March 2001

Planning

Copyright by American Planning Association

2001 HUD Secretary's Opportunity and Empowerment Award

Mid-City Redevelopment Alliance, Baton Rouge

By Mike Dunne

The paint was peeling from the sides of Dorothy Charles's home, and the vacant lots near her little Maywood Street house in Baton Rouge were filled with tall grass and bushes.

Today her house is newly painted and those vacant lots are now 15 homes owned by residents of the area, all thanks to the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, a nonprofit agency underwritten by General Health System, which runs the nonprofit Baton Rouge General Medical Center.

The area around the oldest hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was just like Maywood Street: peeling and weed-choked. That worried the General Health System board. As their concern grew, officials of East Baton Rouge parish, in the midst of creating a 20-year master plan for growth known as Horizon Plan, also worried about development.

General Health System's chief executive officer at the time, Tom Sawyer, was a member of the Horizon Plan steering committee. When consultants presented plans for the planning district that included the hospital, Sawyer saw the possibility of making the hospital the catalyst for the district plan. Mid City Redevelopment Alliance was born, and General Health continues to be the prime underwriter of a communitywide effort to provide financial and volunteer support for cleanup, home repair, and home ownership programs provided by the alliance.

Creating an anchor

In 1991, the hospital hired Elizabeth "Boo" Thomas, who was helping with the plan for the district, and sent her off to seven cities to look at other models of success. She returned to Baton Rouge and began meeting with residents in what has come to be known as Mid City. "The hospital wanted to save the neighborhood, not wall itself off with fences," Thomas says.

The power of the Redevelopment Alliance was finding the solution in rebuilding the sense of community around the hospital. "They listen to you when you talk," says Charles, who thinks more redevelopment groups like Mid City are needed in Baton Rouge.

The country needs more Mid City success stories, too. That's one reason the alliance's efforts are receiving the Housing and Urban Development Secretary's Opportunity and Empowerment Award, made jointly by HUD and APA. The award is made for a plan, program, or project that demonstrates improved quality of life for low- and moderate-income community residents.

Mid City covers the Florida Boulevard corridor in Baton Rouge between a downtown interstate highway segment and Foster Drive, the beginning of suburbia. As Baton Rouge General Medical Center grew and modernized, the residential area and commercial strips around it were dying.

Pickup, fixup

Boo Thomas led the effort to put together a master plan for Mid City during 1992, and at the same time began building a sense of community. "We started small, with trash pickups," Thomas says. The effort was called PICKUP! Mid City.

The next year, with volunteer help from corporate sponsors, Mid City FIXUP! repaired 20 homes. The alliance also has helped create civic associations and the Mid City Merchants Association.

The alliance operates Mid City Home ­Ownership Center, which provides training and below-cost materials for home repair. A First Time Home Buyers Educational Seminar brings low-income buyers and loan officials together, and an alliance credit counselor helps repair credit and overcome financial barriers. The alliance has worked with the East Baton Rouge Housing Authority and local community development corporations to create home ownership opportunities within reach of lower income buyers.

The alliance also worked with a local bank to help create a small subdivision known as Park Hills, the first new subdivision in the older part of the central city in decades. "We built 15 new homes as a model infill project" not far from the hospital, says Perry Franklin, Thomas's successor as executive director.

Getting results

In its first decade, the alliance has much to show: 165 homes repaired within a 67-block target area, more than 1,800 graduates of the First Time Homebuyers seminar, with 46 percent of them buying homes, and infill investment exceeding $75 million.

"Thanks to the work of the Alliance, Mid City is no longer a neighborhood of last resort," says Troy Bunch, planning director of the City of Baton RougeÐParish of East Baton Rouge Planning Commission. "It has shown residents how a community effort can fight crime, reduce blight, improve economic circumstances, and overcome barriers to good living."

"As property values declined, so did the chance that Mid City could tax itself for redevelopment," Bunch says. Private investment from General Health Systems, he adds, "has been returned to the community five-fold in the form of public and private projects" and has spurred additional investment.

Perry Franklin is gearing up to update the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance Master Plan for another 10 years. "We need to start working on commercial development," Franklin says, admitting it will be a big challenge.

Dorothy Clark approves of the idea and what she has seen. The community "is like my house. It looks like a different place now."

Mike Dunne is a senior reporter for the Baton Rouge Advocate.