The Glasgow Avenue Sidewalk Rouzan Heard About in 2018 Is Finally Being Built

"This feature will be important to the Library because the sidewalk will wrap all the way down Glasgow Avenue to the proposed library branch site."

That sentence comes from the minutes of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library Board of Control meeting on March 15, 2018. Rouzan's development team was pitching the board on placing a branch library inside the neighborhood. The library arrived. On Friday, November 6, 2026, crews broke ground on the sidewalk along Glasgow Avenue, more than eight years after that meeting.

In the meantime, the order of things flipped. The South Branch was supposed to sit at the end of a pedestrian route. Instead it has spent its first year and a half as a destination with no proper walking route to it, and the city is now building the route that leads to it.

The Walk Was Part of the Pitch

The 2018 minutes are more specific about walking than most residents would guess. Charles Landry, speaking for Engquist-Rouzan, told the board that when they were considering buying Rouzan, "they were struck at how unsafe the sidewalks are on Perkins Road." He described plans to replace them with a 6-foot sidewalk lined with trees on both sides, and said the sidewalk would continue down Glasgow to the library site. Earlier in that same presentation, the team said it was "encouraging people who want to walk or bike here."

The site they picked was a lot of about 1.6 acres at Glasgow Avenue and Tupelo Street, connected to the Town Center. The architect mapped how people would arrive. The main route by car would come from Perkins Road down Glasgow Avenue, with a left onto Rouzan Square Avenue into a centralized lot. A secondary entrance would come from Southdowns to the east, and a signalized light at Perkins Road and Rouzan Avenue would be a third. The same presentation promised "ample ability to walk or use the bike lanes," and named a 100-year-old live oak on the site as the centerpiece worth protecting.

So Glasgow Avenue was named as the front door from the very beginning. It was the street the plan expected most visitors to use, and the street where the sidewalk was supposed to run.

The Library Opened First

The South Branch Library at 2210 Glasgow Ave. began welcoming patrons on March 24, 2025. The formal dedication followed on Sunday, August 10, 2025. The library system's own branch page places it on the boundary of Rouzan and Southdowns, the two neighborhoods the 2018 plan said it would serve.

The drainage on Glasgow is what held the walking route back. At that same 2018 meeting, a board member pointed to a drainage ditch as an obstacle to biking on Glasgow. The project now under way addresses exactly that. Crews are filling the roadside ditches and putting the drainage underground before the new sidewalk goes in, WBRZ reported on November 8. A sidewalk on Glasgow was always going to mean rebuilding the edge of the road first.

What the Crews Are Building, and on What Clock

The work is a MOVEBR project, and it covers more than the short stretch between Rouzan and the library. It runs the full length of Glasgow Avenue from Perkins Road to Hyacinth Avenue. According to WBRZ's report and the City-Parish's groundbreaking announcement, it includes:

• About 4,000 feet of new sidewalk on both sides of Glasgow Avenue
• Roadside ditches filled in and replaced with underground pipes and inlets
• Accessible ramps and crosswalks at key intersections

Mayor-President Sid Edwards and District 12 Councilwoman Jennifer Racca led the November 6 groundbreaking. The City-Parish said the project serves Glasgow Avenue residents, Glasgow Middle School students and South Branch Library patrons. That's three groups of people walking to three different places, all sharing one corridor.

Most of the delay happened before any design work began. The MOVEBR project page lists Meyer Engineers as the design consultant. Its update log shows how slowly the early stage went and how quickly the later stages moved:

Once design started, the project went from 90% plans to construction in about a year. The longer wait came before that, when Glasgow was listed as a project but nobody was drawing it yet.

The bids came in below the city's estimate. The Metro Council's September 9, 2026 agenda lists an engineer's estimate of $1,105,000, with The Luster Group, LLC as low bidder at $950,089. The bid-acceptance document sets the contract time at 180 calendar days. That means about six months of crews, cones and filled ditches along a street many Rouzan households use every week. The City-Parish invites residents to sign up for project updates at movebrla.gov/Glasgow, and that's the best place to see what's coming before it shows up on your street.

Thanksgiving Week at the Library End of Glasgow

For now, getting to the library means driving through a construction zone. "Make sure they're driving very carefully along this corridor," Councilwoman Racca told WBRZ. The South Branch has a full week coming up, with a holiday schedule wrapped around it:

The children's programs come from the branch's November calendar. Regular hours, listed on the EBRPL branch page, are 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Friday after Thanksgiving falls inside those normal hours, which makes it an easy errand on a long weekend.

Glasgow isn't the only pedestrian project on Perkins this season. Farther up the road, MOVEBR's Perkins Road Overpass project is building a walking and biking route from Reymond Avenue across the railroad tracks to Christian Street. The October 2026 update reports that storm drainage and backfill work are continuing, businesses remain open, and free parking is available in the adjacent lot. Both projects start the same way, by fixing the drainage before anything is built on top.

On Glasgow, that underground work is what makes the 2018 promise possible. The library has been open since March 2025. Within the 180-day contract window, the walk to it from the Perkins Road corner should finally have a sidewalk on both sides.

For a home in Rouzan or Southdowns, a sidewalk to the library changes the daily walk out the front door. If you're weighing what a newly walkable corridor means for a particular property along Glasgow, Del Rio Real Estate would be glad to talk it through with you. Schedule a Private Consultation, and we'll start with the streets you walk every day.