A big piece of land near the RiverPlex MegaPark is about to take on a new role. Last week, the Ascension Parish Council voted unanimously to rezone roughly 150 acres of the old Woodstock Plantation from conservation to heavy industrial.
The parcel sits west of La. 405 and south of Noel Road, in the Modeste area.
According to Chad Stevens of MR Engineering and Surveying, the site will be used as a laydown yard to support a facility nearby.
“This property is in the West Bank industrial overlay zone that was created by this council, and the proposed rezoning to heavy industrial is to facilitate support services for the industrial development that is in this area,” Stevens said. “The proposed use is a laydown area that is going to support unloading from another facility that is about two miles from this location.”
The parish established the overlay zone in 2015, according to parish documents, to encourage orderly industrial growth along the west bank of the Mississippi River, west of Donaldsonville.
The rezoning got to the council without a thumbs-up from the zoning commission. In April, commissioners shot down a motion to recommend approval by a 3-2 vote. Erik Jones and Wade Schexnaydre were in favor; Nicholas Miller, Max Nassar and Michele Unitas voted no. Mark Villa sat it out.
Not everyone was on board at Thursday’s meeting. Donaldsonville resident Harry Joseph stood up to speak against the change.
“I just feel that Modesto has already been zoned industrial. Now you want to go heavy industrial, so let me know that y’all want to put something else there, and open these roads up,” Joseph said. “We’re going to get to the point where we have nowhere to live. Donaldsonville is not a big place where we can go from one spot to another spot. It’s not like that. And I don’t know why we are trying to destroy the areas that we have in our community, and I just hope and pray that y’all decide and make the right decision on what y’all are doing on this side of the river, because people still live here.”
Ashley Gaignard, who founded and runs the Ascension Parish-based group Rural Roots Louisiana, pointed out that the vote landed just a day after the St. James Parish Council held a hearing on rezoning historic, long-farmed land in that parish for industrial use. In a statement, she warned the trend could turn once-protected communities into pollution-burdened “sacrifice zones”—sacrificing local food, property values, public health and historic resources while corporations profit from public incentives.
