“Downtown Baton Rouge needs an independent cinematheque!” I exclaimed desperately to Emma Chammah. The architect is familiar with these bursts of urban sentiment from her city planning apartment mate. But she agrees, as do most folk who live and work in the city. Sure downtown now has a selection of bars and restaurants, as well as a nascent arts district, planetarium, (small) library, and (scattered) park space. But what we need (in addition to a pharmacy and fresh grocery) is a film theater. And this is why: while Baton Rouge days are gloriously spent outdoors, nighttimes are best spent walking — not driving — between a plethora of options not limited to bars and restaurants. A cinema is key – especially one that is showing great films every night. I grew up with one of these theaters in my hometown of Cincinnati and they are great – and not only for providing a temple to such adolescent initiations as midnight screenings of Rocky Horror.

Despite what cable television, Blockbuster and now Netflix would have us believe, films are social events. It is good to know you’ve just enjoyed an awakened experience watching Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal or Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with other sentient, feeling human beings. Cinemas are like imaginary public commons, mental parks and open spaces where we direct our minds to share in empathy a vision that is wholly other to our own and thus — mind expanding! No wonder that for a hundred years films have been married to dinner dates, giving them some center of gravity about which conversations and memories will orbit. For a downtown to live again, it needs a multitude of places for people to enjoy life together. This is the vision of a downtown that is not a tourist destination, but rather a home to people, humans with needs for art, love, food, nighttime breezes, poetry, street music, and serendipitous discovery.

The argument for this sort of revitalization was articulated recently by Fred Kent of the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) in his 2004 article “The Power of Ten.” Imagine a new art museum building with fascinating things inside, but a dearth of energy about its exterior. Sound familiar? Such was the case the Seattle Art Museum sought to avoid when Kent was asked to look at the plans for their museum’s new downtown building and advise them on how to best generate “public activity” around it. As they brainstormed, Kent was inspired by the concept of scale illustrated so powerfully in the short film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. Instead of one or two attractions meant to draw activity to the space, Kent envisioned an arbitrary ten “focal points” — a bike path, a street vendor, a museum, a restaurant, a bookstore, a cafe, a park and water fountain, a busker, the spectacle of other people enjoying themselves, and public art and architecture (just for example).  You can find this sort of environment if you’ve ever enjoyed a stroll through parts of New Orleans or Brooklyn, or even a carnival. The challenge for city planners is often not in finding the attractions but stitching together this fabric among a multitude of public and private interests in a way that doesn’t seem contrived and controlled. Rich urban spaces inevitably develop organically as entrepreneurs use available resources and work around the limitations of the public commons. Sometimes all successful spaces need is interest, attention, and a small push.

In Baton Rouge, the downtown has needed a larger push, greater attention from citizens, entrepreneurs and developers, and top-down interest from the mayor’s office and state government. Ask most Baton Rouge residents about urban planning in their city and they are liable to say, “What planning?” But the truth is that this city has a planning commission, a comprehensive plan (the Horizon Plan), zoning, building, and subdivision ordinances, as well as a rather exciting vision for the revitalization of a downtown grown moribund after a half century of neglect and automobile oriented excess. The plan, succinctly called “Plan Baton Rouge,” was submitted to the city ten years ago by famed architect and town planners, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., the firm of star urban designer Andres Duany. Among other improvements, Duany’s plan called for the creation of a cinema at the corner of Third and Main to act as a commercial anchor for 3rd Street. So what happened?

According to Davis Rhorer, director of the Downtown Development District (DDD), “the Shaw Center happened,” describing it as a development that has been “wildly successful.” After the Shaw Center’s construction and with the mayor’s attention shifted to the much needed improvement of the Baton Rouge riverfront, the idea for a downtown cinema was mostly forgotten — but not entirely so. The Shaw Center has been hosting annual film festivals for the past two years: Red Stick Animation, the Jewish and French Film Fests, and is a regular stop on the Southern Circuit Independent Film Series. Rhorer also points out that the Louisiana Art and Science Museum’s planetarium features a “Space Theater- for showing extra large format motion pictures. New construction on the Shaw Center also includes plans for an outdoor film screening area.

Despite these efforts, Plan BR’s vision for a downtown cinema remains obscure and woefully unrealized. Paige Heurtin, financial director of Manship Theatre who helps to manage the film series, knew of Andres Duany but was unaware of Duany’s call for a cinema on 3rd Street. Nor was John Schneider, developer of the Cyntreniks Group that with Chenevert Architects is restoring the Kress-Levy Building at 3rd and Main.  Keen on meeting the needs of the booming film industry, Schneider was pleased to describe plans for a 75 seat theater discussed with the Baton Rouge Film Commission and his realtors, Latter & Blum. Schneider envisions the theater’s primary use as a facility for industry production screenings, corporate training, and for documentaries showing the restoration of the Kress-Levy building and the history of the civil rights era in Baton Rouge. He also contemplates its use for showing second run Hollywood films.

