Planning panel approves Pitt's 'green' project

The official name of the applicant, Douglas and Andry Sustainable Building LLC, was scarcely as attention-grabbing as, say, Brad Pitt's name would have been.

The official language of the application -- "a request for a mixed-use planned community district overlay including residential and commercial uses in new structures in an LI light industrial district" -- was no more exciting.

But the prosaic terminology of government bureaucracy could not hide the unusual nature of the project that won approval last week from the New Orleans City Planning Commission: a 23-unit "environmentally friendly" low-income residential development in the Lower 9th Ward being built by Global Green USA with backing from actor Pitt.

The complex is being designed, thanks to the use of solar panels and other "green" technology, to require 75 percent less energy than typical New Orleans buildings, said Beth Galante, director of Global Green's New Orleans office. It will include an 18-unit apartment building, five single-family homes and a community center containing offices, an auditorium, a visitor center, a community kitchen and retail space.

Global Green hopes to break ground in May and complete the first home by Aug. 29, the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Galante said. The rest of the complex should be finished by next summer, she said.

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