The Louisiana Landmark Society has named its annual New Orleans Nine, which profiles nine historic buildings and community treasures threatened by demolition or deterioration. As one might expect, Charity Hospital is at the top of the list. The proposed LSU/VA medical complex would leave Charity Hospital abandoned in Downtown New Orleans without any clear plans to put it back into commerce.

Though Charity Hospital's basement flooded in the wake of the failure of the federal levee system, it was decontaminated and ready to reopen to serve patients within weeks, in September of 2005. State officials have represented the building as beyond repair to FEMA in an attempt to squeeze nearly $500 million out of the federal agency to put toward the proposed LSU/VA project. FEMA has said that state officials have improperly represented damage sustained as a result of years of deferred maintenance and as a result of the state's long-standing inability to complete routine roof repairs, secure broken windows and doors, and ventilate the building as storm-related.

Just this weekend, however, Paul Rainwater of the Louisiana Recovery Authority announced that the agency is prepared to use Community Block Grant Development funds to gut Charity Hospital.

This is great news, as it signals a substantive commitment to the physical building even as the state remains stubbornly attached to an unpopular proposal to abandon it as a hospital.

Yet, it is also an ironic step.

The FHL/RMJM alternative plan to rebuild Charity Hospital and save Lower Mid-City calls for, as a first step, the gutting of Charity Hospital. The video embedded above profiles RMJM's vision for a world-class medical facility inside the facade of historic Charity Hospital.

Thus, while our Louisiana officials cling to a proposed LSU medical campus that remains totally stuck in a complicated impasse, lacking both money and public support, they are prepared to implement the first step of the same alternative plan that it has refused to substantively evaluate, let alone adopt.

In other words, they've moved just as substantively toward construction on the plan they don't support than on the proposal they do.

It speaks to the core absurdity of the proposed LSU/VA medical center and the whole process in general; rather than quickly gut and rebuild Charity Hospital into a world-class facility immediately after Hurricane Katrina and in the midst of a healthcare infrastructure crisis that persists today, our elected leaders were somehow convinced to support the most expensive and time-consuming option on the table.

Perhaps, more cynically, given that the latest LSU/VA drawings show no shared infrastructure between two facilities, and given that the state misrepresented the condition of Charity Hospital at the time of its closure for so long, it should perhaps be argued that our elected leaders were mislead into supporting the most expensive and time-consuming option on the table.

As we approach the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system, the illegal closure of Charity Hospital and the backroom to sacrifice Lower Mid-City remain a black eye on the rebuilding of this city, an emblem of the disconnect between the inspiring resilience of individual New Orleans citizens and the ever-deteriorating responsiveness of our state and local government.