Once again, the Rouzan Traditional Neighborhood Development in Southdowns will come before the Planning Commission when it meets tonight. And once again, residents of the surrounding neighborhood also will come before the commission with concerns about the TND. It’s the latest chapter in a years-long saga over the development.
Up for approval tonight is the final development plan of Rouzan’s commercial phase—a 71,000-square-foot, three-building mixed-use complex called the Village Center. Members of the Southside Civic Association are not planning to oppose the final development plan, per se. But they will ask the commission to require developer Tommy Spinosa to take a couple of measures they hope will lessen the impact of traffic congestions on their neighborhood.
Specifically, the SSCA will ask the commission to require that construction crews on the project use Perkins Road for access to the development, rather than two-lane Glasgow Avenue, which also borders the Rouzan development. The members also are requesting a revised traffic impact study. The most recent study was completed in 2011. Since then the scope of the Village Square—which will be home to the market’s first Alamo Drafthouse movie theater—has changed significantly.
“We are hoping that with their approval, the Planning Commission also makes those stipulations,” says Carol Ann Brown, a member of the Southside Civic Association. “We want to know how having an 850-seat movie theater is going to affect the traffic. That wasn’t in the plans before.”
The SSCA also is asking the Planning Commission for a single document showing the cumulative changes that have been approved for Rouzan over the past five years. Brown says so many changes have been made to the TND’s various phases over the past five years that it’s hard to keep track of whether Rouzan is being developed according to the regulations of the city-parish’s TND ordinance.
The final development plan for Rouzan’s Village Center was supposed to come before the Planning Commission last month, but the matter was deferred. In their review of the final development plan earlier this month, Planning Commission staff members recommended approval.
The Planning Commission meets at 5 p.m. in the Metro Council chambers at 222 St. Louis St. See the full agenda, as well as the final development plan application for Rouzan and the Planning Commission staff report on it.
—Stephanie Riegel