The two facade statues of the Columbia (later Paramount) Theater downtown that grace Rhorer’s office are a constant reminder of the demolition madness that once gripped city developers in the name of progress and surface parking. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. Rhorer agrees that downtown needs a cinema. “The suburbs are no place for a theater like Siegen,” Rhorer points out referencing the demise of the closest thing Baton Rouge had to an art theater. Tinseltown Theater, beyond the city’s outskirts, lived just long enough to drive Siegen out of business. Meanwhile, requests to Rave Motion Pictures last fall to show Michael Moore’s Sicko documentary went unfulfilled. Schneider’s plans are unfortunately both tantalizingly vague and too small scale to put much faith in, yet if he can be convinced to engage an independent film distributor such as Landmark Theaters to manage his space, there is hope. Landmark runs the River Oaks Theater in Houston, and cinemas in 24 other cities including Austin, Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC. These theaters are integral to the health of their cities’ art districts — and they are profitable and successful theaters as well. They’ve proven the business model for the revival of independent film cinemas in the US. So why not here?

Significantly, most of these cinemas have greater capacity than what Schneider is envisioning, with three or four separate screening rooms for daytime and evening film showings. Could a 75 seat limited single screen cinema survive in today’s market? Many of Landmark Theaters also have the support of a grassroots city politic that adores film, as well as a neighborhood arts district that provides incentives for art businesses. To the advantage of Baton Rouge, the city council passed in March 2008, the creation of its first ever Arts and Entertainment District downtown, an area bound by North Blvd, 4th Street, River Road and Main Street. — a Disneyland main street occupied by chain stores — but Rhorer is optimistic. He argues that 75% of downtown restaurants are locally owned, not chains, and that the DDD is actively working with local entrepreneurs with an overall interest in Downtown’s improvement.

If as Duany envisioned, a theater at 3rd and Main would be the commercial anchor for downtown, it follows that the failure of a poorly conceived second run movie theater would be a serious blight on neighboring businesses. With the Rave theaters and Citiplace already capturing popular audiences, what chance would a downtown theater have? The answer is that once the film is over would one rather submit to the haunted expanse of the suburban parking lot followed by traffic, or rather enjoy the art district’s Power of Ten. Ultimately, the success of an independent cinema, and of downtown’s arts district, will be due to the passionate clamor of the public-at-large. Realtors like Latter & Blum and developers like Schneider need to hear from the people that the most sustainable and beloved use of the spaces they’re constructing and restoring is a well managed independent repertoire cinema.

—

Note: An earlier version with name misspellings was posted to Sweet Tooth at culturecandy.org

Baton Rouge is a small town that hardly seems to have the urban energy expected for a state capital. A number of concerned planners, civic organizations, corporate sponsors, and urbanist oriented citizens have a vision though. And I’m appreciating their efforts. Firstly, there are obvious attempts to raise awareness of the distinctive urban character of the downtown through way finding signage, restoration and renovation of historic storefronts, facades, and streetscapes, and using attractive “city-beautiful” era type street furniture to evoke the sense that this is a special place that residents here cherish. And there are other ubiquitous, even invisible attributes of the city which reflect the thoughtful patronage of city leaders: there is a freee municipal wi-fi network which covers the Central Business District. Park yourself and your battery operated wi-fi accessible laptop on a sidewalk bench (yes, they have those here as well), and you can read the local paper online.

After my meeting Thursday morning, instead of sitting on an outdoor sidewalk bench though, I walked over to Coffee Star, a local cafe where I was also hoping to check out whatever free community papers and zines were available, and see what fliers may have been posted on a flier table or community corkboard. Coffee Star is a nice cafe (offering free wi-fi) but to my surprise there were no fliers of local art events or music shows. I did find two free community papers but neither seemed to give too much of a glimpse of the local art, music, or youth culture. (Later, someone I met here showed me that this info is found in a Sunday section, called Fun!, inside the city’s daily paper, The Advocate.) Coffee Star also did not have any vegetarian options: even their tomato soup had a meat stock base! But with free wi-fi it feels decidedly spoiled to kvetch.

I couldn’t stay at the cafe too long — anticipating FEMA deployment at any moment, I made certain to make good on my promise to explore Baton Rouge’s levee walk and take some pictures. Levees figure prominently in almost every major American city as most cities were founded as river ports and these rivers naturally overflowed every few years as rivers are wont to. The deposition of sediment from river flooding is the reason why land next to rivers is so fertile. But farming practices in this country have long sought to maximize agricultural land use to the neglect of nature. The essential riparian buffer, the unique vegetated ecosystems that border rivers, is often reduced to only a few meters of scrub. Important trees such as weeping willows, that sunk their roots into the fresh waters of the river, effectively controlling erosion of the riverbanks, were removed. Riverbanks with steeper sides flow faster causing further erosion. This problem was compounded during American industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century when forests east of the Mississippi near cities of any size were clearcut. Without forests to soak up water, the water travels more quickly to creeks, streams, and rivers, carrying soil and other detritus such as farm waste.

