Smart Growth Summit

[richyb83]

Not sure about all the details on this; but thought some of yall might be interested in this stuff??

*Smart Growth Summit*

Join our experts for a lively discussion about the Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan, smart growth and community health, preserving rural character and the effects of planning on our quality of life.

August 21st -22nd

Manship Theatre; Shaw Center for the Arts

http://www.planningexcellence.org/

^This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required to attend. Many different programs(Louisiana Speaks, Louisiana Community Planning, Plan Baton Rouge, Old South BR)

Including: Northshore Regional Transportation Plan and Model Development Code

[richyb83]

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/business/9287301.html

Nearly 400 people are expected to attend the two-day event sponsored by the Center for Planning Excellence of Baton Rouge. Prior registration is required.

Smart growth issues are aimed at designing and rebuilding communities with logical neighborhood services that are friendlier for pedestrians, residents and commuters. The summit will address smart growth particularly in light of post-hurricane redevelopment needs in south Louisiana, with speakers talking about community planning, transportation, community health and innovative building practices.

Baker

[nquint1]

Public urged to demand smart growth

If Baton Rouge wants smarter growth policies and higher-density development in its urban center, it will come only when residents mobilize and put pressure on elected officials to shape public policy to that effect, a

[richyb83]

Thanks for digging deep into the BR vault for this topic nquint1 !!! This thread never got a response from waay back in the past; I saw something on this very recently, but didn't bother to post it. This is good stuff and what Urban Planet is all about IMO.

Baton Rouge definetly will benefit with this approach; actually more of this type of development has been happening; esp. around LSU's Northgates, Towne Center, Perkins Rowe and scattered throughout the city. But much more is need. BR has plenty of open undeveloped land for "smart" infil and live/work/play. And lots of re-development on the fringes of the inner-urban core.

This is just one of Pyatok's examples....this would look good in several locations including MidCity/Westmoreland shopping center; the Nicholson corridor between downtown & LSU, tec...

He actually said BR's sprawl is not that bad when compared others..... Phoenix AZ example (at the end of article) was just hard to believe!

Cities such as Phoenix., the poster child for bad development choices, are locked into a cycle of sprawl because of their policies, he said.

He said Phoenix has about the same number of people as Brooklyn and Queens in New York

[cajun]

Baton Rouge can talk and talk about these types of things.

The parks still suck, the traffic is still a nightmare, and parish officials are too willing to bend to pressure from neighborhoods surrounding infill developments. It's too expensive and difficult to build residential spaces in downtown, and the surrounding areas have too much crime and too little police presence.

Town Center is a great example of bad planning.

Big parks that can only be reached by car are an example of BREC's ineptness....they are actually talking about closing down neighborhood parks. Good recreational spots don't invlove only team sports (hiking, kayaking, jogging, camping....).

Perkins Rowe is an example of having a moderately well thought out design by private developers that happen to be building in Baton Rouge. It's a fluke, and it likely won't happen again.

Enough talking.

[richyb83]

Your right! Towne Center is a great example of bad planning. What would you expect from developers out of sprawling Houston??? Creekstone Companies. I was actually refering to the dense residential section that has been built adjacent to it (The Reserve at Cedar Lodge, The Enclave, and Millenium). Where they went WRONG was not connecting those 3 developments with "walking/bike paths" to Towne Center. They could have gone between the business park, CAMD and Residence Inn. It should have park benches and lighting to go with a small park/lake with some fountains. That would make it a "true" Towne Center.

Rouzan should be a nice place when it finally starts later this year.

They are finally realizing there needs to be a different way to get more residential units downtown. As of now it's still way too slow.

The parks could be better, but they could be worse IMO.

No doubt traffic sucks because BR is too dependent on the insufficient Interstate system. No light synchronization(Holden is trying to fix) and lack of turn-lanes for the major surface streets is also very frustrating. The Green Light Program is a step in the right direction.

[richyb83]

In yesterday's Advocate "Opinion" section...

Our Views: Local summit for growth

Organizers of this year

[richyb83]

Check out what the urban planner said about those 5 houses in Spanish Town...kinda funny & sad at the same time! But hs point is made adding some density....

