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According to the government's measurement, New Orleans was one of the few cities in the country to see a decline in downtown population between 2000 and 2010.
Henry Charlot, with the DDD says the truth is just the opposite.
"We doubled from about 2,500 residents in 2000 to about 5,100 in 2010."
The Census Bureau says downtown New Orleans experienced a population decline of 35,000 residents during that period.
Charlot says the problem is that the Bureau's measuring stick doesn't work here.
"They looked within a two-mile radius of City Hall, and our downtown is only about 1.2 miles square."
"In New Orleans, two miles puts you well outside of downtown," says Charlot. "It puts you well into Central City, well into Mid City, and either right in the middle of the river or, perhaps, into Algiers."
Obviously, those are not downtown areas. And they're areas that haven't seen the amount of growth that the city's actual downtown area has seen.
Plus, Charlot says the Crescent City is actually a rectangle that can't be measured in a circular fashion.
"We go from the river to Claiborne Avenue and from the Ponchartrain Expressway to Iberville Street."
"And, in that downtown core, we actually doubled, just like the rest of the country," says Charlot.
What's more, says Charlot, the downtown area continues to show healthy residential growth.
"We've had almost a thousand new units to come on-line in about the last three-and-a-half to four years. And we've got another 1,400 or so in the pipeline. So, at that rate, we think we're going to double again in the next ten years."
And, Charlot points to retail growth in the downtown area as well, saying that growth tends to follow residential growth.
As examples, he cites Rouse's downtown grocery, the New Era headwear and apparel flagship store that just opened on Canal Street, and a $70 million redevelopment at the Riverwalk.
