This past Friday, the same day protesters descended on City Hall demanding accountability and transparency from city leaders about the crumpled pile of steel and concrete at Canal and Rampart, representatives from 1031 Canal Development LLC reached out to WWL Radio and asked for an opportunity to set the record straight about what they called “misinformation and radical allegations.”On Sunday, 1031 Canal Development placed a full-page newspaper ad featuring an all-caps declaration that “WE DID NOT DO THE CONSTRUCTION,” “WE DID NOT DO THE ENGINEERING OR THE ARCHITECTURE,” and “THE SITE AND DEMOLITION ARE NOT UNDER OUR CONTROL.”Attorney Kerry Miller joined Newell in studio Monday afternoon on behalf of his clients, 1031 Canal Development.“For the record, there are no preconditions to this interview or anything along those lines. You said you wanted to set the record straight, so I’m going to give you this opportunity straight up,” Newell began. “Tell us what it is that you want to set straight.”“There was an unfortunate event last week that happened with the tarp,” Miller said. “That seemed to generate a Twitter-fueled flash mob making accusations against the owner of the project. So we thought this was the right time to come out and let the interested public know what the owner has been doing, because accusations have been that the owner isn’t doing enough… they have been working very, very hard to try and get the bodies out. They hired paramilitary experts to try and go into the building, people who specialized in this in Iraq and Afghanistan.”“What was their assessment?” Newell asked.“The engineers would not permit them to go in.”“Whose engineers? Yours, or OSHA’s, or who?”“Engineers retained by 1031 Canal, and also as consultants of the city. When the building collapsed, an emergency declaration went out, which prohibited anyone, including the owner, from getting access to the site… what you’re dealing with now is a very technical, complex situation. The engineers have had to model the building in its existing state, not structurally sound or secure. The overriding concern was, there was no way to access where the bodies might be located without risking further collapse of the building and risking additional lives.”“With the emotion surrounding this issue, transparency should be key,” Newell said. “We heard about implosion, then that came off the table in favor of taking it down in pieces. Now, implosion is back on the table. We put the tarp up, it’s blown away, we hear it can’t be put back up again, and within hours someone made the effort and got it done. It seems like we have this giveth-and-taketh away mentality here, and with each occurrence of that, the public’s skepticism and cynicism goes up. So we get to this ad that was posted that says ‘we didn’t do the construction.’ What is that about? What message are you trying to send with that statement?”“We weren’t the contractor - that’s what it says.”“But your general contractor is a principal owner of 1031 Canal Development LLC! As well as a subcontractor! So how can you make that statement, ‘we did not do the construction?’