Advocate: With Ochsner's Support, Saints pitched 35% Dome Occupancy for Games in PRESEASON

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The New Orleans Saints have been locked in a public battle with Mayor LaToya Cantrell for weeks over whether the team should be allowed to fill the Mercedes-Benz Superdome to 25% capacity for games, a stalemate that escalated to the point where team officials said they might play in LSU’s Tiger Stadium if Cantrell wouldn’t relent.

But in August, before the season began, the Saints made a pitch to Gov. John Bel Edwards for a bolder idea: 35% capacity — a plan that would put almost 24,000 fans in the stadium for games.

A Saints presentation, obtained Monday through a public records request to the governor’s office, was bolstered with quotes from Ochsner Health System officials who voiced their support for the idea. The plan featured a detailed “seating manifest methodology” that showed how patrons would be spaced from several angles. In all, 23,875 people would have been allowed in the stadium under the proposal, to which Edwards did not agree.

On Sept. 1, Edwards agreed to a plan to allow fans at the Superdome, but the details weren’t publicly announced at the time. Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for Edwards, said the Sept. 1 plan would have allowed 25% capacity, in line with the Phase 3 rules that the governor announced publicly nine days later.

In the Saints’ proposal for 35% capacity, 6-foot social distancing wasn’t quite possible on the aisles. Seats on either side of the aisles are at most 5.7 feet apart — or less depending on the section — when measuring from the approximate location of patrons’ heads, according to the presentation. The 5.7-foot distance comes from the 200 level at the Superdome; the distance between aisle seats in the 600 level from Row 6 to the top is only 5.2 feet, according to the presentation.

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The presentation quoted Dr. Robert Hart, Ochsner’s Chief Medical Officer, as saying “we are actually OK with the 35% capacity seating plan despite the horizontal distance being less than 6 feet, but with the information provided here I think I could give my support to this plan. It gives some variability in the cohort size, which I think is ideal and much better than the 37% and 50% models.”

“I can support the 35% plan with the distance adjustments that have been pointed out,” added Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, Ochsner’s medical director of infection control and prevention, according to the presentation. “It is reasonable and would meet the CDC guidance.”

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The document further illustrates the Saints’ desire to welcome paying customers into the stadium, which has put team officials at odds with Cantrell’s administration as New Orleans charts its own, more strict path on coronavirus restrictions than Edwards’ administration. Saints officials sent the proposal for 35% occupancy to the governor’s office ahead of an Aug. 11 meeting between Edwards, Cantrell and team officials, said Stephens. She said the governor reviewed the plan ahead of the meeting.

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