News TRUDC wins NEA grant award
The Tulane Regional Urban Design Center, under the Direction of Adjunct Assistant Professor Grover Mouton and Associate Nick Jenisch, recently crafted a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant on behalf of the City of Mandeville, LA, in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office, the Planning Department, and the Friends of the Dew Drop Inn, which represents the oldest unaltered Jazz Hall and African American Benevolent Society in the world.
The City of Mandeville is the recipient of the NEA Design Division’s $20,000 award, which will be doubled with city-appropriated matching funds. The grant will facilitate a conservation study for the historic Dew Drop Inn, and will fund schematic design to interpret the history and significance of this nineteenth century structure. The TRUDC will direct all grant activities, coordinate consultants, and develop an interpretive master plan.
The submission was entered last fall as part of the NEA’s bi-annual grant-making process, and stood in competition with hundreds of applications. According to NEA Design Director Maurice Cox, the award was one of only 14 such submittals to receive funding.
The NEA grant award, the recent success of cultural events held at the Dew Drop Inn, and several current city-led initiatives promoting cultural preservation and heritage tourism as an economic stimulus have also led the City Council to submit Mandeville for consideration as a Preserve America community, a program developed in cooperation with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the US Departments of Interior and Agriculture. Brought to the council and coordinated by the TRUDC, the designation and subsequent Preserve America grant applications will fund planning, design, and conservation of historic properties while supporting any number of cultural heritage initiatives. The TRUDC has pledged continued community outreach to help Mandeville attain these goals.
The TRUDC is proud of its decade-long working relationship with the The City of Mandeville, and hopes that this collaboration will continue to highlight cultural tourism and historic preservation in Mandeville.
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