Planner lauds downtown development

Celebrated planner Andres Duany had high praise Wednesday for what downtown Baton Rouge has created in the 11 years since his firm and local groups began brainstorming the future of Baton Rouge. What's been done here is a model of what other cities can and should do, Duany, who in 1998 helped launch the first Plan Baton Rouge, told an Old State Capitol audience Wednesday night.

The Miami-based Duany was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Smart Growth Summit, the fourth in an annual series conducted by the Center for Planning Excellence. Events continue today and Friday at the Manship Theatre and Saturday at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum in downtown Baton Rouge.

Cities make all the sense in the world. They have the best location. The infrastructure is in place, Duany said. Their competition is not with other cities. It's with their own suburbs.

In an introduction, Davis Rhorer the Downtown Development District executive director said $2.6 billion in development has taken place in Baton Rouge's core since 1998, with the private sector spending twice as much as the public sector.

Duany's firm also has served on many Baton Rouge projects since 1998, chiefly vetting them to make sure the city is friendly for pedestrians. Preservation is important, but Duany was nonplussed about the recent controversy surrounding the Capitol Lofts mid-rise housing development in Spanish Town that would displace five houses. Five virtual mud huts if they have indoor plumbing it would surprise me- is preventing the evolution of a densification of a city that needs to take place downtown.

*Entire article...

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/55265477.html

[richyb83]

Good Growth Awards set for Thursday

The 14th Annual Good Growth Awards, a salute to the best examples of smart growth in the Capital Region, will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Hilton Capitol Center. The event, sponsored by the Baton Rouge Growth Coalition and Business Report, recognizes outstanding real estate projects and the people who are making them happen.

http://www.businessreport.com/archives/daily-report/2010/mar/16/1521/

[richyb83]

My as well post follow-up article...

Good Growth award winners named

The Baton Rouge Growth Coalition honored the commercial and residential development projects that are good neighbors at its 14th annual Good Growth awards Thursday evening. Thirty-eight projects were nominated for the awards, co-sponsored by Business Report. The winners are: Audubon Square, Alex Box Stadium, Baton Rouge Coca-Cola landscaping work, Country Club Place, The Dufrocq School, Howell Place, Katrina Cottages at Hidden Cove, Lakes at Jamestown Phase I, LSU Rural Life Museum Visitor Center Addition, Perkins Road Medical Plaza Pediatric Expansion, Phelps Dunbar, Republic Finance building and Stroubes Chophouse. Brace Godfrey and Robert “Buddy” Tudor, two influential developers who died in the past week, were saluted at the event. Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge was presented with the Distinguished Service Award, for building 245 homes for needy families over the last 21 years.

http://www.businessreport.com/archives/daily-report/2010/mar/19/1527/

[richyb83]

Interesting read in today's Advocate

Planner: Policies weren’t smart...Growth summit kicks off in BR

Baton Rouge’s wasteful, post-war sprawl may have had the appearance of a free market acting on the will of its residents, but was in truth heavily subsidized by bad policy that rigged development to unfold the way it did.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/101135339.html

Downtown sites recognized as 'great' livable communities

The Downtown Development District's Arts & Entertainment District and the Kress at Third & Main building were two of the first winners of the Great Places in Louisiana Award. The honor was presented to a representative of each entity by the AARP Livable Communities Council, the Center for Planning Excellence and the Lieutenant Governor's Office as part of the annual Smart Growth Summit. The Great Places awards recognize livable Louisiana communities and developments that meet smart growth principles such as affordability, accessibility, sustainability and walkability. The Arts & Entertainment District includes such landmarks as the Shaw Center for the Arts and the Hilton Capitol Center. Kress at Third & Main has provided downtown with residential, office and retail space, as well as preserving three historic buildings. PACE Greater New Orleans and the Hollygrove Market and Farm, two New Orleans developments, were also honored. Each winner will receive a $1,500 award.

http://www.businessreport.com/archives/daily-report/2010/aug/20/1797/

[hagetaka]

thanks for this update

[buckett5425]

I went to the conference with some friends and we had a good time and enjoyed the wealth of information. It's just nice to know, that even after all of the complaining we do on here, that some people out there actually "get it" and are trying to hard to see real positive change take place within our cities.

[richyb83]

Your welcome hagetaka! Cool you went to the conference buckett! Indeed this is a positive step in the right direction..this is why I had to post it!

Here's some more...people need to walk more around here! But it would help if there were more sidewalks!

