smART City

City Park, sans golf course?

Benjamin Leger — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:10:00 EST

Edging closer to 1,000 signatures, an online petition is bringing the debate about City Park's golf course back into the limelight. Should the 9-hole course be maintained and City Park grow around it, or should it be eliminated and the grounds added to the park's existing green space?The Change.org petition Rolfe McCollister Jr.—CEO of Louisiana Business Inc., which owns 225—started about three weeks ago has led to the creation of a grassroots committee by nearby resident Bryan Jones. The group is called Spark City Park.“I've lived in the neighborhood for a year and a half,” Jones says. “I've been in Baton Rouge for about 12 years, and I've always wondered what the potential of City Park could be beyond the golf course.”While Carolyn McKnight, BREC's superintendent, told the Business Report earlier this week, “We're not taking sides on either side of the issue,” she did say they are excited that people are showing renewed interest in improving the park, especially as BREC prepares for another round of community surveys about future plans for the BREC system.In 2002, McCollister unsuccessfully petitioned to put a parish library on the golf course grounds. In response, supporters of the course fought to get it included on the National Register of Historic Places—it was built in 1928.But BREC has long been floating the idea of converting the course to passive park space. In 2005, BREC commissioned two conceptual designs of the park with and without the golf course.The first design, keeping the golf course:The second design, without the golf course:Both designs utilize the City Park Lake, filling in a portion of the northern shore for a boathouse, piers and a caf�. The non-golf course design replaced the grounds with plenty of walking paths and gardens, a new pavilion and expansive lawn along East Lake Shore Drive, picnic areas and an amphitheatre and stage.In the same year the designs were commissioned, BREC conducted a survey that showed 34% of respondents wanted to keep the golf course, 30% wanted to eliminate it, and the rest were indecisive or gave no response. Only 11% of respondents said they played golf at City Park.BREC plans to hire a consulting firm this summer to gather more public input on City Park and other parish parks. Jones has already met with BREC leadership, who he says have been very receptive of his efforts to organize a committee around the issue. He notes that the previous surveys only contacted residents with landline telephones, and is encouraging BREC to reach a broader audience through online surveys and other means.“Let's see where the public is and where the residents are today,” he says. “Perhaps they are at the same place where they were 10 years ago when this was debated, but my prediction is it's not. Baton Rouge has changed quite a bit. … I don't think we want to wait until the results of that survey for us to talk about whether or not the golf course should be there.”Ted Jack, an assistant superintendent at BREC, wouldn't comment on the possibility of eliminating the golf course, but acknowledged there are a lot of factors at play. “If you're going to build something big and bold, it's a question of where the money will be coming from and will it be a value to people,” Jack says.While usage of City Park's golf course has decreased in recent years—rounds dropped from 21,887 in 2009 to 16,335 in 2012—a renovation of the rest of City Park in 2007, plus the addition of a dog park in 2008, led to increased usage of the park's more passive areas.“We got a lot of things that came together to make that a special place,” Jack says. “The amount of use in that park since we renovated it is amazing. There are so many more people utilizing it. It's wonderful.”Jones is still in the organizing stages for the committee, and hopes to have a website and social media pages up soon to connect with more people. The important thing, he says, is to recognize that City Park is a designated community park—meaning the entire city can give input into how it's utilized.“It shouldn't be about what my neighborhood wants only; it shouldn't just be my voice,” he says. “The most important thing is to open the space up to everyone, not just the golfers, and at the same time preserving as much of the green space as we possibly can. I want it to be a great green space; I want it to be a centerpiece for city.”The May 2012 "Idea Issue" of 225 looked at how City Park needs to embrace multi-use designs. A follow-up story looked at one LSU architecture student's plans to "rewild" City Park—click here to read that story and see his full design plan.

