March 2020 - Parks & Recreation - 42

Designing with
Community in Mind
Flipping the script on the master planning
process in North Baton Rouge, Louisiana
By Anna Cawrse, PLA, ASLA, and Joshua Brooks, PLA, ASLA

ithin East Baton Rouge Parish in Louisiana sits the neighborhood of North Baton Rouge. This predominantly African American community has long seen less investment
than other areas within the parish. This fact, along with
long-term demographic shifts due to out-migration and loss of area institutions, has left the North Baton Rouge area under-performing in key socioeconomic indicators compared to the rest of the parish. Despite decades
of disinvestment, these trends are starting to be reversed through a thriving
culture and incredible community leadership. One of the more visual manifestations of these efforts has been playing out in the recent redesign of
the Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge
(BREC) Greenwood Park and the Baton Rouge Zoo.

in BREC's system, and it provides a
chance to address the contentious issues around disinvestment. Through
an intensive engagement process, the
new master plan created broad consensus and support around a design
that includes roughly $35 million in
publicly funded improvements for
the park and zoo - work currently
underway as part of Phase 1 implementation.

North Baton Rouge has seen a
decades-long pattern of cultural assets and public investments
moving south. This migration has
left North Baton Rouge starved for
amenities. BREC's Baton Rouge
Zoo, one of North Baton Rouge's
cultural icons located in Greenwood Park, was one of the amenities on the cusp of relocating to
a southern part of the parish. The
recommendation to move the zoo
was due in part to an increase in
annual visitors, but largely came at
the behest of the zoo's core philanthropic community members, who
indicated that they would be more
willing to fund the building of a
new zoo in a more " sustainable location " than to fund new improvements at its current location.
As a result of local outcry across
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Parks & Recreation

the parish and with pressure of community leadership from the northern part of the parish, the proposed
relocation of the zoo ultimately did
not come to pass. Instead, BREC
decided it was time for a big change.
The zoo and park provided the perfect opportunity to reinvest in the
neighborhood by reimagining these
incredible public spaces.
BREC set out to create a nationally
renowned park and public space that
would demonstrate its commitment
to the North Baton Rouge community and the parish as a whole. In late
2018, BREC hired Sasaki and Torre
Design Consortium to lead the effort
to reimagine Greenwood Park and
the Baton Rouge Zoo as a cohesive
community asset of which everyone
could be proud. Now, at 660 acres,
Greenwood Park is the largest park

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After several years of discussions, including recommendations to move
the zoo and to redesign the space left
behind, both the local community
and larger parish were a bit on edge.
Local media and frustrated citizens
came to the table with skepticism at
the project's outset. The planning
and design teams took a purposefully broad and blank-slate approach to
the engagement process, focusing on
education and listening before offering any solutions. In order to invite
as many voices into the process as
possible, the team designed engagement methods accessible to a range of
preferences, locations and capacities
for participation. The team's attention toward stimulating true two-way
A map of the proposed Greenwood Park
and Baton Rouge Zoo redesign.

IMAGES COURTESY OF SASAKI

Flipping the Script

March 2020 - Parks & Recreation

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