In collaboration with Ron Filson of UIG in Los Angeles and two young architects then practicing with the Perez firm in New Orleans, Malcolm Heard and Allen Eskew, Moore conceived of a public fountain in the shape of the Italian peninsula, surrounded by multiple hemicyclical colonnades, a clock tower, and a campanile and Roman temple - the latter two expressed in abstract, minimalist, space frame fashion.

The fountain and its surrounding colonnades playfully appropriated classical forms and orders, executing them in modern materials (e.g., stainless steel, neon) or kinetically (e.g., suggesting the acanthus leaves of traditional Corinthian capitals through the use of water jets).

Taking a cue from Boston, Baltimore and other aging port cities who had, starting in the late 1960s, moved to redevelop their historic waterfronts, by the 1970s New Orleans sought to spur investment in what later became known as the Warehouse District.

Without commercial tenants to subsidize maintenance, and with dwindling city budgets increasingly constrained - first by the incremental phase out of federal government revenue sharing, then due to the regional Oil Bust of the mid- to late-1980s - the plaza rapidly deteriorated, with the fountain rarely in operation and the fanciful neon and incandescent lighting accents going unreplaced and unrepaired.

In 1987, the vacant historic row along Tchoupitoulas Street was heavily damaged by a fire and was demolished, resulting in the installation of a large surface parking lot adjacent to the Piazza.

[citation needed] The Piazza design's original vision of an urban "surprise plaza" remains only partially fulfilled, however, and must await the development of the adjacent surface parking lots for its realization.

The first phase of improvements included the installation of more Italian-style landscaping, creating a green screen for visual privacy between the Piazza and the adjacent parking lot, and the development of ADA-compliant restrooms with a new air-conditioning system.

“The dollars will be coming out of fees generated by the parking that is around this area.” In noting its importance to the local Italian-American community, Mayor Mitch Landrieu pointed out that he has Italian heritage on his mother's side.