Health, planning linked....Planner cites smart-growth anti-obesity role

Cities need to recognize that smarter design and a return to walkable communities are valuable tools in the fight against chronic obesity and the related heath problems that plague Louisiana, a planner with the National Center for Environmental Health said.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/101238774.html

[buckett5425]

I have been enjoying the comments on all of the advocate articles. I always enjoy "phil's" opinion. He's always the first comment on every story, and he says the most ridiculous things that make no sense! Hes always my entertainment for the day!

[dan326]

Ooo, tell me were to find some of his comments.

[richyb83]

Yeah some of those comments are a trip! "Stupid Being Stupid" on BusinessReport is entertaining as well!

You gotta like this huh Dan??

Virginia College to bring investment, jobs to Cortana

Virginia College, a private, for-profit college, is scheduled to open in the former Steve & Barry's location at Cortana Mall on Oct. 4. Don Keith, a spokesman for Education Corporation of America, Virginia College's parent company, says the school hopes to eventually enroll 1,000 students in the next year. Keith adds the school will have a faculty and staff between 100 and 130 people. That will pump money into the mall, say Keith and mall General Manager Percy Singleton, as the students and faculty shop and eat. "It changes the mix of clientele we currently see," Singleton says. "Filling that space will also increase the amount of traffic to the general area. … And on a daily basis we'll have both faculty and staff as well as students."

Keith, who spoke during a session at last week's Smart Growth Summit, says organizations like Virginia College are transforming empty stores and shopping centers. "We love big-boxes," Keith says. Those buildings have the room for classroom space, along with secure parking and access to major streets. Virginia College offers diplomas and degrees in a number of fields, including health care, medical billing and cosmetology. Some locations of the school have retail components, such as cosmetology clinics or massage centers, but Keith did not indicate if the Cortana location would have those things. Virginia College also plans to spend $500,000 to $1 million locally advertising the Cortana campus.

http://www.businessreport.com/archives/daily-report/2010/aug/23/1799/

[richyb83]

Another good Sunday article(lenghty) in the Advocate yesterday...from old Bon Marche Mall being converted into Bonne Carre Business Center/technology park and now new CVS; Virginia College to former Service Merchandidse/Steve & Barry's at Cortana; Amedysis in the old Schwegmann's; Circa 1857 from old abandoned drug-store; Renaissance Park; etc...

Old spaces, new faces....Summit touches on how to transform old buildings

If cities are going to reclaim commercial corridors hollowed out by suburban sprawl, they are going to have to find new uses for old buildings.

At a workshop at last week’s Smart Growth Summit called “Transforming Empty Spaces into Useful Places,” panelists talked about adaptive reuse: how abandoned buildings in shopping centers and city centers can be repurposed for new life.

Modern American development has left cities littered with abandoned buildings, vacant strip centers and even regional malls that are dead or dying, panelists noted. And with the collapse of the housing bubble, hard-hit cities like Denver, San Diego, Phoenix and countless others even have new developments with no tenants lined up to fill the space, they said.

Speaker Chris Leinberger, a developer and visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution, said there are about 10,000 dead or dying strip centers and regional malls in the country. Denver, for example, has been forced to redevelop eight of its 12 regional malls. While Baton Rouge’s economy and housing market have fared considerably better, the national retail economy has slowed to a crawl. Chains that would normally be expanding or jumping at the chance to fill space, even in Baton Rouge, aren’t budging.

Consider, for example, the CompUSA site on Bluebonnet Boulevard, which was only recently snapped up by Red Lobster. It sat for 2‰ years on a high-profile spot on one of Baton Rouge’s most vibrant retail corridors in front of the Mall of Louisiana, forced to moonlight as a temporary Halloween Store twice and once as a teen center for a local church.

And it’s not as though the city’s development pattern hasn’t left its share of empty buildings throughout the city center.“These are places that we’ve already provided road access, where all the infrastructure they need to exist is,” said Rachel DiResto, vice president of the Center for Planning Excellence. “Ensuring that we don’t abandon these (structures) and build something new each time is one of the tenants of smart growth.”

