Several firms are in the midst of redesigning areas of the city in ways that are a long time coming.
The former Entergy site on Government Street, including the 115 blighted acres around it, is currently in the hands of two firms that will present their competing ideas to the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority next Monday on how the space should be utilized. One of the firms is involved in the River District project along Nicholson Drive, and the principal of the other firm helped develop Plan Baton Rouge in 1998 (he was also the keynote speaker at last year’s Smart Growth Summit).
The RDA wants to convert the former Entergy site into some sort of mixed-use hub for the neighborhood with retail and office space—as well as the potential future site of a train station for passenger rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The acquired housing that surrounds the site would mostly be refurbished, though plans for that are still pretty vague at this point.