Driving down Highland Road into an area of town where most LSU students are afraid to go is a class of architecture students getting out of their comfort zones and getting into a community helping residents and learning in the process.
Known in the LSU Course Catalog as Arch 5002 — Design Studio and Arch 5004 — Seminar, this class, taught by LSU architecture professor David Baird, has improved a community struggling to improve its image. The students have formed friendships with their clients while learning practical construction techniques that could never be taught in a classroom.
Only 1.2 percent of Baton Rouge’s total income comes from Old South Baton Rouge, and more than half of its residents live at the poverty level, with 29.1 percent of those individuals living at half the poverty level — $12,575 or less per year, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.
Baird said students who enter the work force who only serve affluent clientele are not trained to work with people with low to moderate means.
“It’s a different situation than dealing with a large company,” he said.
All architecture seniors, broken in groups of two and three, are working with five different businesses around the Old South Baton Rouge community, he said.
The courses act as one and are broken into three phases: programming, design and construction or final presentation, he said.
      The students assessed the businesses’ current practices with the goal to help the business be more prosperous after renovations. They devised a design for renovation and have done the construction themselves.
With the final presentation Friday, all construction must be finished by then.
Student Michelle Hanks, who is working with Dale Wood and Dustin Sammarco to renovate Evonne Thomas’ flower shop — Mable’s Flowershop — said everyone in the neighborhood is incredibly friendly.
“They come in and say, ‘What y’all doing?’ all the time,” she said.
Hanks and Wood said they see at least half a dozen members of the community after Sunday mass at the church across the street and Wednesdays for choir practice.
Hanks said people think the construction is actually a new shop that is opening and think what they are doing is amazing.
She said she hears people ask her all the time, “Can y’all do our house next?”
Each group has $1,000 to work with for the entire renovation, so Hanks and Wood both said they have dipped into their own pockets to get materials to finish the project.
Everything at the flowershop is expected to be finished by Friday, except for the new display window because of delays from the welding shop, which is also run by a student.
Sammarco said one of the benefits of the project is working with a client and building something functional and not aesthetic purpose.
He said he and his group have built a good relationship with the shop owner, spending the first three weeks working for the business and another three weeks cleaning her house.
“I’ve learned a lot I would have never learned in school,” Hanks said. “I learned how to deal with a client and learned how to speak their language by not talking over their heads.”
“I’ve learned so much it’s hard to put it into words.”
Mabel’s Flower shop is located on Thomas Delphin Street across from the old McKinley Middle School.
Back toward campus is the old Boyd Clothing and Silver store, now a vacant and graffiti-covered building, but with Ashley Lechtenberg and Laura Morris’ help, it will be converted into a bakery with music, drama and art gallery space.
While construction is not part of the project for Lechtenberg and Morris, they have designed what the bakery will look like when construction is completed.
Down on East Polk Street sits Rosa Pugh, who runs her catering company out of her house.
Students Jonathan Pertuit and Greg Eckert have been working to reconstruct her kitchen to better facilitate her business.
“We’ve gutted the whole room,” Pertuit said. “Everything was dilapidated.”
Pertuit said they have formed a good relationship with Pugh; she cooked dinner for him and his children one night.
Eckert said they had to build trust with Pugh before they began construction.
“We’re not just helping her, we’re having an effect on the other people in the community, spreading the word,” he said.