Metro Councilman Lamont Cole tells Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel that his recently defeated ordinance, which would have allowed bars and restaurants to stay open until 4 a.m., was borne out of years of frustration.
Cole says he didn’t propose the ordinance to help bar owners, it just bothers him that clubs in East Baton Rouge Parish are forced to close their doors to the partying public at 2 a.m., when as a younger man he frequented clubs on the west side that stayed open all night, Riegel writes in her latest column.
“But if downtown bar owners were not the target the ordinance was intended to help, it was downtown property owners who killed it,” she writes.
Citing noise complaints, property owners fought the ordinance. The problems don’t come from what happens inside the bars, Riegel says, but from what happens after patrons leave, when they set about to cruising around downtown, windows down and stereos blaring.
“The extent to which this is a problem depends on who you ask. Some say it’s terrible. Others say it is only an occasional nuisance,” she writes. “Some believe it is actually driving residents from downtown.”
To address the problem, Metro Councilman Buddy Amoroso and other downtown business owners, are now talking up the idea of creating a designated entertainment district for downtown, much like Memphis, Austin and Nashville have done.
Riegel writes that the community needs to have an honest conversation about what is going on late at night downtown, a neighborhood that has been successfully revitalized over the past 20 years.
“The growing pains downtown is experiencing in its evolution to becoming a live-work-play neighborhood are not insurmountable,” she writes. “But they shouldn’t be downplayed out of fear—Baton Rouge is always afraid of something—that talking about it will keep people away.”
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