New Orleans -- The president of the organization that operates the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center here yesterday disputed a report in the city's leading newspaper that a planned center expansion "is being canceled."
"The project has been delayed, not abandoned nor canceled," Warren L. Reuther Jr., president of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority, said yesterday in a statement.
However, Reuther gave no timeline as to when the project will go forward and seemed to suggest that it might not proceed at all.
"We will continue to gather information and explore the project's costs and feasibility until a firm, well-informed decision can be made," Reuther said.
The expansion would create a new building with 524,000 square feet of exhibit space, a 50-percent increase over the center's current exhibit space.
Following Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29 last year, the authority suspended a $315-million expansion construction contract to focus instead on restoring and reopening the center. The center was closed to conventions immediately following Katrina. It partially reopened in February and fully reopened in June. The authority spent more than $60 million to restore the center, which sustained considerable damage from the hurricane and from the thousands of people who took refuge there.
The Times-Picayune yesterday reported that the authority has decided to put the expansion "on indefinite hold" and later in the story characterized the project as "being canceled."
The newspaper quoted Reuther as saying, "We're going to hold off on Phase IV. The demand isn't there right now."
Reuther, in his statement yesterday, said, "The status of the Phase IV expansion project is the same as it has been for several months. Nothing has changed."