With the Labor Day holiday approaching—and the congested roadways it’s sure to bring, as gas prices are the lowest they’ve been in a decade during the weekend—it was fitting that Baton Rouge’s notoriously bad traffic was the major topic of discussion at community forums and events this week.
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development held three public input meetings this week to get public feedback on a proposal to widen Interstate 10 from the Mississippi River Bridge to the I-10/I-12 split.
The Baton Rouge Area Chamber, meanwhile, invited Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy and the director of the program’s Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative, to speak about Baton Rouge’s traffic problems for its Signature Speaker Series.
An increased focus on transportation and infrastructure is not the answer to solving Baton Rouge’s notorious traffic problems, Puentes told the more than 100 business and community leaders who attended the event. Puentes explained that the issue must be addressed on a much broader scale, taking into account disruptive economic conditions and demographic shifts due to globalization, as well as the political and financial climate at both a state and local level, among many other complex factors.
U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, who offered opening remarks at the BRAC event, also sat down with Daily Report this week at an editorial roundtable to talk transportation, among other issues. Graves urged Baton Rouge area officials to come to consensus on traffic solutions and prioritize project funding.
And while the freshman Republican congressman from Baton Rouge applauded the state DOTD for its efforts to address transportation in Baton Rouge, he said “the reality is this is a planning effort that should have started 40 years ago.”
CRISIS, or the Capital Region Industry for Sustainable Infrastructure Solutions, issued its fall election platform this week, which includes five priorities for addressing regional transportation problems. The platform urges candidates to work together to create a regional mobility plan, support projects that give people alternative routes when traversing Baton Rouge, push to fix the I-10 congestion near the Mississippi River bridge, deliver an additional major alternative route through the region and find funding for the regional mobility plan.
Aside from all the talk about traffic, BRAC also issued a report this week on the Capital Region’s efforts to meet its skilled workforce demand and laid out recommendations to continue and strengthen efforts.
Here’s a rundown of some of the other top stories making headlines in Daily Report this week:
- Although a federal bankruptcy trustee hasn’t yet decided how best to resolve Thinkstream’s financial troubles, his latest motion indicates the “most likely scenario” will be selling the Baton Rouge-based company—or finding new investors to keep it going.
- New details on several major, previously announced projects—including Our Lady of the Lake’s Children’s Hospital; the Center for Breast and GYN Cancer planned at the Woman’s Hospital campus in partnership with Mary Bird Perkins-OLOL Cancer Center; and the $22 million, 33,000-square-foot building to be constructed on the City Dock for The Water Institute of the Gulf’s headquarters—were revealed in permit filings with the city-parish Planning Commission.
- Tommy Spinosa is moving forward with plans for the fifth phase of Rouzan, his traditional neighborhood development in Southdowns.
- Zaxby’s, the Athens, Georgia-based restaurant chain known for chicken fingers and wings, is planning to develop its first location in Baton Rouge—and third in the Capital Region—at the corner of Airline Highway and Antioch Road in the Long Farm development.
- Five groups of developers have submitted proposals to Catholic High School to redevelop the Westmoreland Village Shopping Center on Government Street in Mid City, which the school acquired in late 2010.
- Commercial and residential real estate giant NAI/Latter & Blum will be moving its Baton Rouge headquarters to Dantin Bruce Development’s new Offices at City Farm office park on Jefferson Highway near Towne Center.
- A conference created by Baton Rouge businessman John Schneider to highlight technology and entrepreneurship in Louisiana that was to be modeled after Austin’s popular festival South by Southwest, or SXSW, has been canceled.
- Longtime Mexican staple Ninfa’s Mexican Restaurant is being rebranded as Tío Javi’s Fresh-Mex Bar & Grill at the end of the month as the restaurant works to establish its own brand and builds upon the legacy of the late founder T.J. Moran.
—Steve Sanoski