There is often no riparian buffer to speak of near the industrialized riverbanks of cities and towns. Add to this, the water poring off of all the impervious surfaces from city parking lots, streets and sidwewalks, driveways, and rooftops, flows directly into stormwater systems getting pumped into nearby rivers and you have the makings for terrific urban floods. Historic urban flooding was rather common place in America until the 1930s and 50s when huge engineering projects accomplished by the US Army Corp of Engineers, effectively created buffers: levees and floodwalls, next to cities saving them from all but the most devastating floods.

Floodwalls and levees provided some solace but there were consequences of course. City residents were cut off from an essential aspect of their environmental habitat by anoter huge layer of urban infrastructure. Obvious recreational uses of rivers and streams diminished, and without concerned and popular usage, rivers and streams became more and more polluted without a large enough constituency to protect and preserve them. Leap ahead to the 1960s and 1970s when rational planning began to be challenged by community oriented planning theories and practices which sought to recognize neighborhood assets for residents to use, and to help rejuvenate city economies. All sorts of wonderful city planning solutions were developed: an increased recognition of arts and culture institutions, restoring public transit systems that had been abandoned in favor of personal automobiles, reusing transit lines for bicycle and pedestrian paths, protecting and promoting historic buildings and residential and business districts, promoting urban art and rethinking public sculpture and wall art (grafitti vs. murals), creating distinctive urban gateways and signage to create a “sense of place”, rethinking public spaces such as streetcorners, plazas, and streets as cultural assets and to enhance an economy oriented to pedestrian use rather than the efficient movement of workers in automobiles into the city by 9am and out of the city to their suburban retreats by 6pm. Urban neighborhoods, some spearated from nearby rivers and tributaries by levees, received renewed attention as these neighborhoods were within pedestrian walking or bicycling distance to the central business district or legacy (or expandable) public transit systems. To keep these neighborhoods attractive, residents had long sought to protect and promote their nearby parks. But for neighborhoods next to rivers the only available greenspace was that dominated by levees and floodwalls. Similarly, for cities looking to leverage the beautiful waterfronts of their central business districts (for perceived enhanced prestige, a more dynamic tourism economy, and taxable waterfront property value increases), planners needed to find some solution to get people to cross the highways, railroads, and levees commonly situated parallel to their urban waterfront.

Examples of these sorts of developments can be found in the American Planning Association’s Plannign magazine. And non-profit groups such as the Project for Public Spaces, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and even conservation groups such as the Trust for Public Land, help to advocate for reusing public open spaces to enhance the pedetrian, and recreational life and economies of cities. Movements such as Smart Growth in the US, sustainable development in Europe and developing countries, and the Healthy Cities movement in Canada and elsewhere, openly encourage these sorts of developments as a strategy which both controls development through thoughtful stewardship of urban open spaces, and brings other values to local economies (health, tourism, direct use, hedonic/property value, commuter transit, and “green” infrastructure).

Other more intangible values, harder to affix an economic/monetary value on: psychological health, aesthetics, spiritual satisfaction, quality and diversity of wildlife habitat, are also enhanced but are harder to advocate for. And to add some frustratin complexity which is oft ignores, the values of once kind of open space development oriented to one tangible value (tourism) may conflict with another (habitat). Part of the planning process is determining priorities, and in creating a recreational use for an abandoned and sullied urban open space, the restoration of the environment will take a backseat to whatever designs are dreamt to drive new users to the space. So, for example, a desire to provide residents a clear view of their river from a levee walk, might inspire planners to cut away the “weeds and brush” growing next to the river, ignoring the essential value of the riparian buffer in controlling riverbank erosion, in providing access to wildlife inhabiting a diverse ecosystem, as well as providing a nurturing habitat for fish that lay their eggs and grow their spawn in the slower, cooler waters of riverbanks shaded by river trees and roots. Public perceptions of safety in urban parks, mediated by nighttime lighting and public 911 kiosks, are often at odds with park designs which benefit wildlife habitat. My own feeling is that an responsibly developed and brilliant landscape designs will respect the use of that space for the other creatures we share our cities with, and will also recognize the value of that space as natural and sustainable green infrastructure.

Baton Rouge’s thinking for urban redevelopment along its riverfront levee has not sought to restore any of the terribly important Mississippi riparian buffer lost in the last three centuries to te industrial use of its port and the creation of its massive levee. But they have created an attractive levee walk that connects the downtown to LSU’s campus with plans for expansion both north and south along the Mississippi. The result is pleasant enough but also a little comical: the repetition of lampost, bench, garbage pail every twenty, could benefit from some diversity in the form of the street furniture. (That would, of course, have cost more money for the project.) A restored train station next to the river was made into an annex of a new museum of natural history and planetarium. The levee connects to a WWII battleship, the USS Kitt, a fantastic piece of modern sculpture and fountain, and a very artistic, if baffling, piece of river architecture… something like a multi-tiered pier with many curvy paper clip shaped piping. Pictures to follow (full size images can be browsed in the photo gallery). I’m looking for information as to who designed the fountain architecture and the river pier tower.