Bill Robertson and John Perkins Join AGR To Discuss the I-49 Intercity Connector
Tempers flared in Shreveport on June 1st after the debate surrounding the I-49 Intercity Connector devolved into members of the Allendale Strong activist organization allegedly being accused of racism. American Ground Radio hosts Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone offered their air to both the chairman of the Shreveport Metropolitan Planning Commission Bill Robertson and a representative from Allendale Strong John Perkins to clear things up.
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LISTEN:
Louis R. Avallone: “The extension of I 49 through downtown certainly has been a debate in this community that we have had for a very long time. There's very emotional, fervent support on both sides of the issue. And it seemed to all come to a boil at the MPC meeting yesterday, where basically members of the Allendale Strong organization were being accused of being racist. And so,
Stephen Parr: “Wait, wait, wait. The people who are supporters of Allendale Strong were being accused of being racist? Huh.”
Louis R. Avallone: “Yeah. Yeah. And so, I thought it might be a good idea, uh, to maybe bring in the chairman of the Shreveport Metropolitan Planning Commission, and a representative from Allendale Strong, so that they might be able to tell us what happened yesterday. What's all the hubub?
Stephen Parr: “That sounds like a good plan. So, joining us right now, NAACP chairman, Bill Robertson, welcome to American Ground Radio, appreciate your time.
Bill Robertson: “Thank you.”
Stephen Parr: “Um, so are you in, let's start here. What happened at yesterday's meeting with, uh, with all the people that were there? Because obviously the I 49 connector has been a controversial issue for many, many years, and people saying, look, you're gonna blow out this entire neighborhood Allendale. You're gonna ruin the whole community. Other people saying, no, this is actually going to help downtown Shreveport. This is gonna help the city of Shreveport overall because it's gonna create commerce and all this other stuff. What happened at the meeting yesterday?”
Bill Robertson: “Yesterday's meeting. And by the way, thank you fellas for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Um, I was named to the Metropolitan Planning Commission about a year and a half ago, two years ago, by Mayor Perkins and elected chairman at the end of last year. So I'm serving as chairman for 23. I'm also a member of the Allendale Strong Board. And Allendale came to me with a, uh, concern that they had, which was that the, the priorities of the, uh, city's master plan do not, uh, conform to the priorities of the Regional Transportation Board. Uh, in other words, council of Governments, Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments and Allendale Strong's contention is that the two are in conflict.”
Stephen Parr: “How so?”
Bill Robertson: “The regional board, uh, includes people from Webster and DeSoto, Bozer Parish, et cetera. It's not just the Shreveport Board. And their priorities are to move people through the community and around the community as quickly as possible. Uh, the City Master Plan calls for development inside the loop, the loop being LA 31 32 and Interstate two 20. Sure. And by promoting this regional transportation model, um, the Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments is essentially participating in hollowing out our city and emptying out our inner city communities that, uh, uh, Shreveport needs to revive in, in, in order that Shreveport will progress.”
Louis R. Avallone: “Now, now, some people may say that they're actually encouraging development and jobs in our city, rather than hollowing out, uh, the inner city.”
Stephen Parr: “Sure. For, for an example, um, the l u s, uh, I'm sorry. No, LSU uh, hospital Ochsner's. Right. It's just off of I 49 going through Shreveport. Right. It's just a couple blocks over. There's a lot of development, a lot of medical development in that area. Uh, along 49 inside the, the city limits. You actually have a lot of development, a lot of retail. You've got a lot of, uh, fast food, uh, other restaurants and stuff south of, of the loop, but you don't have it, uh, once you get north of where I 49 stops, that that development that you see along 49 stops at 49.”
Bill Robertson: “You know, uh, this is somewhat of a complicated issue, but, uh, let me see if I can put it this way. Sure. Uh, Allendale Strong has done a bunch of research. Uh, a lot of historical research, and we uncovered an interview that was conducted with a man named Arch Winter, who was one of the very first planners, the city of Shreveport hired. And he gave this interview in the 80s talking about the 1950s and the 1960s in Shreveport. And he said he could see the freeways coming. But he could do nothing about it. There was no connection between transportation planning and land use planning. So were, were he to do it over again. I think what he would recommend is that the interstates stop at the city borders, and then the people traveling through Shreveport would go around the city as opposed to right through it.“
Stephen Parr: “Is there a municipality somewhere in the country that's followed that model and it's been successful? Cuz as I think of, as I think of cities that are successful, Dallas Fort Worth, the, the freeways go right through the Houston, all the freeways converge right in downtown. Um, I, I, I'm, I'm, you know, I think of, uh, Little Rock, uh, Little Rock's done pretty well. The freeways go right through the downtown area. Is there a city that has followed the model that you're talking about where they intentionally do not have freeways going through anywhere near downtown and the city's thriving?”
