re: Baton Rouge stepping it's tourism game up

There is something missing from this picture, but I can't quite put my fingergun on it.

My wife and I actually opened a business in the River District during this time. The Downtown Development Authority and its director, Liz Swaine, are so crooked that even 50 wants out of the deal now.
The strip of buildings is partly owned by the city, partly by the casinos, and managed by the DDA, so you can't get anything repaired because everyone just points fingers.
We were promised we would get running water for 9 months before we finally just gave up. You can't run a food establishment legally without it. They didn't care because they owned the health department and could still get you a permit. We just weren't comfortable with it, so we gave it up.

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We need a space needle with bright red neon lights. A big red stick shooting up to the sky.

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Baton Rouge already has that tall water tower downtown that looks like a large stick. It was painted silver for decades, but when they finally repainted it in recent years, they painted it white for whatever reason instead of making it look more like a giant red stick. Someone (I think it was actor Jamie Wax) started a social media effort to instead shine red uplights upon it to at least make it appear glowing red at night. I guess that his endeavor must have fizzled out, because when I've visited Baton Rouge recently it still hasn't glowed red after dark.

Water tower photo.

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Can we bring back Kip Holden's idea for an aquarium along the river?

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Kip got savaged for that by the media and his opponents, but if you go back and look at it, it was a really interesting project that could have turned into a great thing for the area if done right. But politics and greed nipped it in the bud, as happens so often here.