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When Gwen Hamilton, a Baton Rouge native, moved to Old South Baton Rouge in 1973, the area was already starting its slow decline.

“Prior to that, it was very vibrant. Highland Road (for example) was full of life and energy,” she says.

She has fond memories of the now-shuttered Lincoln Theater, where she had her first date with her husband (Santa Claus Captured by the Martians was the flick, she recalls), or the Five Crown on Eddie Robinson Drive, where national and local bands once played, but haven’t for years.

Today, the roughly three-square-mile area from Highland Road to Nicholson Drive, north of LSU and south of downtown has few successful businesses and more than its share of crime and blight. It’s also home to two large Hope VI projects, a federally funded program of the Housing Authority of East Baton Rouge Parish that seeks to replace old housing projects with new, mixed-income housing.

But Hamilton, director of special programs for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, says the success of Hope VI will depend largely on whether the surrounding area is able to come back to life.

On a recent tour of Old South Baton Rouge, Hamilton admired the rows of Hope VI homes along River South Way off Thomas H. Delpit Drive. The housing projects here were torn down in 2005.

But right across from River South Way stands the Paradizyo, a distinctive building that was no doubt quite a nightclub in its day, but today sits crumbling and empty. It’s hard to imagine selling many new homes here while the neighborhood still looks like the past-its-prime inner city that it is.

“If you build new homes in the middle of a sick area, all you’re doing is building a potential slum,” Hamilton says.

The Hope VI project was made possible by an $18.6 million grant from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development. Phase I, expected to be ready for residents by December, includes about 28 houses on River South Way and about 21 at the corner of East Polk and Kansas streets, says Richard Murray, the housing authority’s director. Between the two sites, about half will be subsidized multi-family units for rent and about half are for sale through the Young Real Estate Group for about $85,000 to $120,000, he says.

Phase II, still in its preliminary stages, will include construction on Oklahoma Street between Duane and Glacier streets, along Highland Road between the 1500 and 1700 blocks, along East Boulevard from Terrace to Julia streets and some small sites throughout the area, Murray says.

A total of 126 Hope VI houses are planned for Old South, of which 80 will be rentals and 46 will be for sale. The idea is to have mixed-income developments, rather than the pockets of poverty often associated with government housing.

“There’s always going to be a need for affordable housing,” says Samuel Sanders, executive director of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance. “The work force needs a place to live.” He says the need for affordable housing in Baton Rouge was present even before Hurricane Katrina.

Leading the way for the redevelopment of Old South Baton Rouge and other depressed areas of the city will be the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority that was created by Act 417 of the 2007 legislative session. The exact details of how the authority will function are still being hammered out, but the authority will be led by a five-member board, with three appointed by the mayor, one by BRAF and one by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber.

The authority will have the ability to issue bonds, enforce codes, clear titles on vacant properties and other functions now handled by various agencies. One of its primary functions, as explained by BRAF executive vice president John Spain, will be land banking, whereby the authority could combine a number of properties into a single parcel that could be marketed to private developer for a large project.

David Jacobs

HOPES AND DREAMS: River South is one of two large Hope VI projects, a federally funded program of the Housing Authority of East Baton Rouge Parish that seeks to replace old housing projects in Old South Baton Rouge with new, mixed-income housing.

Today, Spain says, a developer might buy a plot of land for $5,000 and pay $10,000 or $15,000 in legal fees to clear the title, only to be left with a property in the middle of urban blight. Not necessarily a smart investment.

Hamilton says recent efforts to clean up Old South Baton Rouge have helped the area’s crime issue; she says studies show crime goes down when people feel better about their surroundings. Community meetings with police, along with “walk and talks” where officers walk neighborhoods with community leaders to meet folks and get a sense of the problems, are probably more important. What’s missing, she says, is a comprehensive anti-crime plan for the area with clear goals and timelines that everyone knows about.

But while aware of the enormous challenges, Hamilton focuses on the positive. She likes to point out some of Old South Baton Rouge’s bright spots, such as Snowflake Bar-B-Que on East Washington Street and Tiger Town Auto Paint & Body Shop on East Polk Street, both of which she recommends highly. The first home of the Cypress Park development, which she says is designed by Miami-based New Urbanism proponent Andres Duany, is going up on Terrace Street.

And maybe some of the area’s deficiencies represent opportunities. Surely the vacant hilltop lots overlooking Brooks Park could be transformed into prime real estate by a smart developer, she says. Hamilton says it’s going to take people with vision and a desire to contribute to improve the city’s core.

What she doesn’t say is that it will likely take folks willing to take a chance.