JOHN PERKINS
Contributing Columnist
Shreveport City Councilman Grayson Boucher withdrew his plan to convert the second oldest Sears building in Shreveport into a new police station for SPD. With all the controversy in Shreveport as we find ourselves circling the drain, why is it so hard to get a modern police facility built? It hasn’t been that long since the oldest Sears building in Shreveport was converted into housing and retail on Texas Street downtown. That took a long time. Why not do this?
Enter William Hartman, a retired landscape architect who lives in Shreveport after teaching at La Tech. Mr. Hartman has been meeting with a group of architects and urban planners for lunch for some time where these issues are discussed. I’m lucky to get invited to sit in, and I ask questions. I’m curious about our built environment.
Hartman posted some maps with lines drawn on the Strong Towns Shreveport Facebook page, where he is a moderator. One of his map illustrations asks, “What if we built the new SPD HQ on city-owned vacant property at the corner of Allen Avenue and Milam in Allendale?” Only two blocks from the city jail, the Shreveport City Marshal’s Office and the municipal courts. A great location for access to the junction of I-49 and I-20 ICCs. Once completed, the old James Gardner building on Texas Avenue could be abandoned like Shreveport does with old buildings, or demolished and hopefully redeveloped with mixed-income housing that could benefit from the nearby SporTran hub and all the potential retail along Texas Avenue.
As Hartman says, this could be a win/win for Shreveport and for the Shreveport Police Officers Association that came out against Boucher’s proposal for the abandoned Sears building. “But wait, Perk,” I hear you thinking, “what about that unfunded mega-project that the business community wants to build right through Allendale?” I know, when mega-projects finally get our tax dollars, they generate a lot of what politicians call “fees for friends.” We can’t leave out our friends who depend on the tax dollar windfall, right? It would be great for Shreveport and the police union and all, but what about the megabucks that come when the Gold Pooping Unicorn passes over the city?
I-49 through Shreveport could be finished as early as 2039, according to Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments (NLCOG) leader Kent Rogers. The cost estimated for the 3.6 miles of elevated slab through Allendale is about $200 million per mile. Arkansas isn’t about to start on their gap through Texarkana and on to Fort Smith, but current estimates are $23 million a mile there. I-49 from New Orleans through Lafayette? Nada. Choosing Build Alternative 5 for Shreveport would bring similar “fees for friends” to rebuild and upgrade The Loop, which is crumbling.
I asked NLCOG Transportation Committee at their meeting last week when they would honor a Sunshine Records Request to “show their work” on their traffic projections. Their lawyer said, essentially, “The dog ate their homework.” More later: PerkWrites@gmail.com