The newly refashioned East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority has a lot going on.
Within the coming weeks, the agency will have hired three new staffers, received its first $250,000 round of funding from the city-parish, relocated to another downtown space and kicked off an ambitious new transit-oriented redevelopment project along Plank Road.
The heightened activity—under the agency’s new leader Chris Tyson—comes on the heels of a major reorganization of city-parish redevelopment, housing and community development activities that gave the RDA more responsibility. The agency is hiring three staffers, two of whom will deal with grant administration and coordination, and an administrative assistant, at a cost of $165,000 per year, some of which will be funneled through the city-parish Office of Community Development.
Aside from millions in federal funds under RDA’s oversight, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome has also allocated $500,000 of local money to the organization, aimed at fighting blight and continuing the RDA’s land-banking efforts. The RDA is also involved in major projects like the Electric Depot, Ardendale and the passenger rail.
“I feel like the future is bright,” RDA Board Chairman John Noland said at today’s board meeting. “It’s certainly bright in comparison to our recent past. We have a mayor who appreciates the need for the work of a vibrant RDA; her chief administrative officer is highly supportive of the RDA’s work. … We have more friends than we used to have.”
The Plank Road project is in its infancy, and is dependent on the Capital Area Transit System’s effort to establish the state’s first bus rapid transit line on the corridor, Tyson says. But if it moves forward, he envisions an area revitalized with new housing options and commercial development built with an eye toward mobility—in what Tyson sees as one of the parish’s most blighted and disinvested areas.
“Many cities have done this: have focused on mobility, have focused on transit-oriented development,” Tyson says. “We’re not groundbreaking in that regard.”
The agency is set to move out of its current offices at the Louisiana Companies building on North Boulevard by the beginning of March. The RDA will be stationed in a building on Florida Street across from the Lofts @6C, a major apartment project downtown. The 2,700-square-foot suite is on the first floor.
