History
Stefanos Polyzoides came to Baton Rouge in April 1997 as the inaugural speaker for the Marcia Kaplan Kantrow Lecture Series for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Polyzoides and his partner, Elizabeth Moule were among the founders of the Congress of New Urbanism. Polyzoides lectures on New Urbanism inspired the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and Forum 35 to investigate the principles of New Urbanism to see how they could be applied to Baton Rouge.
A New Urbanism Committee was formed to undertake a plan for the redevelopment of downtown, which was to serve as a model to be used in other areas of the city.
The committee's research revealed that West Palm Beach, Florida had developed a new urbanist plan and had experienced significant growth and development as a result. After the committee visited West Palm Beach, they asked the City-Parish and state to contribute funding for the plan. The Metro-Council and state agreed, and Duany-Plater Zyberk and Company was hired as the lead consultant. The $450,000 fee was divided equally between, the City-Parish, the State of Louisiana, and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Duany Plater-Zyberk assembled a team of experts including Alexander Garvin, the implementation expert, Robert Gibbs, retail consultant, and Walter Kulash, traffic consultant. Elizabeth "Boo" Thomas was hired as part of the consultant team to serve as a liason between the consultant team and the client (City-Parish, the State of Louisiana, and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation). Prior to the start of the planning process, DPZ held informational meetings for East Baton Rouge City-Parish officials, neighborhood leaders, and Capitol Park architects. Each of the experts held pre-charrette public lectures as part of their data-gathering visits.
The first phase of planning included an intensive design week known as a charrette. A Plan Baton Rouge Steering Committee was appointed to provide leadership to the community throughout the planning process. To provide a vehicle for widespread community participation, a Leadership Committee was appointed to serve as catalysts and communicators to the rest of the community, inviting their participation in every phase of the planning process.
Downtown Baton Rouge had made significant progress in the past ten years under the leadership of Davis Rhorer and the Downtown Development District but still had empty storefronts, vacant buildings and numerous surface parking lots. Plans were already underway to consolidate state agencies in a Capitol Park complex, bringing 3,000 state employees to downtown. Also, plans to expand the Centroplex Arena into a convention center and the Louisiana Arts and Science Center's addition of a planetarium space theater signaled hope for growth and economic progress in downtown.
The charrette process was the capstone in the efforts to create a Master Plan for downtown Baton Rouge. The plan is intended to guide the growth already occurring in downtown, to preserve and strengthen the two historic neighborhoods of Spanish Town and Beauregard Town, and to restore the pedestrian character and sense of place of downtown for all of its citizens to enjoy. The charrette participants included downtown merchants, property owners, design professionals, developers, downtown residents, and public officials who shared their visions of the future with the design team. The team took their ideas to the drawing board proposing specific projects and solutions to problems. The attendants of the public presentations were invited to react to the ideas presented at the daily meetings.
Plan Baton Rouge is a new way of approaching urban planning and development by identifying public action that will result in widespread, sustained private market reaction. It demonstrates the following principles of New Urbanism: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for pedestrian and transit use as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology and building practice.
Plan Baton Rouge recommends administrative actions, changes in government procedures and zoning codes, transportation improvements, new legislation and development proposals. The plan includes a separate implementation section, specifically requested in the RFQ, which identifies the entities responsible for each of the recommendations, suggests potential funding sources and establishes an implementation schedule.