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The Story of the Old Municipal Dock

By Mary Ann Sternberg On the concrete T-head of the old Baton Rouge municipal dock are now-fading words in white paint of John Lennon’s famed song “Imagine.” According to local lore, this graffiti appeared soon after singer and spiritualist Lennon was killed in 1980, when a devoted fan (one of many adventurous trespassers) sneaked out […]

Waze for Water

A Water Institute tool could transform river management and transport across the globe By Sara Bongiorni For captains and their crews, moving goods can be a white-knuckle experience. Heavy with goods, boats must dodge each other through fast-moving and shifting currents, while also maneuvering around silt hidden under the water. The Water Institute of the […]

2021 John W. Barton Sr. Excellence in Nonprofit Management Awards

For more than two decades, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation has honored the best and most devoted nonprofit leaders with the John W. Barton Sr. Excellence in Nonprofit Management Awards. Four years ago, the Foundation added an award for a younger nonprofit leader—a rising star. How do we choose the winners? People who have charitable […]

Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s John Davies Announces Retirement

In his 33-year tenure, BRAF grew to $722 million in assets, changed the region John G. Davies, president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, announced Wednesday that he plans to retire at the end of the year. Davies has led the Foundation for 33 years, increasing total assets in that span from $5 […]

Shine on: Martin Luther King Jr. monument in Baton Rouge is being restored

Editor’s note: This story was written when restoration began in February 2021. The monument will be fully restored in March 2021. We thank donors to this project: Entergy, Irene W. and C.B. Pennington Foundation, Jennifer Eplett and Sean E. Reilly, Baton Rouge Coca-Cola Bottling Company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation, Capital One, ExxonMobil, […]

Park to spark

By Maggie Heyn Richardson Imagine it: a new park replacing an empty lot—broken concrete and poison ivy exchanged for native shade trees, picnic tables and flower-filled raised beds. A vibrant component of the Imagine Plank Road Master Plan is a neighborhood “pocket” park on a vacant lot at 4258 Plank Road, the corner of Plank […]

Big Deal: Dr. Philip Schauer is putting Pennington on the global map

Dr. Philip R. Schauer is kind of a big deal. It says exactly that on a nameplate behind his desk at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, which recruited Schauer from the Cleveland Clinic to develop a world-class bariatric surgery program in partnership with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center. The nameplate offers a pretty […]

Crisis stabilization center opens

By Sara Bongiorni Strangers began calling Charlotte Claiborne in the weeks before the opening of the Bridge Center for Hope, sometimes late at night, always frantic with worry. Each caller asked Claiborne the same thing: a family member was in crisis—was the crisis stabilization center open and could it help their loved one? “There was […]

New Kids on the Block

By Maggie Heyn Richardson In 2017, Dustin LaFont stood in front of the former Sarkis Oriental Rugs building at Government and Wiltz streets and dreamed. The stately, red-brick former church seemed like the perfect place to expand his Front Yard Bikes, the program he started in 2010 that helps young people earn a bike through […]