'IT'S A LIGHT IN DARKNESS'

Residents bathe in sunshine as they jog, walk their dogs and ride go-carts along the levee against the backdrop of the battered New Orleans skyline.

Entrepreneurs mingle at a professional mixer, swapping business cards between sips of chardonnay.

Locals flock to their favorite bars and coffeehouses, glued to laptop computers and sharing laughs as the jukebox roars and beer bottles clank.

Halloween decorations illuminate front porches, and the carefree giggles of children inject playgrounds with life.

Unscathed by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters and now largely repopulated, Algiers, the city's second-oldest community, has evolved into a nook of normalcy in the midst of widespread destruction, leaving grateful residents humbled and hopeful and prodding elected leaders to tout the West Bank burg as a catalyst for New Orleans' recovery.

"The sense you get here is that everything is OK and sort of normal," said Jill Marshall, owner of an Algiers Point coffeehouse that has been flooded with emergency workers and returning residents looking for their morning jolt.

"You get a false sense of well-being here. You have to go across the river every now and then to remind yourself that this is not the reality."

With at least four of its 13 public schools slated to reopen this month, roughly 70 percent of its businesses running and more than 40,000 of its 60,000 pre-storm residents home, Algiers, which wrestled last year with a proposal to become its own city and escape what some lament as its "stepchild" status in the Crescent City, is clearly regaining its pre-Katrina footing, officials say.

And now the community, along with the French Quarter, may be New Orleans' most reliable source of income: Last year, Algiers residents pitched in $8 million in property taxes and $4.5 million in retail sales taxes to city coffers.

Algiers has become the city's economic salvation, said state Rep. Jeff Arnold, D-Algiers. "We are the tax base for the city, period," he said.

City Council President Oliver Thomas described the West Bank community, the Quarter and parts of downtown as the centers for the city's recovery. Other areas of New Orleans, including Uptown, the lower Garden District, Garden District, Riverbend, Carrollton, Bywater and Marigny also are full of activity.

"It is essentially a foundation for the rebuilding," he said. "There's no question about that."

Still, reminders of Katrina's wrath remain clear. National Guard units continue to patrol the area's historic courthouse, blue tarps blanket roofs, and refrigerators sit curbside.

Residents gripe about slow mail delivery, reduced garbage pickup and lingering debris, but couch their complaints as minor annoyances that fall well short of eclipsing their blessings.

"I just can't even begin to think about how lucky we were," said the Rev. Paul Hart, who runs St. Andrew the Apostle School. "We were spared. Every time you smell a refrigerator or see downed debris, it's a paradise compared to what's going on over there."

Walking her dog, Ruby, on the levee near the Algiers Courthouse last week, Amanda Pinkstaff echoed a similar sense of relief and recovery.

"It amazing to see how many people are home and how many people are working," she said. "It seems to be a more closely bonded community."

Plenty of housing

With other city officials identifying bodies or weighing the bulldozing of houses, Algiers officials are envisioning a grand future for the bedroom community.

Predicting a boom in relocating businesses and a rush of residential development, New Orleans City Councilwoman Jacquelyn Brechtel Clarkson likens Katrina's potential effects on Algiers to those following the oil boom of the 1980s.

"I think development is going to explode," she said. "The world knows who we are now. It has put us front and center on the map. It has become an area where everybody can come to."

"The housing stock has plummeted elsewhere," Arnold said, adding that there is also a strong demand for office space.

Realtor Ann Rohrberger, manager of the Algiers branch of Latter & Blum, said her company is beginning to see an influx of residents from Lakeview, Gentilly and Chalmette looking for homes throughout the West Bank.

Algiers, where property values already are on the rise, could prove to be a hot spot, she said, considering its proximity to the rest of New Orleans as well as tentative plans to open public schools this month. Some private schools in Algiers already have opened and report strong enrollment.

"This is going to be boomtown," said Maureen Pignona, owner of the Dry Dock Café and Bar, an Algiers institution.

Salon owner Sheila Green-McCorkle has experienced the rush firsthand. After repairing roof and water damage, she reopened her store Oct. 22 and worked a 14-hour day serving 30 clients. She was booked the following weekend too.

"I didn't have the heart to say I'm going to give up," said the Algiers native. "I'm here for the long run."

Schools are the key

Residents and officials emphasized that the reopening of schools is a pivotal part of Algiers' predicted resurgence. "If we don't have the schools, we'll never attract the businesses we want," said Kathy Lynn Honaker, executive director of the Algiers Economic Development Foundation.

Clearing political and legal hurdles, the Orleans Parish School Board agreed last week to transform 20 of its schools into charter schools, including all 13 Algiers schools.

