Plank Road presents a faded snapshot of North Baton Rouge’s once-vibrant past. The road is lined with cracked pavement and faded street lines, giving way to jagged potholes that make your car vibrate as you pass over them. Rows of mismatched buildings line the street, each with its own charm and history. Some are occupied, others abandoned, but all seem to whisper stories of a once-great area.

North Baton Rouge has seemingly been forgotten about. The community along Plank Road, just west of Interstate 110 and near the Exxon Mobil Plant in the city’s northwest, never truly got back on its feet after a white flight in the 1990s took a large portion of the population of the area. Residents who have been here for decades are dying off, and no one is coming to take their place, leaving shuttered businesses and derelict homes.

Residents and business owners along Plank Road are fighting to change this trend. They’ve applied for government grants, worked with the East Baton Rouge Mayor-President’s Office and witnessed the beginning of the city-parish’s Plank Road Restoration Project – a $46 million initiative to improve the 5.3 miles of road from I-110 to Airline Highway. For those who live and work near Plank Road — the vast majority of whom identify as Black — the area remains in a state of limbo. But despite the omnipresence of blight, residents of Plank Road have faith that the community will turn around.

“You’ll now have small businesses that will start to scout the area of being a storefront off of the Plank Road area,” Laci Sherman, president of the nonprofit North Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, said. “If they’re a storefront off the Plank Road area, now you’re bringing more money to the community, which is resources. You have people that are getting out of their homes and keeping the dollars in the North Baton Rouge area, versus going maybe to get their nails done in South Baton Rouge because the road and the traffic is a little bit easier to navigate through.”

Plank road in decline

Father Tat Hoang, the pastor at St. Gerard Majella Catholic Church on Plank, oversees over 200 students at the adjacent Catholic school. Most of them are Black.

“A lot of people outside of Plank Road are so scared of the Black community around here,” Hoang said. “But there is really nothing to be scared of. The little kids come up to me after mass and give me these big hugs, and they don’t want to let go.”

Hoang pointed to a white flight in the 1990s as a major reason why Plank Road went downhill. Census data supports this: in Baton Rouge in 1970, 30.9% of residents identified as non-white. In Baton Rouge in 1990, 43.8% of residents identified as Black. As of the 2020 census, 93% of residents in the 70805 ZIP code — which encompasses St. Gerard and the part of Plank Road being restored — identified as Black.

The population has declined, too. What was once a popular and important area with a population of over 8,500 in the 1960s was reduced to around 5,000 people in the 1990s and down to fewer than 3,500 people in 2020.

As people — especially white people — began leaving the area, Black residents stayed. However, as the area lost more and more of its tax base and the population was significantly reduced, the area started being left behind by the Baton Rouge city government.

The Plank Road restoration project

Across the street from St. Gerard is a vacant building. Hoang said it used to be a Firestone, a tire and car care chain. In fact, the same Firestone — then open and lively — is visible in the background of promotional pictures published by the mayor-president’s office to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Plank Road Restoration Project in early September.

The mayor-president’s office has described the project as “a transformative effort to breathe new life into one of the city’s most historic and vital corridors.” It includes improvements such as repaving sidewalks and curbs and better lighting and signals.

These measures may not sound like a lot, but Sherman said snowballing issues can lead to a “ripple effect” for residents of Plank Road as they fall into a cycle of damage to their vehicles.

“When it’s [Plank Road] not complete, things like roll damage happen to your cars. I know all about that,” Sherman said. “And it’s just so expensive when that happens. And then those dilemmas just put you out of commission for your transportation. And then, when you’re out of limits for transportation, it’s a continuance of issues. Now, kids are not going to school. Now, parents are not going to work. Now, parents are being laid off because they do not have transportation.”

Improvements and fears

Most of the residents of Plank Road are low income. The median income in the area in 2022 was $27,556, just under half the median income in the state. Around one in every two residents of Plank Road lives under the poverty line compared to around one in every four residents across Louisiana.

Or, as Hoang put it, “We’re a poor area with really nothing to lose. If the government does something, anything for the area, it will be greatly appreciated.”

And the government does plan to do something. The Plank Road Restoration Project is already underway, though it’s not expected to be completed until June 2026. The road’s surface has been stripped off and is bumpy. But this time, it’s different. The bare asphalt is a tangible promise of better things to come.

Similar restoration projects and the future of Plank Road

Similar upgrades to those coming to Plank Road have been implemented in other areas of Baton Rouge, leading to noticeable improvements in those communities: the Perkins Road Expansion Project completed in 2007, the Sullivan Road upgrade completed in 2016, and more recently, the improvements made along North Sherwood Forest Drive completed in early 2024. Each of these similar projects brought noticeable benefits to those who live in the areas, such as a reduction in traffic and a more attractive area for business.

While these projects have improved these areas, some people, like Metropolitan Councilman Cleve Dunn Jr. of District 6, worry that those poorer citizens who live near Plank Road may not see all of the benefits from these projects that the wealthier residents of Perkins Road and North Sherwood Forest Drive residents saw.

“I think the next civil rights movement is an economic one,” Dunn said. “Oftentimes, we have fought for good roads, good schools, community centers, you know, access to things of that nature. And oftentimes, we’ll get a good road, we’ll get a bridge, but white folks get wealthy building it.”

Dunn, who is Black, also worries that Black businesses do not know or will not want to go through the lengthy process of applying for the many business assistance grants offered through Build Baton Rouge, a government organization created to redevelop blighted areas. Plank Road residents like Tony’s Seafood manager Darren Pizzolato believe that these grants could be a key part in helping to keep the businesses currently on Plank Road and help attract new ones.

Dunn, a small business owner himself, agreed.

“I saw the disparities in the procurement numbers and the contracting numbers, specifically for local minority-owned vendors like myself,” he said. “In the early ‘14s and ‘15s [2014 and 2015], the city-parish had a billion-dollar budget, and less than 4% of those dollars were spent on people who look like us.”

Despite these challenges, hope persists. Residents and officials alike see initiatives like the Plank Road Restoration Project as a chance to breathe new life into places like Plank Road, transforming areas of blight into pathways of progress for Baton Rouge.

“Those who pay taxes deserve to see improvements in their communities,” Dunn said