I-10 design plan presented

• By RICHARD BURGESS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: May 15, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — A plan for future development along Interstate 10 calls for a balance of commercial and residential areas, buffers to shield neighborhoods from traffic, and better road connections in a city not known for ease of travel.

The design proposal, presented Wednesday to a city-parish planning group, was developed by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Community Design Workshop.

The group’s plan addresses how best to guide the development expected to follow completion of a frontage road system along I-10 in Lafayette Parish — road work now in the early planning stage.

The Community Design Workshop developed the design plan out of a series of meetings last year with business owners and residents in areas along the interstate.

The resulting land-use plan attempts to balance the desire of residents to be shielded from increased traffic and the desire of business owners for increased visibility.

The plan includes provisions for green belts between neighborhoods and new roads, such as a stand of trees that could cut noise and hide cars from the view of nearby houses.

Community Design Workshop Director Thomas Sammons said sound walls were discussed, but most residents were more interested in vegetative buffers.

“We want to be buffered, but we don’t want to be walled in,” he said.

The plan also seeks to improve connections with existing roadways.

“One of the things we suffer from in this town it that ability to interconnect,” Sammons said.

The land-use plan must also deal with a kink that developed last year when the Federal Emergency Management Agency proposed new flood maps that reclassify two big chunks of undeveloped land along I-10 as floodways.

The classification, which city-parish officials are challenging, would severely limit development possibilities if finalized.

The proposed floodways include areas along I-10 near Scott and most of the area around the Louisiana Avenue interchange.