Alexandria Daily Town Talk (LA)

November 30, 2008
Section: Opinion
Page: 06C
Article Text:

Our view: Goals met with vision, collaboration

Faithful readers know about Pat Moore, the award-winning landscape architect and smart-growth acolyte who has helped put Alexandria and Louisiana on the map, literally and figuratively.

Patrick C. Moore and his Moore Planning Group LLC are heavily invested in the city and the state as stakeholders and stewards who understand the fundamental importance of vision and collaboration.

Such an approach to planning is common sense in theory, but much less so in practice. Moore and Moore Planning have made it their mission to fix that, and lots of smart people have taken notice.

Among them is Jacques M. Roy, the first-term mayor of Alexandria who is leading a high-profile effort to revitalize the city, armed with a plan that reads like a page from Moore’s smart-growth play book.

Such like-minded things are on our mind today for a good reason: They fit.

Moore is doing nothing less than helping to build a city from the ground up. He and his firm were retained to handle the master planning for Central, a growing rural community in East Baton Rouge Parish.

Incorporated in April 2005, Central is Louisiana’s newest city and a virtual blank slate -- a smart-growth advocate’s dream.
Moore Planning Group has completed the initial master planning for Central and provided city leaders with much more than a road map for development. The plan provides detailed digital direction about where and how public and private investment should take place, and it does so with the will of the people and Mother Nature in mind.

The plan, Moore says on his Web site, will “guide positive growth, catalyze sustainable economic development and promote quality of life improvements.”

Those goals sound familiar to everyone who has a vested interest in the future of Alexandria.

They capture the spirit of the city’s SPARC initiative to develop Special Planned Activity Redevelopment Corridors and, perhaps, to spark investment.

In Central, Moore is witnessing a birth. In Alexandria, he hopes for a rebirth, and he sees what Mayor
Roy and others see.

“We’re sitting on a gold mine,” Moore told a Town Talk reporter. “But we’re not sitting anymore. We’re marching in a direction.”

A smart-growth direction, we’d add, one that starts with vision, advances with collaboration and leads to good things.

On the Web: www.mooreplanninggroup.com and www.cityofalexandriala.com.
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Record Number: alx61417958