While the Planning Commission staff is working its way through the laborious process of updating the city-parish zoning code to bring it more in line with Baton Rouge’s master plan for land use and development, it’s also getting ready to start updating the plan itself.
The plan, known as FuturEBR, was completed in 2010 and adopted in 2011. It is supposed to be updated every five years, which would have been in 2016. Because of last August’s flood, however, the Planning Commission decided to put off the process until this year.
At a special meeting of the Planning Commission tonight, Planning Director Frank Duke will brief commissioners on both updates. He says potential changes to FuturEBR should not affect the changes currently being made to the zoning code.
When FuturEBR was in the planning stages, the public was heavily involved, and community meetings and design charrettes were held all over the parish. The process was very detailed and took more than a year to complete.
Updating the plan will be far less complex, Duke says, though there will be opportunities for public participation beginning in March. Most of the work, however, will involve making technical changes to the plan.
“We’ve identified some errors in the document, some things that just don’t work,” Duke says. “Much of it has to do with errors we have found in the land use map, areas where zoning on the ground is inconsistent with what FuturEBR calls for in the land use maps.”
Part of the update to FuturEBR will also involve updating the city’s Major Streets Plan, which hasn’t been overhauled in more than 40 years. The Major Streets Plan is the complete map of roads and streets in the parish and helps guide improvement projects.
Tonight’s meeting of the Planning Commission is a special meeting. The commission will get briefed on proposed changes, but will not vote on them.
—Stephanie Riegel
