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Baton Rouge is good at planning. For more than 18 years, the city has had on its books the Horizon Plan, which by all accounts is a top-notch, grass-roots plan that uses smart-growth principles to guide future growth.

But Baton Rouge isn’t nearly as good at implementing plans as it is at drafting them. Navigate the congested thoroughfares of the city, and you’ll see plenty of examples of not-so-smart growth—subdivisions that fail to connect, shopping centers that lack pedestrian access from the street and roadways that weren’t widened until after they were overdeveloped.

If the Horizon Plan was so good—and experts agree that it is—why wasn’t it more effective? It’s an important question to ask now that Horizon is reaching its mandated 2012 expiration date and the city has contracted with Oregon consultant John Fregonese to draft a new, presumably better, master plan.

It is not, however, an easy question to answer, because the reasons Horizon hasn’t been more effective are varied and complex. They include the fact that the city’s zoning laws were never completely overhauled to reflect the goals outlined in the plan, and the fact that the Planning Commission regularly amends the plan, enabling developers to build storage facilities and strip malls that are more in line with surrounding land use than lofty smart-growth principles.

There are other issues, too: a lack of coordination between the Planning Commission and the Department of Public Works, which by its own admission is more preoccupied with traffic flow than long-range planning; a lack of money to implement the many infrastructure and transportation improvements that were called for in the Horizon Plan; and a political process that has created a perception, among some, that the fix is in and that those people with money and power ultimately get their way.

Perhaps above all, though, is a culture here that still doesn’t quite get what good planning is all about. Despite the best intentions of civic and nonprofit groups, not to mention all the ink and lip service that’s been paid to the idea, policy is guided by a deeply ingrained, property-rights mentality that is reflected by the actions of local government.

“If you look at two of the most successful developments in the parish, they’re [Country Club of Louisiana] and Santa Maria, and those score low on smart growth,” DPW Director Pete Newkirk says. “So you really need a mix of what people actually want versus what smart growth is, because smart growth is real difficult.”

Photo by Marie Constantin

“More progressive cities lay out infrastructure first—that’s the definition of smart growth. But you need millions of dollars in a city to make that happen, and with our tax base that’s pretty difficult to do.”—PETE NEWKIRK (above), director, Department of Public Works

Initializing the plan

Some people might take issue with that statement, but Newkirk’s assessment is correct in at least one respect: Smart growth has proved difficult to implement in Baton Rouge. It’s not for lack of trying. For nearly two decades, the city has had an A-plus, smart-growth plan on the books.

The Horizon Plan became the law of the local land in 1992, when the Metro Council approved it after waves of neighborhood meetings, technical reviews and public hearings. It was ahead of its time in many respects because it was done from the bottom up and called for so-called best practices—the development of neighborhood integrity, maintenance of open spaces, orderly growth and development, and the cost-effective provision of public facilities. It encouraged development in areas that already had infrastructure, and it laid out ambitious plans for improving roadways, implementing more mass transit and creating green spaces and bike lanes.

“It’s like that old expression: We were country before country was cool,” says attorney Elliott Atkinson, who was actively involved in creating the Horizon Plan. “We had smart-growth principles and objectives all over that plan before smart growth was even a byword.”

And the plan did accomplish some of its goals. One such goal was to promote the redevelopment and revitalization of downtown as a major focal point of the identity of Baton Rouge. Another was to pull together all the various zoning laws and regulations into a single unified development code—or UDC—which was done in the mid-1990s.

But given all the promise of the Horizon Plan, it was clear by its 10th anniversary that it wasn’t living up to its potential. Plan Baton Rouge, now the Center for Planning Excellence, hired the Smart Growth Leadership Institute and the University of Southern California to audit the plan and identify the problems. In short, the audit team found nothing wrong with the plan. The problem was the city’s zoning code, which even in its comprehensive form as a UDC did very little to ensure that most of the principles in the plan would be implemented and funded.

Little has changed in the six years since those much-publicized findings. Though the UDC has been updated in several places, there are no teeth to guide the look, shape and feel of developments. That helps, perhaps, to explain the disaster that is the shopping center at Bluebonnet Boulevard and Burbank Drive.

