At the height of the controversy last month over a barge cleaning facility proposed for a site along the river near LSU and a heavily populated subdivision, Metro Councilman John Delgado announced he would like to rezone the entire riverfront in Baton Rouge from the Iberville Parish line to beyond downtown to make it more attractive to development.
That idea didn’t sit well with some city leaders, including Mayor Kip Holden. Riverfront property owners aren’t happy about it either.
“We don’t think it’s a good idea,” says Andy McKinney, whose family owns nearly a mile of industrially zoned property along the riverfront between the Water Campus site and LSU and operates a barge company there. “We wouldn’t go for something like that. We’d oppose it.”
The McKinney property, home to McKinney Fleet and Barge Service, has been zoned M2, or heavy industrial, for as long as anyone can remember, and the family has operated its company there for decades. He says industrial activity along the riverfront is vital to the area’s economy.
“The port of Baton Rouge depends on this property staying industrial to keep it viable,” he says. “They need to have a place to store barges and provide jobs for the city of Baton Rouge.”
Delgado says his previous comments have been misinterpreted and what he hopes to do is create a framework for commercial development along the entire riverfront—not just downtown. Ideally, he would like to create an overlay district with the same special zoning designation used downtown—C5—which allows for a variety of commercial uses.
“It would allow restaurants, bars, hotels and residential,” Delgado says. “All the things we see downtown would be allowed but not industrial use.”
Property owners like McKinney, whose land is zoned industrial, would be grandfathered in under Delgado’s plan. Property owners farther south down the river, whose property is zoned rural, would be “upzoned” or included in the new overlay district.
“This isn’t going to happen overnight,” says Delgado. “But the key is to create a framework to attract development.”
Delgado says he is set to meet Wednesday with Planning Director Frank Duke to discuss zoning in the area and his ideas.
—Stephanie Riegel
