By GARY PERILLOUX

        Advocate business writer

        Published: Jan 13, 2010 - Page: 1B

The Downtown Development District wants Baton Rouge residents, workers and visitors to experience more of the city through a proposed 2.7-mile trail system tying Memorial Stadium to City Park.

The project could cost $2 million to $3 million or as much as $20 million, depending on public and private funding, enthusiasm for the project, and amenities chosen, said Davis Rhorer, the DDD executive director.

Building parts of the downtown greenway — as the landscaped and lighted pedestrian and cycle path is called — could begin later this year and continue in phases, said Mike Futrell, the city-parish chief administrative officer.

After seeing a below-the-freeway trail system on Buffalo Bayou in Houston, DDD officials looked at downtown trails in Chicago, Richmond, Va., and other cities to hone the concept for the Baton Rouge greenway. The project was unveiled Tuesday at the DDD January meeting at the Shaw Center for the Arts.

“This fits in precisely with Mayor Holden’s vision of actively promoting a healthy Baton Rouge through the increased use of walking trails, bike trails and connecting our public parks,” Futrell said later. “To that extent, we support the DDD (project).”

The greenway could complement a Mississippi River levee bike path that’s slated for extension from Skip Bertman Drive at LSU south to Farr Park and farther north into downtown.

The greenway’s tentative route would swing west from Memorial Stadium to Arsenal Park beside the Capitol, south on Sixth Street or Seventh Street and east on North Boulevard. From there, it would travel under Interstate 110, where public art and parking amenities could be included, and turn east again from the Old South Baton Rouge neighborhood to Brooks Park and City Park.

Rhorer said the project would dovetail with a BREC plan just beginning for redevelopment of the 40-acre Memorial Stadium park that includes a 21,500-seat football stadium, baseball diamonds and former fairgrounds. A potential passenger rail station is at that park also.

“It’s important to us that there be daily uses there,” said Rhorer, whose staff recently bicycled the length of the proposed greenway. “It highlights some of the best that is in Baton Rouge.”

Definitive funding sources have yet to be determined, and the superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish’s recreation commission said BREC has no special funds available for the greenway project. BREC does back the proposal, Superintendent Bill Palmer said.

“We’re very excited about the connectivity to downtown and to the Northdale community (near Memorial Stadium) and that whole area,” he said. “Memorial Stadium is really a fantastic site. The facilities there were well-built and … it has really good access.”

He said it’s too early to say what capital improvements will be made and how much they’ll cost at the park, where the stadium dates back to the 1940s. One expected project will be an outdoor track venue built outside the stadium, which is too tightly configured for an internal track, Palmer said.

Futrell said funding sources could include additional stimulus package money from Washington, D.C., and dollars from the 2011 federal fiscal year budget. The city-parish is discussing the project with the state’s congressional delegation.

“It’s not pie in the sky,” Futrell said of the greenway project. “This is something that is doable and doable in the near term, at least in phases. There’s no excuse in waiting when you have good ideas and plans in hand.”