One-year birthday party ‘to celebrate’ Louisiana road construction project, photos show
Living in the midst of a construction zone that has made half her street “impassable” is frustrating, but a Louisiana woman is making the most of it … by throwing a party.
It’s been a year since the construction project started in Natalie Harvey’s Lakeview neighborhood, so she decided to celebrate its first birthday, she wrote in a Facebook post.
“Happy first birthday to our street construction!” the post read. “To celebrate, I created a replica of the street scene in cake form: two layers of chocolate sponge with peanut butter frosting.”
After seeing a neighbor announce the anniversary was approaching on Facebook, Harvey thought of the idea to put her baking skills to use.
“I make birthday cakes for my kids, I make birthday cakes for my husband and me, so why not make a birthday cake for our street construction?” Harvey told WWL.
She went all in: the cake was decorated with Lego people and miniature construction machines, tiny orange traffic cones and even a small “road closed” sign, photos posted on Facebook show.
When construction first came to the neighborhood, Harvey received a flyer explaining the project would last two to four weeks, she said, according to WWL. More than 365 days later, the street is still torn apart.
Ramsey Green, deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure for the city of New Orleans, says a lot of the delay has to do with bad weather, environmental issues and the coronavirus pandemic, according to WWL.
“I myself was out there all morning [Tuesday] meeting with the Executives of the company and making sure we’ve got tighter deadlines given how long the project has taken,” Green told WWL.
Harvey says the project has likely taken so long because there’s a lack of consistency in the scheduling, WGNO reported.
“The work has definitely picked up in the last couple of weeks. But you never know when it’s going to stop and when it’s going to start back up again,” Harvey told the TV station.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 4:43 PM with the headline "One-year birthday party ‘to celebrate’ Louisiana road construction project, photos show."