The Downtown Development District will celebrate the groundbreaking Wednesday at City Hall Plaza of the third component of the downtown Central Green, a unified system of green spaces near the City Hall complex, Old State Capitol, North Boulevard Town Square and the Mississippi River levee.
The Central Green was a recommendation of Plan Baton Rouge II, the master plan for downtown, and has been in the works for several years. Its $4.9 million price tag is paid for with funds generated by state sales tax rebates.
The latest phase of construction on the Central Green is expected to take most of the year to complete and will accomplish several things that will be readily apparent to downtown patrons, according to Downtown Development District Executive Director Davis Rhorer.
Among them: It will connect North Boulevard Town Square to Repentance Park, allow the Galvez Stage to be used from both the north and south sides, add lighting to The Crest sculpture, and cover the B-1 parking area of City Hall with a new dance floor and green space.
“This really enables us to pull all of our civic and cultural attractions together via the green,” Rhorer says. “It will give us a lot more room—three times more green space than we currently have.”
The project will also improve ADA accessibility and pedestrian circulation in the area, and make critical upgrades to the City Hall parking garage waterproofing and fire sprinklers. The two-level basement garage runs underneath portions of the Central Green.
“The major portion of this project is really to fix the waterproofing issues with a 40-year-old parking deck,” Rhorer says. “That garage hasn’t been upgraded since it was built in the 1970s.”
The groundbreaking will be held at 11 a.m. at City Hall Plaza, 222 St. Louis St., on the west side of the building.
—Stephanie Riegel
