Infrastructure committee backs economic corridor recommendation, outlines plan to compile traffic and utility projects

The Livingston Parish Infrastructure Committee discussed a Master Plan Review Committee recommendation to include an "economic corridor" overlay in the parish's updated comprehensive master plan and outlined work to assemble a parish-wide list of traffic and utility projects to make those corridor areas ready for commercial and industrial investment.

Gerald Burns, a member of the Livingston Parish Master Plan Review Committee, told the committee the committee had drafted a letter and would forward it to the planning commission and the parish council as a unanimous recommendation. Burns said the proposed corridor — the "High Growth Corridor" in the draft update — runs from the Canadian National Railroad in the north to roughly two miles south of Interstate 12 and is intended to concentrate manufacturing, warehouses, retail centers and higher-density housing where major infrastructure is already available.

"The infrastructure is there to support all these things," Burns said, noting the corridor's rail, Highway 190 and proximity to I-12. He described the corridor as a tool to attract businesses that provide high levels of sales and property tax revenue for parish services.

Committee members debated how to balance efforts to recruit industry with ongoing residential development. Several members said rooftops and housing are necessary to support hospitals and retail, while others urged a zoning and master-plan approach that privileges industrial and large commercial uses near major corridors and reserves residential growth for other areas. A committee member summarized that the corridor should favor commercial and industrial frontage within the first few hundred feet of major highways, while allowing complementary higher-density residential uses behind that frontage.

On implementation, staff and members emphasized that recruiting large employers requires showing connectivity and utilities: road and rail access, water, gas and power, and that the parish should prepare an infrastructure map that shows committed future investments (road connectors, frontage roads, rail spurs, airport expansion) to demonstrate readiness to prospective employers.

The committee agreed that two members would prepare a parish-wide "wish list" of 25–30 traffic and infrastructure projects — turn lanes, roundabouts, connector roads and drainage improvements — and present that list at the next infrastructure committee meeting for members to review and add district-specific requests. The committee said the list will be a project vision with no money committed, intended to make projects shovel-ready so the parish can apply for grants and match funding when opportunities arise.

Ending: Committee members said the master-plan recommendation and the infrastructure project list will be forwarded to the planning commission and the parish council; the committee set a follow-up meeting to review the prioritized projects and begin preparing grant applications.