'Treme' producers' letter languished in New Orleans City Hall

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'Treme' producers' letter languished in New Orleans City Hall
April 15, 2011
NOLA.com

Why did a letter to Mayor Mitch Landrieu from the executive producers of the HBO series "Treme" sit unopened for a week at City Hall?

"The letter was in an envelope that was taped to a (mailing) tube, and it was hand-written 'To Mayor Landrieu' on the envelope," mayoral spokesman Ryan Berni said. "The letter looked like a label."

In fact, the four-paragraph note from producers David Simon, Eric Overmyer and Nina Noble asked Landrieu to work with local preservationists to find a way to restore rather than demolish five Central City shotgun houses.

The South Derbigny Street homes appear in advertisements for the TV series, including the cover of a recently released DVD set of the first season.

The April 7 letter also carried the implied message that the "Treme" producers would be willing to assist that effort, possibly including helping to finance it, Simon said.

He said he never imagined he wouldn't get a response, figuring that the mayor either would call on the TV executives to pony up some cash or else explain that his administration had no choice but to tear down the houses.

Instead, "we heard from no one," Simon said in an open letter he issued this week.

Berni said city employees didn't realize the letter existed until reporters who had gotten a copy from preservationists started calling Thursday to inquire about it. The mayor's staff eventually found a copy posted online at a local news website, though the discovery came just hours before a bulldozer was scheduled to raze the homes during a mayoral news conference.

Landrieu ultimately rejected the appeal to save the homes, which he said were in imminent danger of collapse and had become havens for drug dealing and other criminal activity. Meanwhile, workers finally found the letter in the executive wing on the second floor of City Hall.

"We went back and were looking through the office and found it eventually, attached to the tube," Berni said.

In his open letter, Simon tried to counter the impression that the "Treme" executives wanted the houses maintained in their blighted state because of their relationship to the show.

"Many have actually characterized our appeal as an attempt by some dilettante Hollywood-types to preserve some urban blight for purposes of filming and-or profit, and to do so without offering resources for the effort. Remarkable, really," he wrote.

In fact, the producers said in their letter that they hoped "a way can be found to renovate and not destroy" the homes. "What a powerful message it would send about the resiliency and recovery of the city for this block to be restored and transformed into desirable homes for returning residents," they wrote.

Simon said that HBO, "Treme" and its individual producers "have already raised or personally contributed close to a quarter of a million dollars to New Orleans nonprofits," among them the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, the Roots of Music, Common Ground and Habitat for Humanity.