Noteworthy
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Possibilities Under the Pass
THE INITIATIVE FOR AN URBAN TRAIL IN BATON ROUGE’S PERKINS UNDERPASS MERCHANTS DISTRICT
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he Perkins Road Underpass Merchants District—with its funky collective of locally-owned restaurants, small businesses, and nightlife—thrives as a rare example of a neighborhood that has developed directly around the presence of the interstate. Beneath the concrete goliath of I-10 and its decidedly un-classical columns, these businesses have—for decades—fostered a wildly popular counter-culture entertainment hub in Baton Rouge. On Saturday nights, the district’s pot-holed and unmarked parking spots beneath the overpass are some of the most hotly contested in town. On March 15, a group of business owners from the Underpass neighborhood publicly presented plans for the much-anticipated Perkins Underpass Revitalization Project—a proposal that envisions an elevated ADA-accessible urban trail running from Reymond Avenue eventually to the Acadian Thruway, with
phase one ending at Christian Street. The concept has been in the works for over two years now, explained Misti Broussard, who owns BLDG 5 with her husband, Brumby. The Broussards are leaders in the initiative, along with owner of Varsity Sports Jenni Peters, Al Moreau of Moreau Physical Therapy, and Chad Hughes of Ivar’s Sports Bar & Grill and the forthcoming Unleaded BBQ. Misti noted that of the four businesses involved, hers is the only one directly on the proposed path. “I think that speaks volumes to why we’re all interested in this,” she said. “We want this path as residents. We think this is something our city deserves.” After raising $40,000 to fund surveys of the area and the development of a conceptual Master Plan created by CARBO Landscape Architecture, the group is now turning to the Metro Council to give the project, projected to cost $2.5 million, the green light. According to the Master Plan, the
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multi-use path would include features like designated bike trails, native plantings, lighting installations, and improved parking conditions—all integrated with local art that interacts directly with the overpass instead of despite it. “This is a quality of life project,” said Shannon Blakeman of CARBO. “There is no problem of trying to get people here. How can we create better connectivity? How can we make a safer place for bicycles and pedestrians?” Jeffrey Carbo of CARBO also emphasized the opportunity for this project to serve as a springboard for innovations in stormwater management. “It’s not only that we want to create a path,” he said. “We want to be good stewards.” The next step towards council approval and initial funding, explained City-Parish Transportation and Drainage Director Fred Raiford, is securing cooperation with the railroad—which the path would need to interact with. Though that process could take months, he said that he has already begun working with the railroad and has been in conversation with the Mayor about the proposal. “We are
committed to this project,” he said. “It meets all the aspects of what we’re trying to accomplish in our community.” Though the overall impacts of DOTD’s I-10 Widening Project on the Underpass community are yet to determined, pushing this initiative is a demonstration of the neighborhood’s value to Baton Rouge as a whole and raises the stakes for its ultimate preservation and development. “We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” said Misti. “We’ve never seen so much excitement. People literally walk in our door here [at BLDG 5] and say, ‘I’ve heard about this … here’s $20. How can I help?” She said that the group has also been approached by corporations and donors interested in sponsoring the developments, but first “we need the city to take ownership. This is something the city should be taking responsibility for, and getting the green light, and getting it started.” —Jordan LaHaye Fontenot See the plans, and updates on developments, at underpassproject.org.
vagabondance is a newly-established dance company taking up residence in Baton Rouge at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center as the first participants in its new Arts Incubation Program. Photo courtesy of vagabondance.
vagabondance
THE NEW CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY FINDS A HOME AT THE CARY SAURAGE COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER
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he newly-established contemporary dance company vagabondance has leapt onto the scene in Baton Rouge as the first residents of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge’s new Arts Incubation Program. The company is helmed by Artistic Director Scarlett Wynne and Executive Director Erik Sampson, who previously operated a dance company in Santa Fe, New Mexico for three years. During the course of their residency at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center, vagabondance hopes to engage the Baton Rouge community through performances, classes, and open rehearsals. “vagabondance sort of came to be as this idea that we’re always growing and changing and evolving. And I believe that dance should do the same thing,” said Wynne. “But not just dance, but also the structure and approach of a dance com8
pany has a lot to do with adaptability, seeing the needs of the community and the people around us and sort of creating art in response to that. We want to be highly accessible to the community.” Providing artists like Wynne and Sampson with a launch point from which they can connect with the Baton Rouge community and realize their missions is why the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge established the Arts Incubation Program. “Creating a meaningful space that draws artists to the Capital Region and expands the growth of local access to high quality art-making are major goals of the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center,” said Renée Chatelain, President and CEO of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. “We are thrilled to see artists of the caliber of vagabondance moving into our city because of this access.” Wynne and Sampson are hoping to
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incorporate vagabondance events into the Ebb & Flow festival, to introduce the burgeoning company to the Baton Rouge community and jumpstart its residency at the Saurage Center. Sampson, who spent formative years in Baton Rouge for a nonprofit job shortly out of high school, thinks that Baton Rouge and the Saurage Center will be a perfect home for vagabondance to live out its mission. “We’ve been trying to pioneer some new ideas about how a company can be structured in a way that makes it more accessible to the broader community,”
Sampson said. “Really the next step for us as a company is to expand that model. And because of the relationships we have in Baton Rouge, and the connections that we’ve built there, we feel that Baton Rouge is the perfect place to start a new entity with a focus on exploring further what that would look like. Just highly accessible, and represents a redefined version of what dance can mean for the community as far as performative art form.” —Alexandra Kennon vagabondance.org
