Inside Report for Oct. 24, 2008

• By LANNY KELLER
• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Oct 24, 2008 - Page: 7B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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As Mayor-President Kip Holden pushes a bond issue and tax package for almost $1 billion, most of the items in the package seem familiar. Fire stations and a new jail, drainage canals and bridge replacements: Those are the basics of municipal government.

The expansion of the River Center, to draw more conventioneers to Baton Rouge, seems a relatively common expenditure for city-parish government.

But throw in the Alive! project and many voters are likely to say, “Huh?”

For Holden and other boosters of the project, the idea of Alive-and-its-exclamation-point is fundamental to the bond issue.

While jails and fire stations are clearly essential services, they do not provide revenue, the mayor said. Holden said the city needs to use part of the bond issue for projects that will generate new jobs and dollars in the economy, to help replace the property taxes and sales taxes to be increased and spent on the projects.

“We have to drive the economy,” Holden said in a meeting with The Advocate’s editorial board. “Baton Rouge has been fortunate. But we have a natural resource we can choose to do something with.”

He was talking about the Mississippi River and the downtown riverfront, where the Alive! project hopes to create a destination venue that will draw in tourists.

With $247 million from the bond issue and some additional support from the state — Holden says he has an understanding with Gov. Bobby Jindal about supporting the infrastructure needs of the project — the Audubon Nature Institute of New Orleans will design and operate the Alive! center, Holden said, although there is no formal agreement about that relationship as yet.

Backers said the project will bring alive — obviously — the earth sciences and coastal sciences in the same way that Audubon projects in New Orleans have with the Aquarium, the Audubon Zoo and the Insectarium.

Thousands of Baton Rouge families visit those facilities every year, and Audubon President Ron Forman said the attractions have done what no one believed possible, making New Orleans a destination both for adult partiers and for family groups.

John Spain of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation said focus groups asked what Baton Rougeans want to see on the riverfront. The Alive! project will provide not only the gee-whiz technology of the newest family attractions around the country but an educational component families want to see, Spain said.

The locals stressed that there should be local discounts, so that families can return to the site frequently, and that it be run not by government but by professionals. “Audubon has a track record,” Spain said.

Spain said not only that the attraction would provide a resource for families looking for cheaper vacations in these days of high gasoline prices but that it would provide a revenue stream that would operate the facilities. “We’ve been fairly conservative about these numbers” in project attendance, Spain said.