Sunday special: Change is in the air
Good Sunday morning.
Several stories RedEye published this week connect in ways that are worth seeing together. They describe a city with multiple consequential decisions arriving at the same moment—on public space, civic identity and what kind of place Baton Rouge intends to become. Some efforts are already underway. Others are master plans about to go public. All carry the same underlying question: Will Baton Rouge seize the opening, or let it pass?
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1. Baton Rouge's next big choices: Three major planning efforts—Plan Baton Rouge III, BREC's City-Brooks master plan and the University Lakes restoration—are arriving simultaneously. The decisions they make will shape how Baton Rouge competes for talent, investment and residents in the next generation. Read more →
2. The three miles that matter: Between the Mississippi riverfront and LSU lie four of Baton Rouge's most significant public assets. For the first time, the same planning firm is working on two of them at once—and the rest are already in motion. The corridor exists. The question is whether the city will finally connect it. Read more →
3. A gallery worthy of the frame: Baton Rouge Gallery wants to move from a cramped former poolhouse to a larger building designed by the architects behind some of America's top cultural institutions. A once-in-a-generation planning window has cracked open. Read more →
4. Lake woes be gone: This spring, the edges of Baton Rouge's University Lakes will bloom with native plantings—iris, goldenrod, switchgrass—as an $80 million restoration reshapes shorelines, deepens the water and begins to return one of the city's defining public spaces to something worth showing off. Read more →
5. Overpass District on track: A deal with Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway clears the path for a $2.8 million pedestrian and cycling corridor connecting nearby neighborhoods to one of Baton Rouge's busiest dining districts—with lighting, murals and green space replacing what is now a stretch people avoid on foot. Read more →
6. Burden Center welcomes you: Burden Museum and Gardens is finishing a new entrance building—designed by EskewDumezRipple and Carbo Landscape Architecture—set to open in May. It's a small project with a big message: one of the South's loveliest public landscapes aims to grow its audience. Read more →
Our bad: A story aggregation in the Thursday edition incorrectly listed state Rep. Dixon McMakin as running for a congressional seat. He is not. Apologies.