Livingston Parish was once a sleepy, mostly rural parish that a little over 70,000 people called home, and everyone had to go into Baton Rouge for health care, restaurants or retail.
Today, the parish is bustling with a growing wave of its own amenities: Our Lady of the Lake’s ER marked its 10-year anniversary this year, and both it and North Oaks Health System have medical complexes there.
There is a growing retail corridor along Juban Road at Interstate 12—anchored by developer Stephen Keller’s Juban Crossing—where construction is underway on a roundabout to ease congestion at U.S. 190. And the selection of restaurants and entertainment now includes some Baton Rouge favorites.
The growth in Livingston Parish is accelerating year by year, with a population that has more than doubled since those earlier days. Its pace—up 4.3% since 2020—now rivals that of Ascension Parish.
And the controversy over development is building even faster.
In the past 12 months, the parish has found itself in federal court twice over its attempts to slow a rising tide: First when it enacted a moratorium to prevent global manufacturer Air Products from testing in Lake Maurepas related to carbon storage for a planned $4.5 billion hydrogen manufacturing complex; and again when it went up against a planned 2,000-lot development called Deer Run. A judge ruled against it in the first case; it settled in the second one.
At the end of August, the Livingston Parish Council unanimously approved and parish President Layton Ricks signed a 160-day moratorium on new residential developments to allow the council time to work on a zoning strategy.
The signs of growth are everywhere—in school enrollment, commercial business, and residential and single-family homes. The large plywood signs painted white with black lettering announcing a new development planned for a site are ubiquitous.
As evidenced by the contentious council meetings where bitter disagreements over zoning tend to be commonplace, the parish is struggling to manage the growth being driven to a large extent by developers from Baton Rouge and other communities. Heightened concerns about worsening traffic, elevated flood risk and overcrowded schools have yet to be addressed in a substantive way.
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