Officials are aiming for a mid-November opening of at least four schools, housing nearly 4,000 students and resurrecting public education in the city.

In addition, major projects in the works before the storm are still ongoing, although they now stand on slightly less solid ground.

A proposed movie studio near Mardi Gras World has been slowed by a storm-related lawsuit, and leaders are still fighting for a proposal to convert the Naval Support Activity into a "federal city" but the state financing has become shaky.

A huge overhaul of Lakewood Golf Club into a $100 million golfing resort remains on track but the storm could alter design plans and delay construction, which was supposed to begin early next year.

With large swaths of the city still paralyzed by Katrina, the returning bustle in Algiers has renewed conversation from last year about plans for Algiers to become its own city, said Arnold, who initiated the measure.

The effort never garnered much political support, but Katrina has refueled that interest among some residents, Arnold said.

"This is definitely a time when the city of New Orleans needs Algiers," he said, explaining that he would not reintroduce the proposal until Algiers' and the city's fiscal health becomes clearer.

Algiers was incorporated as its own city from 1840 to 1870, when the Legislature made the community part of Orleans Parish.

Some services lacking

Lofty talk and pending projects aside, Algiers already had proved to be an integral part of the city's rebuilding.

In the days after the storm, the neighborhood became the headquarters for emergency officials from across the country, and debris-cleaning crews are still using Behrman Stadium as one of their two primary stations.

In addition, many city services have shifted to Algiers, Clarkson said, including the Orleans Parish Sewerage and Water Board, the Department of Parks and Parkways, fire and EMS officials and three divisions of the Police Department, which are housed at Paul Habans Elementary School.

Talks are still ongoing about bringing additional city courts to the Algiers Courthouse, where the city's Traffic Court, the local assessor and clerk of court have resumed operations, Clarkson said.

Despite the progress, though, Algiers is still feeling post-Katrina pinches. Garbage pickup, now headed by the Army Corps of Engineers, has been reduced to once per week, and the mail remains painfully slow, residents and officials said.

"The little bit we have to do without or sacrifice, we'll live with it," said Tony Carter, president of the Old Algiers Civic Association, who is still awaiting cards from his Oct. 20 birthday.

Huge City Hall layoffs are an additional hardship, with the library and recreation departments taking hard hits. Remaining personnel in both departments have been shifted to Algiers, though, since its recovery is outpacing the rest of the city.

Roughly 3,000 employees, nearly half of City Hall's workforce, were let go last month, and Mayor Nagin recently said the city has only enough revenue to operate through March.

One of Algiers' two libraries reopened Monday with limited hours, and its post office, one of two in the metro area that stayed dry, is running with help from reassigned postal workers. Clarkson has asked military officials to help reopen local playgrounds, and plans to create a tent city in Brechtel Park for volunteers in town to help rebuild homes.

What helped save Algiers, she said, were improvements to the Intracoastal Waterway levees after Tropical Storm Isidore and Hurricane Lili in 2002 and the dredging of the Gen. DeGaulle Drive canal in 2003.

In addition, the community, which has its own water system and is served by a different power company than Entergy New Orleans, never lost drinkable water or sewer service, Clarkson said.

Algiers regained its power faster than any other section of the city, she said.

Not the same place

A strange mixture of mourning and normalcy seems to have swept over Algiers. An 18-year resident, Brian Washington estimates that about half of his Real Timbers neighbors have returned.

"It's quieter, it's slower and it's even safer," he said of his altered surroundings. He laments the loss of his children's classmates who have yet to return. "Their friends are no longer in the community. Socially, they are impacted."

Dolores Taylor, who lost her Gentilly home of 39 years to Katrina, now reluctantly resides in Algiers in a Leboeuf Street house her daughter lived in before relocating to Baton Rouge. She calls her refuge a blessing but can't help but notice how different her new world is from her old.

"That's just hard to comprehend, that everything here is like nothing ever happened, and over there, everything is destroyed. Look at all these houses. There's nothing wrong here."

Still, that doesn't negate the pain, said Taylor, 70. "I was born and raised in New Orleans, and I want to go back. I like it here, but I'd love to be home."

Restaurant owner Pignona, who lost three houses in Mississippi but found her Algiers house and business intact, likened the latter to winning the lottery.

But when talk turns to the rest of metro New Orleans, her mood, even standing in the middle of a steady crowd at the bar she has owned for 17 years, changes sharply.

"It sickens me," she said, fighting back tears. "My city is dead."

Hart, who has seen the number of residents attending his weekend Mass skyrocket from seven in mid-September to about 2,300, mixed his grief with hope.

"I see Algiers as a force," he said. "It's a light in darkness."

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Rob Nelson can be reached at rnelson@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3796.