In the News

from the The Business Report, Baton Rouge, LA 7.7.04

DAILY REPORT

Blame elected officials

The problem of neighborhoods not connecting - resulting in more traffic congestion and greater pollution that causes health problems - can be traced back to local council decisions across the country, former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening told a group at the Old State Capitol last night. Around the country and in Baton Rouge, local authorities have let neighborhoods be built with only one entrance and off the street grid, which results in more traffic on main roads and extra car trips. Neighborhoods off the gridded network also break down the community, keeping people from walking between homes and meeting each other, said Glendening, head of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute. The breakdown of the grid, he said, often is caused by council members who appeal decisions of planning commissions. And an appeal by an indvidual council member usually is approved by the entire elected body, which customarily defers to the individual members representing the area in question. It works somewhat like that in Baton Rouge, though here the Planning and Zoning Commission often permits neighborhoods to be built off the grid. The solution, said Glendening, is not to let appeals of planning decisions that require new neighborhoods to connect to existing ones.

RELATED STORY

Developing a rift
A civic association divides over what should be allowed to be built on the Sheep Farm

By Mukul Verma, Business Report staff

The Southside Civic Association, which fought Wal-Mart on College Drive, has split over what should happen to pastureland on Perkins Road, a battle that comes with allegations of a board coup and the resignation of the association's president.

The group is divided over the zoning of a tract that could soon be sold for development.
People who live along the property want the land to be a single-family neighborhood. But a handful of the association's board members were willing to listen to developers who might offer a design that follows "smart growth" principles- which led to their removal from the board.

The dispute underscores Baton Rouge's growing and often prickly debate over how the city should be planned. Should it stick with A-1 zoning that has been used for more than five decades to create places like Kenilworth and Tara? Or should it choose smart growth's traditional neighborhood design, which mixes houses with shops and small offices in a walkable community, the kind America built before World War II and the rise of the suburbs?

The land at the center of the Southside brouhaha is roughly 150 acres known affectionately as the Sheep Farm. The property, wedged between Pollard Estates and Southdowns, is a slice of green space that most people in the area don't want disturbed. But odds are that will change; the owner of the tract died last year, making it likely the land will be sold for development.

Knowing that developers want the acreage, Southside's board voted in May on a resolution to assert its position that the current A-1 zoning of single-family housing be continued by the city-parish.

But a handful of board members, say LaVonne Martin and former Southside President Richard Barker, wanted to remain open to a developer who might offer a better urban design. They say some Southdowns residents who live on Sweetbriar Street, which is right next to the land, stacked the association's annual meeting and voted to toss the dissenters from the board in favor of candidates who agreed with them.

During the meeting, Barker, the public face of the association who worked tirelessly to get a more palatable site plan for the Wal-Mart on College, resigned.

"The meeting got pretty heated and, I think, at that point I resigned," says Barker.
Barker says that even though he voted for the A-1 resolution, he feels the traditional neighborhood development concept offers a "higher standard" of urban design.
"It was unjust to have board members removed for backing what amounts to smart growth standards," he adds.

Martin, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, calls the move by the Sweetbriar contingent unexpected. "It was basically an ambush."

She says the neighborhood is now divided, which reduces its power to lobby together for what should happen to the property. An attorney, she also is exploring whether the rules of the association were followed at the annual meeting.

Pam Perkins lives on Sweetbriar and voted for the resolution that calls on the association to stand up for single-family A-1 residential zoning, as it has in the past. She doesn't dispute that residents of Sweetbriar showed up in numbers and took over some board spots.

"We got several new board members now as a result of some nominations from the floor that were in fact offered by one of the neighbors on Sweetbriar Street, and it was in fact in response to the A-1 zoning issue."

But she adds that other residents at the meeting could have offered other candidates for the board. Perkins says that ultimately the change was good.

"What really happened was that we got some fresh, new young members, some very impressive young folks on the board," she says. "And they are replacing some who had been there for a long time."

Her contention is that the people on Sweetbriar will be most affected by what happens to the undeveloped property. And she says that keeping the property A-1 is smart growth. Having new homes built in existing urban areas is "infill," one of the planks of the smart growth movement.

But Barker insists A-1 zoning limits good urban design. "They want A-1 zoning, which was created in 1949 and gives you minimum standards of development."
Though he resigned from the board, Barker says he remains committed to the area.
"I'm a neighborhood guy, you know," says Barker, a city urban planner before retiring. "It's sad, but I'm still for the neighborhood and support it 100 percent and do anything I can to make it better. I have no agenda other than that."