re: Austin's skyline in 7 short years

quote:

---

It just never made sense to me how the two centerpieces of the city (downtown and LSU) are separated by two miles of ghetto wasteland. It's always struck me as horribly sad.

---

LSU was originally downtown by the capital, but Huey Long wanted to build a new larger campus so it could grow into a real prestigious university. The land on which the campus now sits was a plantation. The land in between campus and downtown along Highland is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and was a blue-collar black neighborhood even then.

At the time, the footprint of the city was roughly Exxon with a blue-collar white neighborhood surrounding it around Plank Road; Downtown and Mid City extending out to around Park Blvd.; and Old South Baton Rouge. The land along Nicholson was plantation land, Much of the Garden District and Southdowns was a swamp until the WPA built the LSU Lakes in the 30's, the rest of Mid City was Goodwood plantation, and the Essen/Bluebonnet/Siegan area was all farms.

The area around Nicholson went to hell when the sewer plant was build right across the railroad tracks on river road. The nice houses there became abandoned due to the smell and slums were erected in their place back in the 50's.

Now, the south sewer plant near Gardere has been enlarged leaving the central sewer plant between LSU and Downtown unnecessary. That sewer plant is scheduled to soon be dismantled, just in time to coincide with the completion of the Nicholson Gateway developments and the Water Campus. Even if the streetcar is never built, the property values of Old South Baton Rouge should explode over the next decade.