BATON ROUGE - Plans for a complete overhaul of the area surrounding the Perkins Road overpass are moving forward, thanks to a decision from EBR Metro Council members Wednesday night. 

The council approved a contract for landscape architecture firm, Carbo, to begin drafting construction documents for the $2.2 million project. 

"We're going into a phase where we're creating drawings that are going to be built," said Shannon Blakeman, managing partner at Carbo Landscape Architecture. 

Business owners in the overpass area have been pushing for years to upgrade lighting, parking and implement a multi-use path along the corridor. Last year, the group contributed thousands of dollars in private funds to purchase the initial designs from Carbo, which were then presented to the city-parish.

In September, the city-parish picked up the project and allocated $2 million dollars to the effort. Now, architects are making the final edits to their designs. 

"We went back to the drawing board to look at some of the areas where the path needs to go through. We also had to look at the railroad crossing which was a big component of the project," Blakeman said. 

Blakeman says the final draft will not deviate much from the plans that were presented to the city-parish in 2022. If things go smoothly, construction could begin in the fall of 2024.