Walk This Way

Brad Goins Thursday, January 19, 2017 Comments Off on Walk This Way
Walk This Way

Smart Growth In The Lake Area

Story By Brad Goins

Photo By Jason Carroll • monsoursphotography.net

Photo By Jason Carroll • monsoursphotography.net

The Lake Charles Metro Area is making progress in several of the basic principles of smart growth. But in a couple of these principles, the Lake Area has hardly begun the work that needs to be done.

Smart growth envisions metropolitan centers that grow from the inside out. Whatever may happen to the city as a whole, its historical and cultural center — usually its downtown — must be strong and constantly attended to.

Twenty years ago, it looked as if the Lake Area had cut downtown Lake Charles loose and left it to languish in decay. But since then, the stories of renewal of traditional downtown commercial properties have been many; and quite a few of the new businesses are likely to enjoy a continuing saga of success.

These success stories include those of Pujo St. Cafe, Luna and Luna Live, Blue Dog Cafe, 1910, Botsky’s, Stellar Beans, the reworking of the Charleston Hotel and Muller’s and others. Luna and Luna Live have been fundamental to the creation of a bustling downtown weekend nightlife and very noticeable crowds of pedestrians on the immediate downtown streets and sidewalks.

Photo By Jason Carroll • monsoursphotography.net

Photo By Jason Carroll • monsoursphotography.net

As one might have expected, all that was needed was the perception that downtown businesses could be successful. That perception has spawned a brisk business in Sunday brunches — right now at Luna, Blue Dog Cafe, Pujo Street and 1910 and soon, very likely, at other spots.

The elaborate development of downtown “streetscapes” and of the lakefront area (undertaken mainly under the auspices of Mayor Randy Roach) has created many new areas for seating and walking, as well as new shaded environments, downtown. These produced marked improvements in the quality of life for downtown residents and visitors — improvements which (of course) strengthened the central community of Lake Charles. Pedestrians can now sit and walk with ease in much of the downtown area most frequented by the public.

‘Existing Communities’

It is as we move out from the downtown that the metro area starts to fall short on a key principle of smart growth. The Smart Growth America organization lists 10 principles that it calls the “foundation” of smart growth. No. 7 asks that planners “direct development toward existing communities.”

As one moves south or north of the greater Lake Charles downtown area, development comes to a screeching halt. A casual drive down the main thoroughfares of the mid-town or old-town — Kirkman, Common, Hodges, 12th Street, 18th Street, Alamo — enables one to view multiples houses, and the occasional business, that appears abandoned. One hastens to note that many of the houses that look abandoned are in fact inhabited. That fact alone is a strong indicator of lagging development.

A similar set of statements could be made about the part of Lake Charles north of Railroad Avenue.

Smart growth assumes that solid urban growth begins with a strong, tight community in the downtown that then spreads outward through the older communities. This overriding principle explains one of the best-known features of smart growth: its staunch opposition to urban sprawl. Smart growth assumes that metro areas are weakened when empty lots at the edge of town are turned into more and more Walmarts, Outbacks, Taco Bells and apartment complexes while apartments and houses in mid-town areas fall further into decay and eventual collapse.

One of the documents of the Lake Area’s Go Group, which was designed to deal with the infrastructure problems that would be created by the boom, predicts with amazing accuracy what has indeed happened to mid-town housing with the onset of the boom:

“The availability and affordability of housing is also anticipated to be an issue in the area. Without a sufficient supply of temporary or permanent homes for new residents to occupy as they look to find jobs with industry, the increased demand will likely result in an increase in rent. As rental rates increase, many individuals who have lived in apartments or homes for many years could find themselves displaced, or homeless, as they find they don’t have the funds to pay higher rental costs. Sufficient planning is needed to ensure that homes are available at an affordable cost for those in need.”

Sudden, staggering rent increases are just another factor that will eventually hasten the deterioration of housing in “existing communities.”