Essentially, it’s the antipathy of smart growth and was on the driving tour CPEX leaders gave to Fregonese when he was recently in town. The development is set far back from the street behind a vast parking lot, which has no sidewalks or pedestrian walkways. Granted, had anyone tried to access the development on foot they would have been hard-pressed to get there, as there is but a narrow and incomplete strip of crooked sidewalk virtually dead up against the street with no green buffer to offer protection from the fast-moving traffic. Nearby, a huge storage facility looms over the small dental office that sits in front of it.

Photo by Brian Baiamonte

“We had smart-growth principles and objectives all over that plan before smart growth was even a byword.”—ELLIOTT ATKINSON, attorney

“I can’t imagine what in the world allowed something like this to happen,” CPEX Director Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas says. “It’s not a good example of planning.”

Mind you, the city has a new street standards guideline that could have been followed in the development of Bluebonnet and Burbank. It was created by a subcommittee of the Zoning Advisory Committee, an informal, ad-hoc group that advises Planning Director Troy Bunch. Had the new guidelines been followed, the shopping center would have walkways and landscaping. But the new standards are only a list of suggestions. They’re not required—and in this case were not implemented.

Similarly, the Horizon Plan doesn’t regulate details like setbacks and the height of a building or the look of a neighborhood. So even though the plan technically has the force of law behind it, as a practical matter that doesn’t mean much.

Amending the plan

It means even less when you consider how frequently the plan is amended by the Planning Commission. A review of minutes from meetings shows that over the past 18 months, it has approved more than 30 amendments to the Horizon Plan, which often includes zoning changes as well.

Technically, the recommendations to approve the changes come from the Planning Commission staff. They review the hundreds of applications that come before them each month and make recommendations to the nine-member appointed board of commissioners, who come from a variety of backgrounds. Most have little or no professional planning education or expertise. As a result, commissioners typically follow staff recommendations—nearly 95% of the time, according to an internal department audit.

In some instances, the amendments they approve are warranted. But what troubles proponents of smart growth is that, in one decision after another, the reason given by Planning Commission staff for recommending an amendment is: “… even though the proposed rezoning … is not consistent with the … [Horizon] land-use plan … it is consistent with the surrounding land use character … .” In other words, an area should be rezoned not based on what is best for the community in the long term, but based on what has already been built there.

ANTIPATHY OF SMART GROWTH: The city has new standards that could have been followed in the development of Bluebonnet Boulevard at Burbank Drive, where there is a narrow and incomplete strip of sidewalk virtually next to the road with no buffer offering protection from the traffic.

“A land-use plan is supposed to be flexible, so some things are going to need to change,” says a former Planning Commission staff member who resigned in frustration over the department’s approach to planning. “But it’s not good enough to change the land-use plan just because a portion of the surrounding land is changing. That just means we support the status quo.”

Bunch disagrees. He points out that Baton Rouge was a far different community in 1992, when the Horizon Plan was adopted. The city population was about 20% smaller, and there was no Towne Center at Cedar Lodge or Mall of Louisiana. No Springlake or University Club. Even though the Horizon Plan has been updated every five years as required by law, it still needs to be amended regularly.

“Neighborhoods have changed, and the patterns of growth and development in the parish have changed,” Bunch says. “So even though the plan made a recommendation initially for one type of land use … it is a dynamic plan and needs to be amended as social and economic conditions change.”

But there is a danger in having changed it so many times—a danger that will carry over into the new plan if not addressed. It’s hard to take a plan seriously when it is so easily and frequently amended.

“We passed the Horizon Plan years ago, and we said, ‘This is how we want our city to grow,’” developer Ed Kramer says. “But we’ve amended it so many times that it really doesn’t have any efficacies.”

What Kramer and others would like to see is an overhaul of the UDC, a comprehensive change to the zoning code that brings it into compliance with whatever master plan is guiding the city’s development.

But updating the UDC is not an easy process. It is time-consuming for staff members at the Planning Commission and requires public input as well as approval by the commission and the Metro Council. Critics say Bunch and his staff have not taken a proactive role in making this happen or to educate the community as to what good planning is really all about.

Bunch says his office has made many changes to the UDC to bring it into compliance with the Horizon Plan. It was under his leadership that the city’s various zoning and property regulations were brought under the umbrella of a single UDC to begin with.

WALK AT YOUR OWN RISK: There is no sidewalk leading from The Millennium Towne Center apartment complex on Jefferson Highway to the Towne Center at Cedar Lodge just two-tenths of a mile away.

