential and entertainment development, according to the Clerk of Council’s Office.
The cooperative endeavor agreement is seen as critical for the development to move forward, but Harris’ withdrawal doesn’t mean the deal is dead. In fact, it was approved more than a month ago — by two local government bodies created to spur economic development around the convention center and in the River District.
The council was expected to be a party to the deal, along with the two economic development boards and the developers building the River District.
But following a contentious early December meeting during which council members raised questions about certain elements of the agreement, the economic development boards — the New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority Economic Growth & Development District and the River District Neighborhood Investors Subdistrict — cut the city out of the contract and approved it without a council vote.
The 35-year agreement, whose apparent final passage has not been previously reported, authorizes the boards — largely made up of unelected officials — to raise sales and hotel taxes in the River District by up to 2% and use the revenues for infrastructure within the development. Unlike similar taxes passed in recent years — such as the quarter-cent French Quarter sales tax that pays for additional police patrols — the boards will be able to levy those additional taxes over the length of the agreement without an election.
At its Dec. 1 meeting, the council approved a controversial property tax break for the regional headquarters of Shell Oil, one of the main tenants of the development. Also on the agenda that day was the larger sales tax agreement.
But Councilmember Helena Moreno asked to put the brakes on the vote, saying she was concerned that the contract was difficult to understand and that the council and the public had not been given enough time to fully review it.
Harris, who sponsored the agreement and whose district includes the River District development, deferred the proposed agreement. Local news stories from that week and the following weeks reported that the council would have to sign off on the agreement for it to take effect.
However, just after the council meeting, the governing boards of the two economic development bodies quickly approved a nearly-identical version of the contested deal.
The board members amended the contract to remove the city as a party, effectively bypassing the need for council approval.

Under state law, the New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority Economic Growth & Development District is composed of Convention Center board members, the city council president, and the councilmember who represents the district that includes the convention center and the River District — Harris, who was at the meeting and voted in favor of the deal. (Council President JP Morrell was absent for the meeting.)
The development district also created the additional “subdistrict” within the district, composed of the same governing body. During the New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority Economic Growth & Development District meeting, an RDNI representative said he hoped the city would be included as a party in a future agreement “as soon as humanly possible.”
Representatives from River District Neighborhood Investors, the private development consortium selected to build the River District, or RDNI, said the boards decided to move forward with the agreement when it became clear that the full council “was not yet ready” to become a party in the contract. A spokesperson for the company said it “will continue to work with all offices and may seek reconsideration at a later date.”
The new agreement has been effective since Dec. 1, with control of the River District and its public subsidies now falling under the purview of investors, developers, and the new district and subdistrict.
Because of a provision in state law, the deal will commit future residents of the district to pay the higher taxes in their neighborhood, potentially without being able to vote on them for the full tenure of the decades-long contract.
State law typically allows economic development districts to levy additional taxes only after voters living in them approve them. However, if no one lives in the district, as is now the case with the soon-to-be development, no election is required.
While there are no current residents of the River District, the project plans to build market-rate residential housing and hundreds of units of affordable housing.
“The construction of affordable housing within the RDNI Subdistrict is the highest priority of RDNI and the RDNI Subdistrict,” the agreement reads.
A City Council staffer, who asked not to be identified by name, said the group hoped to move forward with the agreement because Shell, a major tenant of the development, had the option to terminate the lease by Dec. 1.
It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether council members, other than Harris, were aware that the deal had been approved without them. Harris declined to comment on this story. Other council members did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday evening.