Everyone knows that with the onset of the boom, there’s been a strong demand for worker housing in the Lake Area. Several worker housing plans have been dropped because residents in middle-class communities fear the disruption such housing operations may bring. But planners should consider that worker housing might be welcome in mid-town areas where both the economics and housing are far below par.

Since mid-town and north Lake Charles are quite obviously providing much less housing and many fewer commercial operations than they could, it’s difficult to say just how much of Lake Charles’ vast urban sprawl is gratuitous and how much is necessitated by the lack of attention to “existing communities.”

‘How Do We Manage That?’

There are now quite a few “traditional neighborhood developments” in the Lake Area. These communities follow smart growth principles related to “walkability.” The communities are built in such a way that basic services are within easy walking distance of residents’ homes. Walkways are large and safe. Residents are encouraged to keep their vehicles behind their homes (and thus off the streets).

When a traditional neighborhood development such as Walnut Grove is located in “existing communities” near the city center, it’s a particularly strong success story for smart growth principles. Not only does the community use smart growth within its boundaries, but its presence ensures good housing in places where housing might otherwise deteriorate.

Walnut Grove now has twelve occupied homes with another 30 homes under construction within the next year, including commercial cottages and townhomes.

Walnut Grove now has twelve occupied homes with another 30 homes under construction within the next year, including commercial cottages and townhomes.

On the other hand, it seems to this writer that if traditional neighborhood developments are built very far from the central area of L.C. (say, south or east of the intersection of Nelson and McNeese), however well they may be managed, they are still part of urban sprawl.

When I expressed this notion to Grant Bush, land use planner of Leesville and a former planner in Lake Charles, he said, “that’s a good point.”

Bush referred to the time when a major medical complex was created “in the middle of nowhere” on Nelson Road. It may not have been a shining moment in the ongoing struggle against urban sprawl, but since the business was certainly going to exist, and a community would certainly spring up around it, Bush said the concern was “to allow [this growth] in a way that’s harmonious and creates transportation back and forth with Lake Charles … How do we manage that?”

To give you an idea of why “urban sprawl” is called what it is, Bush said the drive from the new development to downtown Lake Charles averages 45 minutes. Of course, there is now much development that is much further out than the location of the medical complex. IMG_9033

I was surprised to learn from Bush that Lake Charles has an urban growth boundary. Such boundaries are one tool that large progressive cities such as Portland use to try to curb urban sprawl. In Portland, any business that proposes to build outside the urban growth boundary must receive the full approval of the city council. Council meetings about such proposals are the subjects of intense public scrutiny.

In Lake Charles, the urban growth boundary is called the “study area boundary.” It’s the area of land where there is potential for more growth.

‘A Variety Of Transportation Choices’

Smart growth’s directive to focus development on “existing communities” goes in tandem with the principle of smart growth on which the L.C. metro area fares the worst — “provide a variety of transportation choices.”

Lake Charles may not have the most minimal transit system of a metro area of its size. But if it doesn’t, one shudders to think of a transit system that does a poorer job of meeting its city’s basic needs. The L.C. system provides a total of five routes for all of the massive area of Lake Charles’ development. The bus routes run only from 5:45 am to 5:45 pm. And no routes at all run on the weekends.

Such a skeletal system is no less than disastrous for thousands in the working class and underclass communities of mid-town Lake Charles. They have no access to mass transit at night or on the weekends — the very times when their labor is most wanted at the service jobs they often hold.  IMG_9700

Louisiana learned from Hurricane Katrina and the Great Flood of Baton Rouge that there were many in the urban areas afflicted who did not have the wherewithal to own or drive a vehicle. Those who have few glimpses of how the other half lives are unaware that a large segment of Lake Charles’ underground economy consists in those who have working vehicles charging those who don’t for rides. For many low-wage workers, it’s often the choice of which costs less — the taxi or the neighbor who has a car.