“The UDC is updated on a continuing basis as we identify continuing opportunities to do so,” he says. “I think both Horizon and the UDC have been working well and, up to this point, have helped guide growth and development.”

Still, things tend to fall through the cracks. Take The Millennium Towne Center apartment complex on Jefferson Highway. It has no way for residents to actually walk to the shops at Towne Center just two-tenths of a mile away.

“That should never have been built without a sidewalk,” says Metro Council member Alison Cascio, a former Planning Commission staff member. “You can’t even take a back pedestrian walkway.”

Bunch explains the Planning Commission approved the development with a 5-foot sidewalk along Jefferson Highway. As to why it’s not there, he can’t say.

“We have brought it to the attention of the Building Official’s Office,” he says.

Processing the plan

Another difficulty with the planning process, some people say, is the role of DPW. Ideally, the agency should work hand-in-glove with the Planning Commission. In reality, it does its thing, which is mainly engineering and infrastructure, and leaves the land-use issues to the Planning Commission.

As a practical matter, this is not bad for developers, who say that approvals and permits that might take two years in other jurisdictions take months here. Newkirk concedes that most projects “get a green light from us.”

It’s a process that begins when plans are submitted to DPW. A team of six or so engineers reviews them for things like traffic, sewerage and drainage. Once they’ve completed their review, they make a series of recommendations that go back to the Planning Commission. Newkirk says it’s a good system of checks and balances. Some people agree.

Photo by Marie Constantin

WHERE THERE’S A WILL: Herb Gomez, the chairman of the Planning Commission, says there has to be a collective desire to enforce changes to the updated Horizon Plan.

“Everything I get has comments from DPW on it,” Planning Commission Chairman Herb Gomez says.

Others point out, however, that DPW doesn’t send representatives to Planning Commission meetings, and that there’s very little collaboration between the departments.

Newkirk does not disagree, nor does he think that’s a bad thing.

“We’re not planners,” he says. “We’re engineers, and our duties are divided for a reason. I think we need to work together and see each others’ point of view, but if something has gone through the Planning Commission then it’s not our place to come in and say it needs connectivity.”

Still, it’s an attitude, say critics, that is reflected in myriad ways and all boils down to bad planning. There are the little things—like a pole sign at Rotolo’s Pizzeria on Government Street, for instance. It’s in a newly created overlay district, which means special zoning regulations are supposed to govern the look and design of buildings in this old commercial district. Under the new rules, only low-to-the-ground monument signs are allowed.

“It’s a little thing,” Cascio says. “But we’re trying to clean up Government Street, and this is the kind of thing that should never have gotten through.”

Newkirk concedes the sign slipped through the cracks. But he says it was a simple mistake caused by the fact that a sign reviewer in the department didn’t realize the restaurant was in an overlay district. Rotolo’s has since agreed to correct the problem.

A bigger problem with DPW, according to critics, is that the department routinely allows road-widening projects without any thought to long-range planning. The oft-heard argument is that the department’s solution to traffic congestion is to widen the streets. Conversely, they say, DPW doesn’t concern itself with traffic-impact issues until after developments are built.

Photo by Olivia Watkins

A SLICE OF TROUBLE: Rotolo’s Pizzeria erected a pole sign in the newly created Government Street overlay district, which allows only low-to-the-ground monument signs.

Take the current widening of Brightside Lane. For years, developers were given the green light to build condominiums and apartment complexes along the two-lane road south of LSU that runs from Nicholson Drive to River Road. Presumably, they paid traffic-impact fees that could have gone to mitigate some of the congestion. Only now, however, is the road being widened—and at taxpayer’s expense as part of the city’s Green Light Plan.

“DPW still goes with widening roads and getting cars from point A to point B as fast as they can without thinking of appropriate growth development in neighborhoods,” a former Planning Commission staff member says.

Newkirk does not take issue with that, either. His department has no planners on staff—until recently there was one, but she resigned—nor does he feel it necessarily needs one. He is comfortable with the division of labor that exists between DPW and the Planning Commission, and he believes it’s the commission’s job—not that of his office—to worry about things like land use and connectivity.

