Mayor Kip Holden is calling on business and civic leaders to “come to the table” and figure out how best to get on with redeveloping Baton Rouge’s blighted neighborhoods, now that Walter Monsour has announced he will resign as president and CEO of the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority.
Though the RDA will continue to function under the leadership of an interim CEO, who has yet to be named, the agency is due to run out of money by the end of 2015—and Holden has said the city-parish cannot afford to help fund it. The RDA’s board has voted to formally request $3 million from the city-parish budget. The mayor tells Daily Report his opinion on that issue remains unchanged, even with Monsour now out of the picture.
“Funding the RDA is non-negotiable,” Holden says. “We have some major problems in our budget. I’m not going to tell Walter one thing then turn around and give someone else money.”
Moving forward, Holden says he might be amenable to working with a “hybrid RDA,” but that it would have to partner closely with the city-parish Office of Community Development and other agencies involved in redevelopment, such as the Mortgage Finance Authority, the Gulf Coast Housing Authority and, even, the non-profit Habitat for Humanity.
“It is going to take people who served on the RDA board, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, our office and other agencies getting together and coming to the table,” Holden says.
The mayor says he’d also like to get former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin somehow involved in helping the city reorganize its RDA and deal with its blight issues.
“I haven’t spoken to her about this yet,” he says. “But she has always told me if I need her help just to pick up the phone and call.”
As to what will happen to Ardendale—a planned mixed-use development project in Mid City that has been spearheaded by the RDA and is just getting under way—Holden says it is too soon to tell.
“We are going to have to take a look at that because right now there are a lot of unknowns,” he says. “We are going to have to go back to square one in a lot of areas.”
In his resignation letter submitted to agency officials on Monday, Monsour says he is leaving the RDA—which he helped create and has headed since its inception—to help keep the agency afloat. Monsour was reportedly earning $365,000 in salary and benefits annually at the RDA, and in recent weeks the mayor has been sharply critical of Monsour’s compensation package, especially in light of the RDA’s precarious financial situation. —Stephanie Riegel
