According to many real estate pros, the old Ford farm, 119 acres along Perkins Road between Southdowns and Pollard Estates in the heart of south Baton Rouge, was the most attractive plot of open land left in Baton Rouge. Developer Tommy Spinosa paid $15 million for it in 2005.
Spinosa told Business Report in 2007 that, as far as he knew, every other serious bidder was planning a conventional subdivision. Instead, he said he preferred to build a village: about 800 residential units of various sizes and prices along with retail, office, restaurants, a library, a church, and lots of green space. Dubbed Rouzan, it was to be the parish’s first official traditional neighborhood development, or TND.
In some ways, TNDs are a reaction against the single-use suburban development model that many smart-growth advocates believe is unsustainable. TNDs attempt to create organic neighborhoods that include shopping, dining and work in the same area. Richard Carmouche’s Willow Grove follows the same principles, although it was approved before the TND zoning existed in East Baton Rouge Parish.
From day one, some of the development’s future neighbors, most notably several members of the Southside Civic Association, have crusaded against Rouzan. While often derided as NIMBYs (for “not in my backyard”) who don’t want any kind of development at the old farm site, Rouzan opponents say their concerns about how the high-density development would impact the area’s already-overburdened infrastructure have never been addressed.
As a 2010 Business Report cover story pointed out, Rouzan is a case study in the flaws of East Baton Rouge’s highly political planning and approval process. And since that process is so widely mistrusted, both opponents and proponents of Rouzan easily can find justifications for their views.
Although Rouzan eventually was approved in 2007, smart-growth advocates still fume over the way the controversy played out, and observers attribute the difficulty the project has had since then to the delays caused by neighborhood opposition.
“The Ford property was a classic place for a TND to go, and whether Tommy Spinosa was the right person to develop it was almost irrelevant,” David Cronrath, an architect and former dean of the LSU College of Art & Design, told Business Report in 2010. “Now it’s been enough of a headache that you’ve lost a lot of the inertia.”
But Rouzan could just as easily be viewed as a case of how developers appear to get special treatment. Why, opponents want to know, do city agencies continue to give them the runaround when they seek basic information on the project? Why has the TND been approved piecemeal in subphases that are notably different from those in the original plan, which they say violates the spirit of the city’s carefully crafted TND ordinance?
In a sluggish real estate market, progress perhaps has been slower than developers might have hoped. But the work continues: Changes to the site plan were approved by the Metro Council Zoning Committee this past April, clearing the way for a groundbreaking on a six-acre phase that will include 34 single-family homes.
While the Southside Civic Association, which wanted to defer the changes, was disappointed with the council’s ruling, the group says it hopes to work with Spinosa as the development progresses. But Spinosa says opponents are looking for “another stalling tactic to try to kill Rouzan,” and vows to “continue fighting the fight.”