But Newkirk also points out a problem to which others allude—money. Or, rather, the lack of it. Smart-growth plans, like the Horizon Plan, call for building the infrastructure before the developments. But the public has been loathe to pay for infrastructure improvements in the city, as one failed bond issue after another has shown. That’s why Kenilworth Parkway was never extended across Perkins Road to connect with a road that would connect to Bluebonnet, something the plans call for.

“More progressive cities lay out infrastructure first—that’s the definition of smart growth,” Newkirk says. “But you need millions of dollars in a city to make that happen, and with our tax base that’s pretty difficult to do.”

As for why traffic-impact fees haven’t been put to better use, Newkirk suggests they have. But he says they don’t generate enough to cover the really major work, like the project on Brightside.

“It costs $15 million a mile for road improvements, and Brightside is three-to-four miles long,” he says. “So you’re looking at substantial investments. How much is a developer supposed to contribute to infrastructure when the rest of the public uses it?”

Discerning the plan

At the end of the day, though, what many feel is one of the biggest problems with planning is the role that politics plays in development. To what extent is hard to gauge. What is clear, however, is the perception that the process is not completely fair.

“I hear all the time that the fix is in,” Thomas says. “But where’s the proof?”

NOT IN THEIR BACK YARD: Developer Carlos Alvarez appealed to the Metro Council when residents in the adjacent Perkins Village subdivision balked at the addition of a street to connect their neighborhood with the new Lakes at Jamestown.

It’s hard to find. Planning Commissioners are appointed. Metro Council members, who can reverse Planning Commission decisions, are elected and accept campaign contributions from developers. But a review of campaign-finance records from 2007 and 2008 do not reveal a pattern of council members receiving significantly more money from developers than from anyone else.

Where, perhaps, suspicions are aroused, is with the closed-door nature of the decision-making process. Until recently, Bunch’s Zoning Advisory Committee met in private and neither the group’s membership nor meeting minutes were available to the public. No one really knew it existed, save for the members, until a ZAC subcommittee recommended changes to the city’s TND ordinance, which governs how traditional neighborhood developments can be built.

Those people closely following the development of the controversial Rouzan TND near Southdowns were alarmed when they learned of the changes and began questioning Bunch about ZAC, how it had come up with the proposed changes to the ordinance and why it was not part of a more public process. In the end, the Metro Council reversed the Planning Commission changes, and ZAC proceedings are now more public. But the issue remains—namely that there is a perception things are going on behind the scenes or under the table.

“That’s the perception and it dates as far back as the ’50s when we called this Exxon’s town,” Atkinson says. “There’s a long history on why things may or may not happen quite right in Baton Rouge and that, perhaps, helps explain why bond issues fail.”

Even if there’s nothing amiss, however, the planning process in general allows the Metro Council to make the final call. Developers and vocal neighborhood groups take their complaints to the Metro Council when they don’t like what the Planning Commission has done, whether it represents good planning or not.

A case in point is the much-heralded Lakes at Jamestown development. When designed three years ago, plans called for an emergency egress, not a street, between it and the adjacent Perkins Village subdivision to the west. But last summer, developer Carlos Alvarez went before the Planning Commission for approval to upgrade a portion of the development from condos to townhouses, and the Planning Commission—in keeping with smart-growth principles and the goals of the Horizon Plan—told him to add a real street to connect the subdivision to the adjacent neighborhood.

“No one in the neighborhoods nearby wanted to connect and the neighbors were very upset about it, so I had to go to the Metro Council,” says Alvarez, who was successful in his appeal.

The Alvarez story is just one example of something that happens often enough. Gomez, who is friends with Alvarez and has his office in the Lakes at Jamestown, says it’s a constant frustration of serving on the Planning Commission.

“It happens with connectivity issues more than anything else,” he says. “We’ll approve a subdivision and say it has to connect here and here, and the Metro Council will reverse that and say it doesn’t have to.”

Enforcing the plan

Which brings up the issue of what local residents really want and, as it relates to the new master plan, will they support giving it the teeth it needs—changes to the zoning code—to accomplish truly smart-growth policies? Or, to put it another way, if some of the highest-end real estate in the city is in gated communities on the edge of sprawl, as Newkirk points out, how much collective will exists for real change?

No one is quite sure.

“You have to have the will to enforce changes,” Gomez says. “You have to say we’re going to have our neighborhoods connect and we’re going to have a street grid.”

