City Park gone wild

As 225 was developing our “Ideas Issue” and looking at ways for BREC’s City Park and the surrounding University Lakes to be revamped to reach their full potential, Chad Caletka was putting the finishing touches on his final landscape architecture design project for the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.

He called it Rewilding City Park.

The detailed and inventive project has already been hailed by a national landscape architecture organization and includes research, design, and planning and funding structures for the complete redevelopment of City Park into a more vibrant destination for indigenous people, animals and plants alike.

After interning with a park design firm in New York City, and regularly jogging the University Lakes, Caletka came to see the former Cypress swamp as nothing short of the intersection of the arts, ecology, economy and community of the Capital City.

“Many cities are realizing what an asset habitat and well-designed parks within the city can do to improve property values and qualities of life for their residents,” Caletka says. “Baton Rouge is sitting on top of this fabulous opportunity to do the same.”

Caletka’s design proposal includes a sculpture park, pond-spanning boardwalks, canoe docks, wetlands preserves and more.

To view the complete Rewilding City Park project, click here.

Editor’s note: This story has been changed since its original publication. An earlier version of this story misidentified Caletka’s project as falling under the pervue of the LSU School of Art, instead of the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. 225 regrets the error.