 | By MIKE SMITH | Staff writer |
Good morning and thanks for joining us. Here are some of today's top headlines.
TRAGIC FAREWELL: Ed Daniels, the longtime New Orleans sportscaster who suffered a heart attack while covering Saints training camp, has died. Tributes have poured in for the WGNO sports director and New Orleans native. Keith Spera has the full obituary of a man whose even-handed approach made him "the antithesis of the screaming sportscasters."
A HOTEL APART: A project in the 1000 block of Canal opens this fall as an “apartment-style” hotel — essentially, a complex of short-term rentals — called The Mayfair. It's located on the upper floors of four historic buildings next to the site of the former Hard Rock Hotel, which collapsed while under construction in 2019. The project combines the buildings and converts them into 32 units with a total of 72 bedrooms, four rooftop patios, an upscale lobby on Canal Street and ground-floor retail space. Stephanie Riegel has the story.
TAKE THE BRIDGE: The state isn’t any closer to finding the hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to replace the closed bridges along U.S. 90 linking Louisiana and Mississippi. But it recently put out a notice asking if anybody is interested in removing the old bridges, which are historic, for use somewhere else. If so, they are all yours for free, Bob Warren reports.
CLASS CONCERNS: Louisiana wants to give high-performing teachers more freedom and struggling teachers more support. Under a new teacher-evaluation system that schools have the option of piloting this year, teachers rated as “highly effective” can request fewer classroom observations, while those who earn lower ratings will receive coaching to help them improve their classroom instruction. Elyse Carmosino has the story.
Check back throughout the day for more news, entertainment and sports from The Times-Picayune here. Thanks for reading. | 