You also have to have money. As a practical matter, the contract with Fregonese does include an implementation item. Funding for a complete overhaul of the UDC is not included in the contract, something that concerns Thomas.

“The consultant has not been given enough money to make sure the UDC is a one-to-one correlation with the new vision plan,” she says. “It’s just not in there.”

But even if the funding were there to overhaul every aspect of the UDC, there would need to be a lot of public input guided by leadership and education from the Planning Commission—something that has been lacking in the past. Atkinson is skeptical it will happen this time around. He was on the Horizon Plan implementation committee and recalls the difficulty they had in setting up neighborhood meetings to get public input on making the necessary changes.

“It wasn’t for lack of trying, but we had to overcome mass apathy,” he says.

Will this time be different?

“I’m sure the new plan will sound good,” Atkinson says. “But at the end of the day, no one’s going to implement it.”

WHO'S WHO?

Planning Commission

The Planning Commission is a nine-member board that is appointed by the Metro Council. Those interested in serving on the commission submit resumés to the council and must receive at least seven of 12 votes to be appointed. Commissioners can serve two consecutive four-year terms, and can only be appointed for a third term if they receive a super majority of council votes.

The role of the commission is to develop zoning and subdivision regulations, review rezoning and subdivision applications and make recommendations to the Metro Council for ordinances, ordinance changes and land-use requirements. Its members include a representative from the Metro Council as well as an appointee of the mayor. Of the nine members currently on the commission, only Kathleen Callaghan has a degree in planning.

Tara Wicker

Herb Gomez [chairman], Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors executive

Kathleen Callaghan [vice chair], landscape architect and planner; attorney

Tara Wicker [Metro Council representative], Metro Council member; public administrator

Roxson Welch [mayor’s appointee], educator; former Metro Council member

Ervie Ellender, retired from industrial construction industry; real estate property manager

Audrey Nabors Jackson, community activist; retired school teacher

Laurie Marien, attorney

Frank Muscarello, businessman

W.T. Winfield, engineer, former Metro Council member

The Zoning Advisory Committee

The Zoning Advisory Committee was created by Planning Director Troy Bunch and serves at his pleasure. It meets on an as-needed basis to advise the director on various issues. Until recently its membership and meeting minutes were not public. Members include:

Elizabeth "Boo" Thomas

Larry Bankston, attorney

Dana Nunez Brown, landscape architect

Mike Bruce, engineer

Rex Cabaniss, architect

Larry Dietz, commercial real estate broker

Thomas Dubos, Federation of Civic Associations

Ron Ferris, engineer

Herb Gomez, Planning Commission

George Kurz, commercial real estate broker

Charles Landry, attorney

Jimmy Nunnally, developer

John Radford, Federation Civic Association

Trula Remson, architect

Mitch Richardson, real estate consultant

Samuel Sanders, Mid City Redevelopment Authority

Hardy Swyers, Baton Rouge Growth Coalition

Elizabeth “Boo” Thomas, Center for Planning Excellence

Raywood Trahan, Federation of Civic Associations

Tara Wicker, Metro Council

Gary Williams, Realtor

Wayne Woody, Federation of Civic Associations

HOW PLANS ARE APPROVED

Any development larger than 30,000 square feet must be approved by the Planning Commission staff. Any development larger than 50,000 square feet must also be approved by the Planning Commission. In sum, the process is supposed to work like this:

• A site plan is submitted with an application fee to the Planning Commission, which copies the plan and distributes it to the Department of Public Works and other interested parties.

• Planning Commission staff members review the plan from a land-use perspective. At DPW, a team of engineers simultaneously reviews it for traffic, sewerage, drainage and other infrastructure issues.

• DPW typically approves plans, with comments that are forwarded to the Planning Commission staff, who are supposed to take into account DPW comments when formulating their recommendation.

• The Planning Commission staff makes their recommendation on the project and forwards it to the commission.

• Commissioners take up the project at their monthly meeting and vote to approve or reject.

• Any plan that involves a zoning change, zoning waiver or amendment to the Horizon Plan—even if approved by the Planning Commission—automatically goes before the Metro Council for a final vote.

• A plan that is rejected by the Planning Commission can be appealed to the Metro Council, but it must be brought up by the affirmative action of a Metro Council member, not directly by the appellant.