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The Metro Council approved an ordinance without objection Wednesday, accepting Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s strategic plan for redeveloping the River Center complex and developing a headquarters hotel.
Broome’s proposal adheres to the ordinance the council approved in March, which OK’d LSU’s plans for a new arena and directed the mayor to identify strategies for developing additional convention capacity and soliciting a developer to create a convention hotel at the River Center.
“This is an opportunity to make a game-changing new project for Baton Rouge,” Jill Kidder with Visit Baton Rouge said to the council.
Broome’s proposal also includes a project oversight committee comprising stakeholders from the area. District 10 Council member Carolyn Coleman will serve as committee chair.
Broome has an appointment on the committee that has yet to be announced.
The other members of the committee are:
- Jonathan Grimes (Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge)
- Ann Trappey (Baton Rouge Area Chamber)
- Chris Meyer (Baton Rouge Area Foundation)
- Rodney Braxton (Build Baton Rouge)
- Whitney Hoffman Sayal (Downtown Development District)
- Gary Jupiter (Hospitality industry representative nominated by Visit Baton Rouge)
- April Hawthorne (North Baton Rouge Economic Development District)
- Jill Kidder (Visit Baton Rouge and committee vice chairperson)
- Jennifer Racca (Metro Council appointment).
The proposal also calls for a project management team of development and finance professionals to assist the council and the project oversight committee with preparing the requests for proposals for the project’s design and construction phases.
The council also approved an ordinance finalizing a $150,000 contract with Fishman Haygood for professional services related to the River Center strategic plan.
Charles Landry, a partner at Fishman Haygood, said at Wednesday’s meeting that the contract is set up for the firm to determine if the project is viable. If the project advances, the firm will return to the Metro Council to amend the contract to compensate it for the additional services.
“Something like this could take two or three years to accomplish,” he says. “This is an incremental stop point where we’ll come back at that point and see how viable this project is. If we get to a point where we’re negotiating definitive documents with lawyers and their lenders, this [contract] would not be at all adequate for that. This is an appropriate point to come back to the council with the committee to say, ‘Here’s where we are.’”
