Past Challenge to EBR Parish Tree Commission

From "Business Report", 9/16/2003:

Baton Rouge's new commercial landscape ordinance is causing a riff between the city-parish and a handful of builders and developers who say Baton Rouge can't afford to be so green.Though the ordinance, an update of the 1994 original, was three years and several public meetings in the making, critics argue the Metro Council's July approval was a rush to judgment because it didn't consider the views of those impacted by the changes.Part of the Unified Development Code, the revised landscape ordinance, after a 90-day delay, is scheduled to take effect Nov. 11.


Carolyn Torrance of Salco Construction says the city-parish Landscape and Tree Commission, the group that wrote the new rules, kept commercial builders out of the process to squelch dissenting viewpoints. The development community, she contends, didn't learn of the regulations until June, when the Planning Commission gave the ordinance its blessing. Moreover, Torrance and others worry the additional landscaping requirements will dramatically increase the cost of construction, impact the size of buildings and stifle industrial development in older sections of the parish.'When I read the ordinance I see cost, cost, cost,' said Torrance. 'The city is spending everyone else's money very easily.'


Commission members counter that the complaints are much ado about nothing. They say there's nothing onerous about the ordinance and that the public is demanding a greener Baton Rouge.'The changes we've made are baby steps,' said commission member Dennis 'Buck' Abbey, a landscape architect and associate professor at LSU. 'They've made it sound like the world is falling apart.'The new ordinance not only requires more landscaping on commercial and industrial projects but also calls for larger trees and additional green space buffer zones. Supporters of the ordinance contend better landscaped developments, both residential and commercial, aren't just important for environmental and aesthetic reasons but also aid the city's quest to attract companies with higher paying, white collar jobs.'The cities of the future aren't going to look like Airline Highway, they'll look like Highland Road,' said Abbey. 'Visit any thriving city and that's what you'll see.'While East Baton Rouge Parish is relatively green, with 45 percent of the parish covered by tree canopy, experts point out that the percentage has dropped 11 percent from a decade ago.  https://www.businessreport.com/news/2003/sep/16/the-cost-of-green/


Note: Subsequently, downtown Baton Rouge did put in place a "tree ordinance"....
Ordinance 14363 (Adopted by MetroCouncil on 3/19/2008), Section X, "Streetscape Planting":
http://www.downtownbatonrouge.org/downloads/pdf/AEordinance.pdf