Bill Robertson: “I'm, I don't know the answer to that, but our friend John Perkins might”
John Perkins: “Allendale Strong is a, a founding member of a national group of, uh, freeway fighters, uh, sponsored by, uh, Congress for the new urbanism, uh, this year, uh, cities that built them in the fifties. It was a great idea, they thought in the fifties. And it also cuts through poor neighborhoods. So it eliminates all that blight, but it actually creates more blight and more sprawl, which Shreveport, you and I have, we've all talked about the sprawl here. And we should de-annex. So Syracuse, New York, Rochester, New York and one other town in New York have begun removing theirs, uh, their inner-city connectors to improve the local business climate, cuz that's where the real money is. How many gas station, they call 'em exit cultures. How many gas stations and fast food joints do you think it would take to get our billion dollars back? You know, if we spent a billion dollars, what's the tax generated? But Seattle removed I-5. Uh, it all started in 95’ during the World Series. Any baseball fans in the Embarcadero fell, uh, collapsed during an earthquake in San Francisco. While the players were on the field, the residents of San Francisco in the Embarcadero said, please don't put it back. And for reasons known only to God, the government listened and didn’t.”
Loius R. Avallone: “Okay, so Bill, I, I want to talk about possibly a, a conflict of interest here as chairman of the, uh, Metropolitan Planning Commission and as well as your involvement with Allendale Strong. I want to get to that here in just a moment. But there were allegations at the MPC meeting that anyone who was in favor of the inner city connector was racist. And isn't it true that every mayor since Beau Williams, with the exception of Cedric Glover, is in support of the inner city connector? Are, are they, are all of those mayors, uh, many of them of, of course, that are African American, are all of them racist for wanting this inner city connector to be built?”
Bill Robertson: “I'm not prepared to go there, Louis. Uh, I'm confident what has been reported about our mayors and their view on the connector is accurate. Uh, I have talked to Cedric Glover, and Cedric has some major concerns about the connector, which I share. Uh, and I think it's pretty hard to refute that a lot of, um, inner city freeways go through poor black neighborhoods, and these are folks who don't have a lot of political influence and power, so it's very difficult for them to stop this process. Now, we've got interstates carving up Shreveport Interstate 20 East, west, interstate 49 coming from the South, and all of those freeway miles go through previously neighborhoods, okay? Like Cedar Grove is been bisected. Uh, cross Town is an old neighborhood in, in, um, in the central part of Shreveport that was basically reamed out by Interstate 20. So, uh, uh, the racial issue came up yesterday, primarily as one of the MPC members took issue with the presentation by Allendale Strong. But what Allendale Strong is putting forward is that we can do a better job. We can do a better job transporting our citizens and people who are just traveling through our city, and we don't have to carve these gigantic four or six lane elevated freeways, through our neighborhoods.“
Louis R. Avallone: “So, so our text line is just blowing up. Now, here's one of, one listener texted Shreveport Downtown is essentially dead right now. I mean, can't we try something else? I mean, it can’t hurt. Right?
John Perkins: “Right? What happened to downtown Shreveport, uh, was they built I 20 south of downtown cutting through and completely wiping out the cross-town neighborhood and blocking highland foot traffic. Okay? This is our history. This isn't saying anything's racist, but blacks in Crosstown were moved away from downtown. They were all allowed to shop downtown in those days. I was a child then on Saturdays only. So when you blocked Highland and crosstown foot traffic from coming in and shopping on, let's call it African American Day, then those retailers Selvers and Levy's, all those guys lost their Saturdays. And when you lose your Saturday, you lose.”
Stephen Parr: “But you know what? Yeah, but, but downtown was downtown's down from where it was just 10 years ago. We haven't built any freeways through there. Downtown's been, been falling for, for several years now.”
John Perkins: “Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, uh, you know, don't shoot yourself in the other foot to solve your blood pressure problem, you know what I mean? To let the blood out. I mean, gotta Dallas a city to look at is Dallas. Sure. Dallas is removed, uh, their freeways and are removing, like, they're gonna remove 345, which cuts between downtown and an old African American neighborhood. Um, d…”
Stephen Parr: “Dallas, I know they built the, the toll road back, uh, what was it, back in the 1970s? And it, it did go through several neighborhoods on, on the north side of town. But if you look at Dallas right now, the downtown area has several freeways that go through it. And, and some that aren't even interstates. They
John Perkins: “They capped and buried one interstate. Um, they capped and buried their loop, you know, and they've built a garden over it so you can still drive under it, right? But they can't smell it downtown. And property values have gone up building, building a wall around your town. So you asked earlier what is, what, what are city's? Dallas is removing 345. Their, their city, city council rejected, rejected building, uh, the, uh, Trinity River Expressway. They, they just absolutely said, no, thank you. We've got enough highways.”
