Eight years before GIS-Pro did a walkability analysis for the City-Parish Planning Commission, former Business Report writer Hal Cohen did his own. In December 2005, Cohen—now a preparedness program manager for global risk management firm Witt | O’Brien’s—chronicled a trip few before or since have made: from the Garden District to the Mall of Louisiana. On foot. The journey was not without its perils: braving a three-foot sidewalk on the bridge over Kansas City Southern’s rails as trucks whizzed by, darting through traffic at College Drive and Corporate Boulevard, surviving a near-clipping by a Toyota Corolla turning into the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and discovering assorted “urban excretia”: a shoe, a cast-iron bathtub, a 24-pack of Schlitz Malt Liquor. Insight at the end of his journey: The entrance to the mall “is the most unwelcoming place I have yet encountered. You have to drive in to gain pedestrian privileges.” Both Cohen and GIS-Pro came to the same conclusion: Baton Rouge decidedly rates as “auto-dependent.”
“‘Tis the season for gift-buying, so on a recent cold, clear morning, I set off for the Mall of Louisiana from my Garden District hours. But I did not take the car. I walked. Why? I didn’t really have a point to prove. I know no one walks to the mall. Even people without cars take the bus. And I don’t need to hike across town to know Baton Rouge is not a walking city. It was a matter of principle, I guess. Humans have feet, so I figured we ought to be able to use them to travel the landscape we’ve created. Not so long ago, our world was experienced exclusively on foot (or hoof). I wanted to know what that would be like. Why walk to the mall? Just because.”
— From the Dec. 20, 2005, issue of Business Report
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+ ALSO FROM THAT ISSUE
BATON ROUGE MEDICAL SCHOOL, PART I: For the past several years a shadowy groun called the Louisiana University of Medical Sciences has pushed an ambitious solution to the complaint that Louisiana’s rural communities are short on doctors: Establish a new medical school, perhaps in Baton Rouge. It would target rural Louisiana students, with the expectation that they return to their home parishes after graduation to practice family medicine.
HOSPITAL SHOPPING: Woman’s Hospital will roll out seven specialty stores that will aim to redefine retail in the Baton Rouge health care market. “We’re not going to try to be Neiman-Marcus, and we’re not going to try to be Walmart,” says Lisa Garland, Woman’s new retail director. “We’re going to cater to our clients—to their niche and what they’re looking for.” Within that niche will be maternity and baby items, customized lotions, scarves, wigs and prostheses for cancer patients, and spa and fitness products for the Woman’s Center for Wellness.
