Alexandria Daily Town Talk (LA)

March 10, 2010
editorialboard@thetowntalk.com
Article Text:

Our View: Challenges in Alexandria area offer chances to be smarter

Intelligent discussions about "smart growth" and a community's quality of life are always welcome. This is especially true in towns, cities and regions that have awakened to find themselves facing significant infrastructure and revenue challenges shaped over time and common needs made urgent by the pressures of the moment.

Such is the context for a presentation to be made March 16 in Alexandria by Patrick C. Moore and Nathan Gaspard, both of the well-regarded Moore Planning Group of Alexandria. The managing principal and his director of planning, respectively, will address members of the Rotary Club of Alexandria, an audience whose mission of providing service to others suggests these are people who are predisposed to the principles and value of smart growth.

The presentation comes to the right place at the right time. The Alexandria metropolitan area is heaving with tectonic plates of change. Consider just a few of the factors at work on the region: The levees on the Red River in Rapides Parish and beyond, and on bayous inside municipal limits, are under scrutiny, thanks to regulatory changes triggered by levee failures in Orleans Parish when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Resulting changes to local flood maps could affect all manner of issues - for better or worse -- from property values and insurance requirements to the region's viability for economic development. This challenge is also a smart-growth opportunity.

State transportation officials project a measurable increase in highway traffic for the metro area, driven primarily by numbers of vehicles per household, improved north-south access through the state and ongoing development of an east-west corridor.
Local discussions about building an "inner loop" around Alexandria and Pineville need a smartgrowth framework to be effective.

The city of Alexandria is in the process of spending $90 million on infrastructure improvements in a plan designed to ensure the public's health and safety and increase the city's capacity to attract and accommodate private investment. Investors seek communities that are healthy, strong and committed to development that is both synergistic and sustainable, the pillars of smart growth.

More than anyone, landscape architect Pat Moore and his firm have made smart growth part of this community's conversation. Be sure to listen -- and engage.