Charting a new course: Golfers who had urged BREC to keep the course open at Howell Community Park lost their fight on Wednesday evening when the BREC Commission voted unanimously to repurpose the golf course into a community park. BREC says surveys of residents have found they want amenities such as a fishing lake with piers, a new recreation center, picnic area, walking paths, multi-purpose field, outdoor basketball court and adventure playground added to the park. BREC has $2 million in its budget to repurpose the park. BREC anticipates presenting a master plan for the project to the commission at its meeting next month. Work on the repurposing is expected to start next summer.
Counting collections: At roughly $15.8 million, sales tax collections in East Baton Rouge Parish were up 1.6% during September, compared to collections of $15.5 million in September last year. The figures, released Wednesday by the city-parish Finance Department, show collections inside the city limits of Baton Rouge were up by nearly 4%, at $8.8 million, while collections outside the city limits were down 1.1%, at $7 million. See the complete sales tax collection report.
In full bloom: The undergraduate and graduate programs at the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture have once again been ranked among the best in the nation by DesignIntelligence magazine, the university has announced. In the magazine’s latest annual listing of “America’s Best Architecture & Design Schools” LSU’s undergraduate program is ranked No. 1 in the nation and the graduate program is No. 3. It marks the sixth time since 2007 that the magazine has ranked LSU’s undergraduate program No. 1 nationally. LSU has more details.
