Honor Award

Rewilding City Park

Chad Caletka, Student ASLA, Undergraduate, Louisiana State University
Faculty Advisors: Van Cox, FASLA and Lake Douglas, ASLA

City Park, a cypress swamp turned golf course, is located in the core of Baton Rouge and adjacent to the University Lakes, Baton Rouge’s most used recreation area. Rewilding City Park builds an ecological strategy to reinvigorate native ecologies while diversifying the park’s program for a wider array of users. With economic generators and aggressive management strategies that maximize ecological health, City Park becomes a pilot for a new treatment of the University Lakes ecosystem.

Introduction

Baton Rouge City Park, a former cypress swamp turned golf course, is a 95 acre community park located in the core of Baton Rouge between downtown and Louisiana State University (LSU). The park is at a transect of the low-income Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood to the west, the Garden District and downtown to the north, the higher income Lakes District neighborhoods to the east, and LSU to the south. City Park is also at the headwaters of the University Lakes recreation area and watershed. The lakes are home to 7.5 miles of paved recreation trails that circle City Park and are the most heavily used recreation area in Baton Rouge.

The University Lakes have been under scrutiny for some time due to their poor water quality issues and crumbling infrastructure. City Park is also under review as its golf course and current management are a heavy monetary burden that is compounding environmental problems as the park continues to be managed as a historic golf course. When cross-referenced to the availability of golf facilities in Baton Rouge, the 18 hole, 91.5 acre Webb Park course is located just 1.7 miles from the 9 hole, 25 acre City Park Course. In addition, there are 410 acres of golf courses and four 18 hole courses within a five mile radius of City Park, and comparatively, there are 0 acres of conservation areas in the same radius. With multiple, better golfing options available in close proximity and City Park’s adjacency to the eutrophied and decaying University Lakes, can City Park be designed to make a statement to improve local environmental stresses and serve a wider range of localized users?

Yes, and Rewilding City Park is a proposed solution to this question. Building on current ecological models ranging from the romanticized restoration ecology to the aggressive management of “radical rewilding,” City Park finds a middle ground in the ideals of reconciliation ecology. In reconciliation ecology, the ideal of a historic baseline, in this case a former cypress swamp, is understood to be an unattainable and arguably impractical goal. However, there is an understanding that City Park and the University Lakes can be a much richer, functioning ecology that fosters far more biodiversity than its current state, all the while maintaining and improving current recreational facilities and infrastructure. Rewilding City Park outlines this ecological model for a new treatment of the University Lakes and uses City Park as a pilot project for this revitalization.

Strategy

City Park contains a thirty foot elevation change, a huge topographic variety relative to the surrounding floodplain. Within these different topographic ranges lies several different ecologies including those of the riparian edge, cypress swamp, bottomland hardwood forest, mixed pine uplands, and coastal prairie. Rewilding City Park begins with an understanding of these ecologies and how they can build an ecological framework to cleanse water, provide habitat for city-dwelling wildlife, foster biodiversity and ecological education within Baton Rouge’s population core, and provide a canvas for varying programmatic features to take shape through time.

Programming

The programming within the park’s ecologies begins with opening access to the park by removing the existing golf course and building stronger linkages into surrounding neighborhoods. Existing park amenities, including a dog park, tennis courts and facilities, a children’s playground and picnic area, and the Baton Rouge Gallery, an art gallery with weekend arts programming, are preserved or enhanced due to their current viability and popular use. The first of new programmatic elements includes an environmental sculpture park that utilizes the Baton Rouge Gallery and former golf pro shop facilities. In time, the Gallery will expand its current scope to commission artists to build site-specific pieces that work within the concept of Rewilding City Park, and these pieces will be on display throughout the park. In addition to the sculpture park and expanded arts facilities, City Park will also house two restaurants for economic support, one adjacent to the Baton Rouge Gallery for dining, and a secondary restaurant on the shore of City Park Lake for soups and sandwiches. A boatshed and canoe/kayak rental facility will also be located near the shore of City Park Lake and will fill a long-needed desire for park visitors to rent paddle boats.

Design

The site design is organized by topographic qualifications for ecologies, a rail grade that bisects the park into north and south parcels, and a three tiered circulation system for varying spatial experiences of the park. The three tiered circulation hierarchy contains a primary circulation loop for bikes and joggers that integrates the park into the University Lakes trail system and improves access from surrounding neighborhoods. A secondary circulation system opens access into to the park and its programmatic anchors, and a tertiary circulation system consists of smaller width and softer material trails that provide more intimate experiences to the site’s ecological amenities.

The site ecologies are organized around a large wetland water treatment feature that crosses in a southeastern arc across Dalrymple Drive south to City Park Lake. This wetland displays primarily cypress swamp and wetland edge ecologies with fragments of bottomland hardwoods on its higher topographic margins. This working wetland intercepts a large inflow from Old South Baton Rouge to the northwest and removes sediment and cleanses water through a system of weirs and wetlands as the water moves its way south into City Park Lake, all while building a stronger connection to the newly renovated Brooks Park. In addition, there are three hierarchies of circulation through this wetland feature for the primary recreation/commuting loop, passive strolling, and tertiary, intimate wetland experiences.

As the elevation begins to increase up the floodplain terrace, swamp and bottomland species transition into mixed pine upland ecologies. The mixed pine forest is located primarily on the margins of the rail grade and forms a spatial definition for a large recreation lawn in the southeastern corner of the park and forms a backdrop for the mixed coastal prairie on the northern parcel of the park. Within this mixed pine prairie is the bulk of display spaces for the sculpture park. Also within the prairie is a series of hedgerows to support bird species while also segmenting off “rooms” for sculpture displays.

Managment

The management of City Park will build on current park management via BREC, Baton Rouge’s taxpayer funded recreation commission. The formation of a public-private partnership will bring in an outside management consultant such as the Trust for Public Land to form a non-profit committee for the park’s additional funding and construction. This non-profit will coordinate and represent members from the city/government, neighborhood organizations, nearby institutions, the Baton Rouge Arts Council, local conservation groups, and several local businesses who pledge support. As the non-profit secures funding, a master plan and budgeted endowment will be drafted to move the project into construction. Throughout the process, BREC will be in close collaboration with the non-profit group and will continue to maintain City Park following construction. Through the coordination of local government, BREC, the Trust for Public Land (or some other consultant), a non-profit committee for City Park, local business and private support, and a carefully chosen design team, City Park will begin its move towards a new paradigm of ecology in the University Lakes. Rewilding City Park will be the catalyst for integrating healthy, functional ecologies into an improved recreation infrastructure for a more beautiful and improved University Lakes ecosystem.

American Society of Landscape Architects