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The Downtown Development District Commission approved a strategic plan yesterday setting the goals of the organization for the next five years—but it’s actually just one of several Baton Rouge entities working on blueprints to help guide development and growth in the region.
East Baton Rouge Parish
The East Baton Rouge Parish Planning Department is working on a 5-year update to the city-parish’s comprehensive master plan, FuturEBR. FuturEBR covers the city of Baton Rouge and the unincorporated areas of the parish, and defines land use and policies intended to guide and address both current and future needs of the parish.
Community meetings soliciting input wrapped up last week; revisions are expected to go before the Planning Commission and Metro Council for approval by the end of the year.
BREC
East Baton Rouge’s parks and recreation system retained a Massachusetts-based firm earlier this year to help craft its next master plan to guide the organization through the next decade. BREC has been soliciting community feedback on the plan, which is expected to take a full year to draft.
Pennington Biomedical Research Center
The Pennington Biomedical Research Center’s new five-year strategic plan, with an end-of-the-year targeted completion date, is expected to include a game plan for ramping up philanthropic fundraising for the organization and emphasize commercialization.
Florida Boulevard
Earlier this year, parish officials also launched earlier a master planning effort to boost economic development along the Florida Boulevard corridor. The goal for the Florida Boulevard master plan is job creation by enhancing private sector projects while catalyzing development in areas where it might not otherwise be economically feasible.
In January, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome said the plan would capitalize on key investments along the Florida Corridor, like the new Amazon Fulfillment Center, as well as provide a unifying vision for north and south East Baton Rouge Parish.
LSU
LSU is drafting a new strategic plan for its flagship campus, though its completion and execution timeline is unknown. Mark Bieger, who came to LSU to serve as its vice president for strategy and to create the proposal, left the school in August after nearly two years in the position.
Jason Droddy, LSU vice president for public policy, told Louisiana Illuminator last month that Bieger submitted a draft of the plan before his departure, but did not indicate when it might be finalized.
“I don’t want to characterize it as finished or near finished or halfway done,” Droddy told Louisiana Illuminator. “I don’t want to characterize it because it really is up to the president about where we stand.”
