When you say Slidell, what many people who aren't from Slidell picture is Gause Boulevard, the Veterans Boulevard of the Northshore.

“I don't think anyone really understands Slidell,” said Grover Mouton, the director of the Tulane Urban Design Center. Mouton is helping the city re-design after Hurricane Katrina.

“For the last four years, they have been under such a -- it's almost like a restraining order, because you had, what 89 percent devastation. Well, that's the biggest restraining order you're ever going to have in your life.”

This week, Mouton welcomed some of America's top urban planners to Slidell. They evaluated for three days, then Wednesday, showed city leaders their ideas for how to make the city better. They admit some of the main arteries like Gause aren't pretty.

“Yeah, they're kind of crappy.  But it's the same crap you see everywhere in America.  But once you step off the crap, you've actually got some real good stuff,” said Rollin Stanley, an urban planner.

Like Heritage Park in the heart of the city and the Train Depot and especially all of Olde Towne, from the thriving antique district to the re-building civic district to what they call the entertainment district, all of which needs work.

Maybe the most valuable thing to come out of the urban planners' visit will be helping Slidell with historic properties like Olde Towne.  Rollin Stanley says for governments who know how to tap into it, there's federal money out there to help rebuild these properties.  And, he says, there's a lot of it.

Slidell has the potential to tap into essentially free money through tax credit programs that towns of every size across this country are beginning to realize are ways to rebuild.

Stanley says because of Katrina more money is actually available to Slidell than many other cities. He says this can be an ideal retirement city.

And Grover Mouton says because it's surrounded by water Slidell offers a great quality of life, but the city suffers for design mistakes.

“I most probably need a minimum of 150 miles of sidewalk,” Slidell Mayor Ben Morris.  “In the past, developers were allowed to come in here and not put sidewalks.  And now, we're paying the price.”

Mayor Ben Morris says he's hoping to hire a grant writer to tap into some of the federal money available for things like bike paths.

“The nice thing about being mayor instead of chief of police is, some of these things you do now will last for, maybe a hundred years.  And that's good,” said Morris.

And he says some ideas he got this week may help him do that.

The urban planners will now send a written report to the city of Slidell with specific ideas of how to better design the city and cash in on federal money.