Changing gears

Benjamin Leger — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:05:00 EST

Mark Martin is prepping for a full schedule of projects on the horizon—from securing a designation of Route 90 from DeRidder to Bogalusa as a US Bicycle Route, preparing for workshops later this month with several Baton Rouge organizations to brainstorm how to use federal funding to improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and consulting with the city on a new Dalrymple Drive bike path.That's a lot of bike-centric work for a guy who just stepped down from his post at Bike Baton Rouge. Earlier this week, the non-profit organization announced Martin, who established it in 2006, had retired as its longtime chairman.“It was time,” he says. “It was pretty clear we needed a change. If you've been at it this long, a pattern can start to happen where it becomes your thing rather the organization's thing.”Martin (pictured above) has a long list of accomplishments with Bike Baton Rouge, from helping establish the Mayor's Family Bike Day and the annual Velo Louisiane Bicycle Festival to petitioning DPW to include bicycle and pedestrian facilities on new road improvements and encouraging legislation that adopted a Complete Streets model for new DOTD projects. Still, Martin says he was ready to hand over the reins to a new group of Bike Baton Rouge members with new ideas.One of those folks is Beaux Jones, a current board member and assistant attorney general who has taken Martin's place as chairman. Jones helped spearhead the name change of Baton Rouge Advocates for Safe Streets to Bike Baton Rouge. The organization's longstanding work has been on policy change at the city level to implement better and new bike paths. But with the rebranding came a focus on getting the community interested in bicycling opportunities.“What we realized over the last several years is that there are plenty of good ideas in Baton Rouge; we know what we need,” Jones says. “The problem is having that political capital—we need people who are demanding change, otherwise it's hard to get things done. So one side of our work is infrastructure policy and advocacy, the other side is really just people—getting people interested in riding bikes for fun, riding bikes for fitness and also as an alternate transportation.”One facet is the Easy Trips program, which encourages people to use their bikes for trips that are two miles or less—what amounts to about 40 percent of urban trips. Bike Baton Rouge is planning a bicycle route atlas with suggested routes to grocery stores, shopping centers and other destinations based on the neighborhood.Another facet is the Bike Friendly Businesses program, which highlights nearly 20 local businesses providing bike racks for their patrons. The organization also offers free consultations to businesses that want to participate. “A lot of businesses want to help and cater to more active modes of transportation, but maybe don't know how,” Jones says.Martin has often advocated the fact that business owners could replace one parking space in front of their shops with a bike rack and accommodate 10-12 more customers. Studies have shown bicyclists don't spend as much during each visit, Martin says, “but they go more frequently.”And the frequency of bicyclists on Baton Rouge streets has been apparent recently, with many visiting the Better Block BR event in April to try out the temporary bike path. Bike Baton Rouge often provides free bike parking corrals at downtown events, and saw its largest turnout at the Baton Rouge Blues Festival, securing 173 bikes for patrons of the event. That amounted to 173 less individuals struggling to find vehicle parking for the popular music festival.The increased interest and the fact that Bike Baton Rouge currently has its largest membership to date made it the perfect time for Martin to step down, knowing the organization is headed in the right direction.Both Jones and Martin note that he's still very much involved in the organization, but also plans to focus on some of his own projects now, one of which includes a long bike trip to mark his upcoming 60th birthday. Martin hasn't finalized it yet, but says it will take him northwest to several national parks before following the Mississippi River trail back to Louisiana. He's looking at a trek of about 6,000 miles and several months.“I guess the more people I tell about it, the more I'm going to have to do it,” he says.

Events outside the box

Benjamin Leger — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:18:00 EST

Upstairs at a warehouse on Main Street near downtown, artist Raina Wirta is standing atop a very tall ladder, adjusting the lighting above a giant, furry (yes, furry) dome-like structure that hangs from the ceiling. The LSU MFA candidate unveiled her exhibition “(un)familiar” to a crowd last Friday. Earlier that week, she was busy putting together the finishing touches.That brown, furry dome? It's accented on one side with folds of red material and in the cavernous space underneath, bat sounds are pumped in through speakers. It's one part of a spatial collage, where works on canvas Wirta has hung on the brick walls of the warehouse are morphed into real shapes scattered throughout the vast space. “It gives these things a new meaning,” she says.

One of Wirta's works inside the Capitol Area Corporate Recycling Center.

The starting point is wallpaper. Wirta gathered scraps of gaudy floral wallpaper patterns and added her own elements—cutout images from magazines of hands, legs and other body parts that unfold almost like the flowers in the pattern. While she moved the ladder across the room, securing wiring to the rafters high above, she talked about why she chose to weave wallpaper through her pieces.“Looking at it, it brings up memories from my childhood of wallpaper I really hated or liked. We don't really talk about wallpaper, but it's there in the background,” she says. “It's supposed to be this sort of ignored thing.”Her exhibit was one of many MFA candidate shows happening last week, though hers continues this week and was the only one held in a non-traditional space. Wirta, a founding member of the local art collective Elevator Projects, organized that group's first event in the same location. And on opening night last week was the final product of her MFA work, with wall art, sculpture and a video installation of a model wearing one of her sculptures.“(un)familiar” continues tomorrow, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., at the Capitol Area Corporate Recycling Center on Main Street.While we're talking about art in interesting places, the LSU Sculpture Department is hosting an exhibition of sculpture and performance by undergrads that starts at 5 p.m. tonight (Thursday). The event happens on the 4th floor terrace of the Shaw Center, on the grounds of the building and at North Boulevard Town Square with interactive and kinetic works as well as a performance that encompasses the full two hours of the opening reception. If you miss it tonight, the installations will be on view through May 3. For more, check out the event's page here.Another event Thursday that celebrates art in Baton Rouge, Art Wine Design takes place at many businesses at Southdowns Village shopping center. The event will take on a block party vibe with music from Michael Foster and Hubbard, Decker & Rhodes. Artwork purchased Thursday will be sold without sales tax. The event kicks off at 6 p.m.Well, with his art, anyway. Yet another event Thursday night is Of Moving Colors closing out its 26th season with a performance at the Manship Theatre. The show, “P.S.425” is a collaboration with LSU College of Art and Design's Nadine Carter Russell Chair Peter Shire and will feature dancers using interactive set pieces he designed, including a catwalk, whimsical chairs, thrones and more. A free pre-performance reception will be held at Glassell Gallery at 6:30 p.m. The show begins at 7:30 p.m., followed by a free post-performance reception at Glassell at 8:15 p.m. Tickets are $25. For more information, click here.