Prioritizing parks and pathways

BREC’s Superintendent Carolyn McKnight got to usher in two new additions to the parish park system in the past two weeks that lay the groundwork for much bigger projects. On Wednesday, she announced the grand opening of the new Convention Street Park downtown, which features a nice lawn, seating areas, a pergola and a temporary mural by TJ Black and Alex Harvie (right) all maximizing less than an acre of land across from the US Post Office building.

The vinyl mural covers a brick wall that faces into the park and features a colorful skyline of downtown Baton Rouge from Spanish Town to the Mississippi River bridge. Downtown Development’s Davis Rhorer noted the Plan Baton Rouge project devised way back in 1998 had called for creating a park at that site. It will now be a stopping point along the route of the future Downtown Greenway, which will connect the Garden District, Old South Baton Rouge and downtown. McKnight remarked at the ceremony, “All great cities are known for their great parks, greenways and trails.”

A week earlier, she announced the sort-of groundbreaking (construction actually starts in January) of the Capital Area Pathways Project. The first phase is a 2.2-mile section of a potentially 7.4-mile looping path that would connect Essen Lane, the Perkins Road Park, Pennington, the LSU Rural Life Museum and Perkins Rowe. The first phase takes it from Bluebonnet Road southeast along Wards Creek between the Mall of Louisiana and I-10, through The Grove (an under-construction traditional neighborhood development) and across Siegen Lane to the shopping center there. That phase should be completed by summer 2013 if all goes well. Download a map (PDF format) of the first phase and the full “medical loop” here.

“We’ll be able to rival any parks system in the country with what we have planned,” McKnight said at the event. Let’s hope that comes true, because as Adam Pearson at the Business Report wrote last week, there are still plenty of unknowns in the other phases of the project.

And as some residents commented on that story—and I tend to agree—the number of nearby residents who can benefit from this first phase is pretty limited. The rest of us will have to drive to the shopping center parking lots to access the pathway. We won’t see it serving as legitimate infrastructure until the full loop is built. So why is this pathway project starting where it is?

I’m guessing what finally got the ball rolling was Richard Carmouche, the developer for The Grove, allowing the path to cut through the property. It’s sort of a win-win, in that the project now clears a strategic hurdle and The Grove can add an amenity for potential residents and business owners. A lot of factors are at play for such a huge undertaking, but I don’t think frequency of use was one of the bigger ones considered here. Which is a shame because if the first visual for Baton Rouge residents of what this great loop could look like is a potentially underused and oddly placed path, it may not get all the support it deserves down the road.

Just look at this tweet from Wednesday after the Convention Street Park was unveiled:

It’s that kind of mentality (“Parks are where the homeless hang out and where crime happens.”) that we’re up against when it comes to changing the landscape of Baton Rouge. We have to focus on public space projects that will attract the most use, and a lot of that has to do with location. Moreover, as Kelly Pack of the national Rails-to-Trails Conservancy said at the Smart Growth Summit recently, “It’s not ‘Build it and they will come.’ You have to build it, promote it, program it (provide ongoing events and activities that spur interest) and maintain it.”

I think the Convention Street Park (and potentially the Greenway to follow) will meet those objectives; I’m more iffy about the pathway project. And I’m hoping BREC and the city leaders keep that in mind when prioritizing the many great projects they have in the pipeline.