Same city, different future

In 2004, a delegation of Baton Rouge business, civic and government leaders boarded a plane for Austin and came home unsettled. It was a Texas-sized can of reality.

The two cities had once been near mirror images—similar in size, both state capitals anchored by their flagship universities. One, fueled by economic diversity, a "keep it weird" ethos and the mindset of the future being "in the mind of some 25-year-old," became one of America's fastest-growing cities and a magnet for young, educated professionals, creatives and researchers.

The other, well, is Baton Rouge, which prefers the familiar, disdains risk and is losing the very demographic it craves.

Mayor Bobby Simpson responded by declaring that Austin and Baton Rouge really weren't that different.

This, in part, explains why Simpson was a one-term mayor.

Another byproduct was a group of then-young professionals banding together to form Austin 6, an advocacy group that pushed hard for change—especially on topics of downtown vibrancy, Baton Rouge's quality of life and giving young people a seat at the decision-making table. A co-founder of that group was Mike Polito, now the head of the BREC Commission.

Few circles are that complete.

Why it matters: Every fight Baton Rouge has about a park, a conservancy or a master plan is really the same argument the Austin trip first forced into the open: what kind of city does Baton Rouge want to be—and who gets to answer that?

The familiar divide: On one side are those who believe Baton Rouge is fundamentally fine—that it needs investment and love, not reinvention. And change should come from within, not inspired by the latest city du jour.

On the other are those watching the moving vans head to Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Greenville. To them, "fine" isn't a strategy.

Both camps have been arguing about this for two decades. City-Brooks has given it a new address.

Two voices, one argument: The debate found its most recent expression in a pair of guest columns published this month in The Advocate. Len Apcar, a Baton Rouge resident and journalism professor at LSU, acknowledged the value of parks but defaulted to a familiar position. "A redesigned park will not erase Baton Rouge's traffic, blight and spotty nightlife," he wrote. "Parks enrich a city, but they cannot alone make a 'quality of place' where younger people want to stay."

Not every change or new idea is a good one. But the knee-jerk response here is always "why?" or “let’s not.” Not heard: "why not?” or “let’s do it.”

Welcome to Baton Rouge.

Maggie Conarro, a young professional and program director of Serve Louisiana, pushed back. Great parks are civic infrastructure, she argued. Third spaces—free, accessible places where people gather without an agenda—are essential to a city fighting an epidemic of loneliness. You don't wait for everything else to be fixed before you build the things that make a city worth staying in.

Both are right about something. Neither is talking to the other.

Voting with moving vans: While groups like Friends of City Park make their case on social media and at late-afternoon public meetings, young professionals are making their voices heard with their feet.

• For more than a decade, Baton Rouge has been tracking out-migration, and those leaving in the largest numbers since 2013 are 25- to 44-year-olds.
• Perhaps most sobering, the 2019 CityStats survey by BRAF found that only 8% of EBR parents wanted their children to remain in the parish as adults.

The trust problem: The opposition to the conservancy model isn't purely a defense against change. It's also a product of a community that has watched enough civic projects promise broad benefit and deliver narrow results. That history doesn't make the conservancy argument wrong. But it makes it harder to win on the merits alone.

The better question: How much does Baton Rouge care that people are leaving, the economy isn't diversifying and its quality of life for the next generation is lacking? Perhaps the city is content to mask those problems with the comfort blankets of the petrochemical industry and large public-sector employment.

Our love for independent taxing authorities, dedicated taxes and the rise of incorporated cities suggests something other than a "we first" perspective.

All is OK as long as I am OK.

The bottom line: Baton Rouge has been having the Austin conversation for 22 years. The answer isn't copying someone else's city. It's deciding what kind of place Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish are uniquely positioned to become. A reimagination of City-Brooks and the lakes isn't the destination, but it might determine if the city wants to take that first step.