Of course not. Then, it would be gentrification.

Let's look at why NBR is the way it is. They claim the infrastructure is out of date and stagnated. Most of it was built in the 60's and 70's, but NBR has an actual road grid, with plenty of 4-lane highways. It's population has not grown at all since the 70's, and in fact, has shrunk. In the meantime, the south side, which was nothing but farm roads up until the mid 80's, has seen tremendous growth. Infrastructure investment was needed because it was undeveloped. The North Side doesn't need any more roads or expanded roads. Sure, it could use some new traffic lights, repaved streets, repaired pot-holes, light synching, ect, but so could most of the roads in the parish.

There are 4 glaring issues for NBR going forward that need to be solved:
1. Terrible public schools. I don't think the blame is exclusively on the management of the schools or on the students, but they both certainly share blame
2. Lack of an Emergency Room. This is absolutely needed, but where will the money come from to pay for it?
3. Crime. No one wants to start up a business in an area with frequent robberies and murders.
4. Zoning blight. Most of the empty commercial space along Plank Road, Scenic Highway, and other thoroughfares of NBR were built prior to modern building codes. They have out of code electrical systems and lack the room for the requisite number of parking spaces and wheelchair ramps. It is physically impossible for those properties to be renovated into commercial spaces to comply with those building codes. Once an old building is renovated beyond a set percentage of its tax-assessed value, it has to be fully upgraded to meet all modern building codes. These blighted properties are thus too far gone to be renovated cheaply enough to reopen, and the property won't allow for the parking spaces needed to be brought up to modern specs. This can be fixed by: A. re-assessing the tax value higher, B. adjusting the building codes so that in older areas businesses can operate with fewer parking spaces, or C. offering a special program to grandfather in more types of buildings.

The broken homes in the black community cause 1 and 3. 2 and 4 can be fixed, but only with SBR involvement and money, which likely won't happen prior to solving 1 and 3.

This post was edited on 8/3/16 at 1:49 pm