Stephen Parr: “I, I understand that's decision that they've made about stuff in the future, but I'm looking at what has led to the success of Dallas so far. And Dallas is clearly a town that has had interstate running through the downtown area that have been successful for the city.
John Perkins: “ In, in spite of that, because, you know, it's like, like the magical thinking, like the best thinking in the Middle Ages was you leave some meat rotting out in your yard, and before you know it, it spontaneously generated flies. That was the science of a certain day. And this is like that. It stopped in 1995 when the Embarcadero fell down on its own, act of God and the citizen said, please get that thing outta here. And they didn't build it back.
Stephen Parr: “In San Francisco?”
John Perkins: “Yes. And it, and the neighborhood blossomed.”
Stephen Parr: “All right. Now, San Francisco's been losing population for about 20 years now,”
John Perkins: “Subsequently, but yeah, we're losing population faster than ..”
Stephen Parr: “I, I agree. It's absolutely, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to figure out why we would follow…”
John Perkins: “Federal government program causing us to lose population and our local people. We all worked on that, our, our own ideas or to build it up, but we're working against and outvoted by the COG system, which was instituted by the federal government back when they thought highways were the answer. And we'll all live alongside one.”
Stephen Parr: “ I I understand that. I'm just saying that if, okay, if you're saying that San Francisco is a model to follow, uh, be I because they took out a freeway, I would argue, I'm not sure that is a model to follow. They've been losing population and they've got a whole bunch of problems in down San Francisco.”
John Perkins: “Causation, you know, Milwaukee followed and they benefited from it. Cities all. I'll send you guys a link. You can put it on your side. Please do, please do. But cities all across the country are removing them, including Dallas. Okay? I looked at it back when I was working with Pat Boris on understanding all this stuff. Uh, uh, your guy, one of your guys said, uh, big cities that you wanna move to have a north-south highway with an east-west, you know? Okay, so look at I 20, there's 11 cities along it that have a north-south Highway. Think of Jackson. Somebody said yesterday, we don't want to be Jackson. One of the guys that’s for the highway. Everybody moved north towards, uh, Memphis, along, along the highway.
Stephen Parr: “That's true. No, that’s a good point.”
Louis R. Avallone: “All right, let, let me interject cuz you know,”
John Perkins: “Six of the 11 cities, the majority of cities that have those two highways are smaller than Shreveport. “
Louis R. Avallone: “So this is a very popular topic that our text line is really blowing up. Uh, we got another listener that texted in that said the school board, the Cattle Parish School board, and the Cattle Parish commission, both past resolutions in support of this inner city connector. I mean, can they, can all of these folks be racist and… and wrong?
John Perkins: “We're not saying they're racist, we're saying they're wrong. And yeah, ab absolutely, you know, C 100 is for it, and C 100 is politically powerful. We're not, we, all we have is our brains. So we have to do our research, do our homework, and talk about it. That's why we appreciate you guys have having us on because we know things but don't have a hundred thousand dollars that they used. And we have a video online.“
Stephen Parr: “And we have just, we have a … We have just a few seconds left here. Uh, as I understand it, the proposal that you ha… you have would, rather than going through the downtown area, basically you just want to use the, the current route that's going up and you want to, you wanna build up the loop. Is that, is that really.”
John Perkins: “Yes, you can get nonstop from Texarkana down to Nadu for meat pies and get back to Texarkana without ever stopping in Shreveport. If that's, and we want to fix it. I don't know if you've driven on it lately, but sure it's way overdue. You know, there's that pile of dirt that's holding up the retaining wall, Mr. North, uh, DOT told me that's how Louisiana fixes walls because the core problem is we've built more than we can afford. We're like house-poor people. We can't afford to keep the air conditioning on all the rooms or fix the roof tarp on the roof. “
Stephen Parr: “Gentlemen, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Uh, talk about this. Obviously, it's very important to the city, uh, as people are, are texting in, uh, throughout all this. So really appreciate your time and appreciate the discussion. Thank you so much.”
Perkins has posted several videos to YouTube regarding the I-49, one such clip from a KSLA Mayoral Forum on October 25th featured State Sen. Greg Tarver and Mayor Tom Arceneaux’s comments.