‘Business Report’: Gardere faces uncertain future as B.R. grows around it

Growth is not just coming to the southeast corner of East Baton Rouge Parish; it is here. Last fall, the $368 million L’Auberge Casino & Hotel opened on the banks of the Mississippi River just west of Gardere Lane, turning the sleepy strip of River Road into a tropically landscaped miniresort. Less than a mile away, the Emerge Center for Communication, Behavior and Development broke ground in January on what will be a state-of-the-art facility in Innovation Park, LSU’s newly renamed south campus on GSRI Avenue. This spring, developer Mike Wampold will begin construction on the first phase of Harveston, a mixed-use development that will bring housing, retail, offices and nature trails to 1,470 acres off Bluebonnet Boulevard and Nicholson Drive. Those are just three of the many examples of development afoot in the last large, undeveloped chunk of the parish. The area roughly bordered by Staring Lane and the Iberville Parish line, Burbank Drive and River Road is being transformed from raw, wooded land into subdivisions, TNDs, research parks and entertainment destinations. And smack in the center of it all sits Gardere, a low-income neighborhood of roughly 3.5 square miles and 10,000 residents that is synonymous with crime and urban decay. For many in white, prosperous Baton Rouge, Gardere is as close to the ghetto as they get. They speed past it on their way to BREC’s soccer fields or venture just one block into it, when their kids play ball at Cypress Mounds. Read the complete cover story by Stephanie Riegel in the new issue of Business Report here.