Article by Mukul Verma, RedEye.

Baton Rouge’s housing authority is preparing to build a 114-acre community centered on agriculture and wellness north of Florida Boulevard, expanding on the success of its new mixed-income apartments on nearby Ardenwood Drive.

A site plan for the project shows a previously announced YWCA with an early learning center on Ardenwood, stables for horses, 55 single-family homes, 20 townhouses, student housing, a commercial farm, restaurants and office spaces.

Ardendale's "Agrihood" Site Plan

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Why it matters: Advocates say strong communities should offer a mix of uses and incomes—places where people can live alongside neighbors with different incomes and reach many of the services they need without relying on a car.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority and its development partner, Partners Southeast, have already delivered the mixed-income apartments across from the 114-acre site.

The details:

• The authority owns 114 acres between N. Ardenwood Drive and Lobdell Boulevard.
• The city-parish’s MovEBR program is spending an estimated $16 million on a two-lane street connecting N. Ardenwood and Lobdell.
• The road, expected to open in about a year, will unlock the property for development by the authority and Partners Southeast, a development affiliate.

What’s already built:

• J. Wesley Daniels, who leads the authority, said Cypress at Ardendale is seeing strong demand. A market-rate three-bedroom unit rents for about $2,000 a month there.
• Cypress at Ardendale Senior, a 70-unit independent-living community, is under construction on Ardenwood.
• Ardendale includes a community center with a pool and outdoor grilling areas.
• The community is designed at a human scale. Its central apartment buildings rise no more than three stories, and plans call for a shared space across from Ardendale’s existing pool and gathering place.

“We wanted to give it the flavor of Rosemary Beach or Alys Beach,” Daniels said. “We didn’t want to go back with the huge monolithic buildings. It just feels like a very unique community, like no other in the Capital Region.”

• Daniels said the authority also plans to build single-family homes on 15 acres on the same side of Ardenwood.

What’s planned: The 114-acre next phase of Ardendale will blend housing with other uses.

• The site will include plenty of green space, partly because it contains wetlands.
• Daniels also wants Baton Rouge Community College to build its baseball complex on land the college owns along Lobdell.
• The inspiration, he said, is Serenbe, a 2,000-acre community near Atlanta that preserves 70% of its land for forests, wildflower fields and nature trails.
• Agriculture is central to Serenbe, which includes a 25-acre organic farm along with restaurants, shops, hotels, arts programming and events.
• But while Serenbe is upscale, Ardendale is intended to include more affordable housing, and, possibly, student housing.
• Ardendale will also include an equestrian area, a YWCA on Ardenwood, a possible elementary school, working farm, restaurants, commercial spaces.

The backstory: Ardendale has been more than two decades in the making.
The land was donated to several nonprofits, which eventually sold it to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

The foundation created a master plan for the site nearly 20 years ago before turning the project over to Build Baton Rouge, then known as the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority. Build Baton Rouge later sold the property to the housing authority.

The authority’s work: Ardendale's next phase is no pipe dream. Evidence of the ability to deliver is visible across the parish:

• Near downtown, the authority built River South, a Highland Road community with 32 duplexes, two single-family homes and a 12-unit garden-style apartment complex.
• Across the road, it developed Cypress River Lofts, an upscale, industrial-style community with 19 energy-efficient homes between downtown, LSU and the Water Campus.
• At Ardendale, it is now building the 70-unit Cypress at Ardendale Senior community.
• The authority also has applied for tax credits to build housing at the former Earl K. Long Medical Center site in North Baton Rouge.

The bottom line: In recent years, the Housing Authority has shown it can build—and fill—desirable mixed-income housing. If that momentum continues at Ardendale, the project could attract more investment north of Florida Boulevard and begin breaking down a psychological barrier that has long served as an economic dividing line in the parish.

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