“And any creative or adaptive use is something that keeps activity in neighborhoods,”

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/business/101667838.html

[richyb83]

Dates set for smart growth summit

The Center for Planning Excellence will hold its 2011 Smart Growth Summit Aug. 18 and Aug. 19 at the Shaw Center for the Arts. The event will kick off with an opening reception on the evening of Aug. 17 at the Manship Theatre with a still to-be determined keynote speaker. As part of the event, CPEX and AARP will present the Great Places Awards, which go to developers who make neighborhoods that have access to the support services elderly people need, along with quality housing and mobility options. The two-day event will feature panel discussions on everything from repairing sprawl to the role of banks in building walkable communities, and from smart growth economics in the current fiscal climate to the innovations at "green" schools. Registration for the event is $50 through August, and a number of scholarships are available. For more information, go to summit.cpex.org.

http://www.businessreport.com/archives/real-estate-weekly/latest/

[richyb83]

Let's see if I'm allowed to post this...Where are the emicons???  Where are the BOLD; Italics' Underline Bar on Top?? Wow! I liked the old way back...go way to make a Forum go cold...

Decent article from "Dig Baton Rouge"...nice pic too...

"Grow Forth and Prosper"

Smart growth proponents say building up might save Baton Rouge – but only if we do it the right way

Baton Rouge is a wide city, and we are all familiar with both ends of her. Drive down Airline to the pet store, over to Siegen for the bookstore, head over to the overpass area for lunch – that’s a whole Saturday right there.

We sprawl, and we’re suffering because of it, not just in terms of peace of mind, but economically: a bankrupt bus system, ghost neighborhoods, crumbling infrastructure within the city, while development in the surrounding suburbs are flourishing.

Next week, the Center for Planning and Excellence will hold it’s annual Smart Growth Summit, a conference of some of the most brilliant and bold minds – both local and national – in urban land use and development. These urban planners are advocating for smart growth, one of the latest trends in progressive urban development. Smart growth is a development philosophy that pairs pre-automobile urban design with the needs of modern life to create sustainable, walkable communities.

But smart growth isn’t without its criticisms – and the debate has residents, developers and designers asking themselves, ‘is smart growth really smart for Baton Rouge?’

http://digbatonrouge...d-prosper-2673/

[Antrell Williams]

"is smart growth really smart for Baton Rouge?"

Is our current trend working?

[Southron]

@Richy - concerns duly noted. There are usually temporary glitches after major site upgrades and this latest one was definitely a major one.

Digging the topics at the upcoming summit. I wish I could attend.

[itsjustme3]

We sprawl, and we’re suffering because of it, not just in terms of peace of mind, but economically: a bankrupt bus system, ghost neighborhoods, crumbling infrastructure within the city, while development in the surrounding suburbs are flourishing.

So sprawl has resulted in CATS being a failure? I'm so sick and tired of people not stating the obvious and that is the CATS mgmt is awful. If it weren't funded by taxpayers and grants then it would be closed.

And building "up" won't help you compete with the suburbs. The suburbs have lower crime rates, better schools and are safer. Building up isn't going to address any of those problems.

[Antrell Williams]

Did you completely disregard the rest of the article? All of that was addressed. Building up isn't going to solve anything. Using the existing infrastructure to lure people closer to their employment centers and entertainment will drastically reduce the wasted time on our roadways and the roughly 30% of the income that suburbanites use to travel to and from the city everyday, I was one of them. If merely half of that new growth in Ascension, Livingston, Zachary, and Central were concentrated in EBR, CATS probably would have some full buses, the schools would have more investment as well as the neighborhoods, and quality of life never would have diminished to the point it is now.

The city government and some citizens realizes the path of growth that we have been focusing on for the past decade or two is NOT financially healthy for the city or its residents. Eventually the city will be a ghost town, besides state gov't employers, and everything will move to the suburbs, which will go down the exact same path the inner city did. Crime will rise as lower income families move to the suburbs, traffic will get ever so worse, and those cheaply built houses will fall apart as their subdivision lowers in value.

[itsjustme3]

If merely half of that new growth in Ascension, Livingston, Zachary, and Central were concentrated in EBR, CATS probably would have some full buses, the schools would have more investment as well as the neighborhoods, and quality of life never would have diminished to the point it is now.

Again, you're missing the point. WHY do businesses and families choose to live in the suburbs? WHY?

There is a fundamental problem with Baton Rouge and it's got nothing to do with planning.