Lake Charles is forced to consider ways to provide a variety of transportation choices because of the harsh economic realities of its poorly developed mid-town and old-town neighborhoods. It hasn’t yet progressed to the point of providing various transportation choices for the reason many larger cities do — to reduce the level of single-driver vehicle traffic and the resultant high levels of pollution. In many very large cities, the objective is to create a mass transit system with such coverage and such frequent turnover of routes that drivers feel that car driving and the use of mass transit are equally attractive alternatives. The Lake Charles metro area is light years away from such a state.

In spite of its relatively small size, Lake Charles has an extremely car-oriented culture. Its transportation system is firmly built around the notion that each person who travels from one place to another should do so in a vehicle of which he or she is the only occupant.

The very widespread assumption that one should only travel in one’s own vehicle — and alone if possible — is behind the Lake Area’s failure to make the grade in another one of the basic imperatives of smart growth — “create walkable neighborhoods.” IMG_9698

It’s striking how many roads even in very old mid-town portions of Lake Charles are without sidewalks. To return to that earlier list of mid-town thoroughfares, one doesn’t have to drive far down such roads as Hodges and Alamo before one comes upon blocks without sidewalks. In the mid-town stretch of Ryan Street, which has never been updated so that it can carry the dramatic traffic increases of recent years, the sidewalks offer little aid to pedestrians who must risk life and limb to cross the road by somehow navigating the ceaseless blur of speeding trucks and minivans. An intersection as far afield of downtown as that of Lake Street and Prien Lake Road is so ill-equipped for its loads of traffic that even skillful drivers often avoid it — sometimes out of fear for their safety. It’s almost unfathomable that a pedestrian might somehow make it through such an intersection.

The Go Group has a firm grasp of this situation; one finds this appraisal on its site:

“The infrastructure the Southwest Louisiana area was built on is now aging, and was originally designed to service the needs of a population significantly less than that which is expected over the next few years.”

‘Little Bit By Little Bit’

In the 2016 update of the Lake Area’s “Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy,” only 8 percent of the “Transportation Funding Priorities” was devoted to mass transit. That amount was actually 1 percent less than the amount devoted to “pavement markings and street beautifications.” This is clear evidence of funding priorities that are far out of sync with basic principles of smart growth.

As for smart growth’s emphasis on reducing pollution caused by heavy traffic, in the update’s list of “Transportation Goals,” “Conserve Energy” was ranked last.

In all fairness, it should be emphasized that these off-kilter approaches to mass transit in the L.C. Metro Area may be largely reflective of the area’s culture. The vast majority of residents in the Lake Area simply do not consider the possibility that there are modes of transportation other than driving in one’s vehicle.

Bush noted that when he goes for a walk, it’s common for someone to pull over and ask him “What’s wrong?” and offer him a ride. “That’s the kind of people we are,” says Bush. It’s nothing more than part of the prevalent assumption that any pedestrian is either someone who has a vehicle in the shop or is impoverished and can’t afford even a beater car. IMG_9695

This is all part of a larger culture that isn’t conversant with the attitudes about culture and lifestyle that exist in the large, progressive cities that — to some degree — carry on a way of life and transportation that is in keeping with smart growth. “We have to be realistic,” says Bush. “We’re not going to be Austin.”

Bush says that in Lake Charles, mass transit is viewed as a “system for people in the urban core” of the city. As the boom approached, Lake Charles planners saw the need for a vast renovation of the transit system — just to help workers get to and from construction sites if nothing else. They prepared the Coordination in Human Services Transit Program for Southwest Louisiana. The program was considered so thorough that it received the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation and Development (DOTD) Award for Excellence.

But few changes to L.C. transit have occurred. Bush, who helped design the program, said, “We weren’t able to get that moving as fast as we wanted.” He says progressive changes to transit in the Lake Area will have to be made a “little bit by little bit.”

When it all is said and done, one can only wonder what construction site foremen say when workers ask, “Why can’t we ride a bus to work?”

Food for thought about smart growth can be found on the highly informative site of Louisiana’s Center for Planning Excellence (cpex.org), which is headquartered in Baton Rouge. More information is available at the Go Group web site gogroupswla.com. The basic principles of smart growth in the U.S. can be found at smartgrowthamerica.org.

Comments are closed.