5th Annual Smart Growth Summit
CPEX’s 5th Annual Smart Growth Summit was held August 19 & 20, 2010
Click here to visit the Smart Growth Summit website >
Dear attendees, speakers, and volunteers of the 2010 Louisiana Smart Growth Summit,
Thank you so much for your participation this year. You helped us make this by far the most successful summit to date.
Over 800 participants took part over the course of the three days. Over 30 elected officials from around the state joined in our special lunch with Tom Murphy, former Mayor of Pittsburgh and 39 of our Louisiana Speaks Champions came in for the keynote event. Attendees represented 34 parishes, plus we welcomed guests from Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Washington DC, and even Canada (we''re international!). Also, over 30 cyclists joined in for the B.R.A.S.S. led bike ride on Friday evening.
Media coverage dramatically improved over past years, as we have dug up 25 published articles so far, many from Baton Rouge publications but also from other Louisiana towns such as New Orleans, Lafayette, Alexandria and Opelousas—and Smart Growth America posted two of our blogs to their site for a national audience. Tack on 3 radio appearances in Baton Rouge and Lafayette and a couple of local TV spots, and we think visibility for the summit has stepped up to a whole new level. Let''s hope that translates into our witnessing of a paradigm shift in the way our communities think about growth in Louisiana.
Themes of transportation and housing, coastal restoration and rebuilding, livable communities with access to amenities and transportation options, connecting communities to job centers, creating energy through renewable resources, restoring blighted and vacant properties to commerce, and wading through the technical, financial and legal jungles that come with smart, responsible development all pervaded conversation throughout the event. Our additional events, including the Keynote Reception and Louisiana Speaks Champions recognition, Transportation Dinner, Great Places Awards Reception, Elected Officials Lunch, and Leisurely Baton Rouge Bike Ride allowed participants and stakeholders of various backgrounds to capitalize on the coming together of such a diverse audience in one place.
While the event was a smash success, we believe we can always improve the experience, the outcomes, and the impact. In addition to extending our programming to year round events, smaller and more distributed, we would love your feedback on how we can improve the summit. In that spirit, we would like to ask you to take two minutes to fill out our feedback survey:
2010 Smart Growth Summit Feedback Survey: https://cpex.wufoo.com/forms/2010-smart-growth-summit-survey/
As an active participant, your feedback is critical to the success of this event and therefore to the progress of Smart Growth thinking in Louisiana.
As you may have heard, thanks to Cox 4, we will be posting videos of each and every session on the summit website: http://summit.cpex.org
We are expecting to have the videos available by the end of September, and once they are, we will send out another email like this one letting you know. We hope the video content can be used to educate students, to communicate ideas and principles in communities undergoing planning and implementation, to arm elected officials with best practices, and in any other venues appropriate for expanding Smart Growth thinking.
Thank you again for making this such a successful event and we look forward to your input!
And a big thank you to all of our sponsors without whom the summit would simply not be possible:
Platinum
Fannie Mae
AARP
Baton Rouge Area Foundation
BlueCross and BlueShield of Louisiana
Baton Rouge Growth Coalition
Cox 4
Reception
Downtown Business Association
Gold
The Vinyl Institute
McGlinchey Stafford PLLC
ABMB Engineers, Inc.
Jones Walker
Eatel
Louisiana Chapter, American Planning Association
Silver
Wampold Companies
Cypress Realty Partners
Lamar Advertising
Entergy
Massengale Grounds Management, Inc.
National Association of Realtors®
Albemarle Corporation
CSRS, Inc.
Shaw’s Environmental & Infrastructure Group
WHLC Architecture
Louisiana Chapter, American Society of Landscape Architects
Benchmark Group, LLC
Phelps Dunbar
FENSTERMAKER
Tipton Associates
SGS Petroleum Service Corporation
The Cordell and Ava Haymon Fund
GCR & Associates, Inc.
Reich Associates
Louisiana Lottery Corporation
Looney Ricks Kiss, LLC
Refreshments
East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority
Neel-Schaffer
Mockler Beverage Co.
Bronze
Chenevert Architects LLC
Milton J. Womack, Inc.
Republic Finance
Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport
La Capitol Federal Credit Union
Bradley-Blewster & Associates
Cox Communications
Supporter
Tulane School of Architecture
D. Honoré Construction, Inc.
Perez, APC
Saurage Commercial Real Estate
Sierra Club - Delta Chapter & Baton Rouge Group
Acadian Millwork & Supply
Franklin Industries, LLC
HNTB Corporation
Citizens Bank & Trust
Urban Land Institute, Louisiana
Thank you again,
- Center for Planning Excellence Staff