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Nightlife in downtown Baton Rouge, barely a murmur a few years ago, has become quite the scene.

Bars such as M Bar, Boudreaux & Thibodeaux’s and 600 Main are drawing ever-larger crowds Friday and Saturday nights. For decades downtown was a dining wasteland after sunset, but now suburbanites descend on downtown for dinner at Tsunami, Capital City Grill, D’Agostino’s, Little Village, Schlittz & Giggles and Kingfish Restaurant in the Hilton Capitol Center, among others.

Steady crowds flock downtown for performances at the Shaw Center and the River Center, mingling with some of the hundreds of hotel guests staying at the Hilton Capitol Center and Sheraton.

Between downtown, Beauregard Town and Spanish Town, there are now 2,200 downtown residents, with another 400 expected to move there when developments now under construction are complete.

With so much going on, business people and property owners are urging local authorities to catch up and get ahead of the curve. They wish for new or properly enforced rules to regulate and keep order among the growing crowds, and they want a formal Arts and Entertainment District with well-defined rules and procedures.

And that’s a problem.

With growing crowds downtown, many business owners welcome an Arts and Entertainment District, one that would set clear policies and maintain diversity.

Progress creating the district has been glacial in the five years since the idea popped up locally after a group of civic leaders returned from Austin, where they observed downtown’s model for success.

Baton Rouge’s Arts and Entertainment District has two primary objectives: to nurture and attract the city’s creative class to live, work and play downtown by way of tax incentives. The second is to define and establish regulations for weekend nights, when it’s a hotbed of nightlife. Ideas range from closing some streets to relaxing the ban on open alcohol containers to adjusting closing hours.

The policies we have now, downtown property and business owner Danny McGlynn says, are “backwards.” Rather than showing progress toward creating the district, new problems keep emerging in the absence of permanent rules and regulations.

John Schneider, co-owner of strategic governmental consulting firm Cyntreniks, points out that bare-bones guidelines for the district were only passed in March, yet some people have jumped to the incorrect conclusion that the district is up and running. “The policies and procedures have not kept pace with what is actually taking place,” Schneider said at an April 16 meeting with the new Arts and Entertainment District board, the police chief, commissioners of the Downtown Development District and key downtown stakeholders.

The meeting was, in Chairman Derrell Cohoon’s words, to discuss “our successes and growing issues and policy.”

But what many were really worried about at that meeting was exactly the kind of incident they fear could dampen downtown progress if police and local government don’t catch up quickly. On March 30 police were called to break up an early morning fight on Third Street following a party hosted by a promoter who’d rented out a club.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff tried to put the incident in perspective. “Baton Rouge is not on fire,” he said in a slow, measured tone. “What does crime look like downtown? It looks good.” The message: The incident was an isolated event.

But for those involved it brought into sharp focus the need for the Arts and Entertainment District to put the right policies in place and quickly. For example, should party promoters be required to do more to ensure their events are safe, just as restaurant or bar owners are?

If the 15-block area bounded by North Boulevard, River Road, Main Street and Fourth Street is going to work as a functioning district, then its leaders will need to decide exactly what they want it to be—no simple task when you consider the number of interested parties. Even something as simple as officially approving the proper boundaries for the district didn’t go smoothly. In March the board approved boundaries that inadvertently excluded the Louisiana Art and Science Museum on River Road (the board later took action to fix its mistake and added the museum to the district).

Bars and restaurants like Schlittz & Giggles have re-awakened downtown nightlife.

With the district boundaries now defined, officials now are accepting bids from companies interested in drafting a comprehensive incentives package the city-parish can offer to trigger growth within the district.

DDD Director Davis Rhorer says the district’s myriad policies will be developed simultaneously with the incentives. Among them could be any number of ideas discussed at an April 19 meeting, including plans for street closures, beefed-up police patrols, meter maids, incremental closing times for bars and a possible storefront police substation.

Michael Lang, a regional director for Commercial Properties which is building swanky apartments in its One Eleven development next to the Shaw Center, wants the DDD board to act quickly.

“Get (the policies) in place,” he says. “It’s going to be extremely difficult to draw more residential downtown if we wait until something serious occurs.”

While the new Arts and Entertainment District board works to set its course, Rhorer says DDD will continue to push the same principal it has pushed since before downtown’s renaissance began in the 1990s. “It should be the community’s living room, where everyone can come to celebrate, play, work, educate and all the things a downtown can offer, and be reflective of our community,” Rhorer says. “I want to keep it diverse. That makes it so much more interesting.”