Designing downtown

Some things you won’t see in the new Arts and Entertainment District: aluminum and vinyl siding, glass curtain walls on first-floor retail and cement block facades.

These materials came closest to an outright ban and are listed as “not recommended” in the recently approved design guidelines for the 15-block area centered on Third Street that will be Baton Rouge’s Arts and Entertainment District. Ironically, the street’s best-known, award-winning development would not meet some of the new criteria for exterior appearance.

“If you were to follow every letter of the ordinance, you couldn’t do the Shaw Center because of its large expanse of blank walls,” says Dyke Nelson, COO of Chenevert Architects, a forward-thinking firm that moved into its redeveloped historic downtown building in January. “So there is a vehicle to review projects on a case-by-case basis for what is appropriate.”

Exceptions to the established design guidelines will be reviewed by the Downtown Design Committee and decided by the Planning Commission. The Department of Public Works must approve any deviation from the standard 2-by-2-foot square grid sidewalks. No company can receive any economic incentives until its building aligns with this new aesthetic rulebook and has been approved by the commission.

Nelson’s partner Norman Chenevert says the design ordinances are less about forcing uniformity or preventing buildings from looking too dated and more about quality control. “It’ll keep someone from slapping some paint on the old Richoux’s building and opening the doors,” says Chenevert, who is also a DDD commissioner. “They would be required to enhance the exterior of the building.”

Requirements for utility companies have been set, too. When they spray paint markings on the street, they now have 14 days to remove them when finished.

These guidelines come nearly five years after the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s Austin canvas workshop that launched A6 and initiated the effort towards an Arts and Entertainment District. It’s the first piece to DDD chief Davis Rhorer’s visionary puzzle for branding the district with a marketable personality and an atmosphere of attractions that will please both residents and visitors.

“I want to see a new kind of entryway constructed that would be representative of arts and entertainment,” Rhorer muses. “A neon arch over (Third Street at North Boulevard) and a series of pylons surrounding the district so you know you’re coming to a special place that delivers those things.”

Chenevert likes Rhorer’s arch idea and suggests a more deliberate walkway toward River Road and a marquee, like a beacon, on the levee.

Those ideas are further down the pike, but later this year the city’s Green Light Program will spend $9.6 million on new streetlights, traffic signals and, for the first time, pedestrian crosswalks at 29 downtown intersections. Intersections in the 15 blocks of the Arts and Entertainment District will be paved with brick crosswalks. “It’s going to start looking better,” Rhorer says.

If approved, another plan could replace all downtown street signs, and those in Beauregard Town and Spanish Town, too. A prototype of the new signage can be seen at Sixth and Laurel streets. Rhorer has heard a few complaints that the prototype is Florida Gator blue and orange. He says the color scheme and design could change.

As written, the guidelines offer enough leeway for the development of a dynamic and complementary, if not strictly uniform, Arts and Entertainment District.

“You certainly want to discourage against things that are out of character for the district,” Nelsons says. “But what we’re excited about is there’s now a framework to design within without cramping creativity.”