The city of Marksville is the parish seat of Avoyelles Parish and is organized around its historic courthouse, the center of downtown. The city has a population density of 1,095 people per square mile, indicating that many community assets such as schools, restaurants, and other places of interest are within walking and/or biking distance of most residences. However, walking and biking around town is difficult and even dangerous in some places due to car-centric infrastructure design and a lack of pedestrian and biking facilities. This action plan presents a list of recommendations that will make Marksville a more accessible and connected environment for residents and visitors alike. This plan responds to input from residents of Marksville who want to revitalize downtown and foster economic development, increase quality of life and mobility, and better connect to community-wide and regional assets and attractions. This plan aims to improve the health outcomes for rural, minority, and elderly residents in the city of Marksville through resident engagement, capacity building, and the development of infrastructure and amenities that support and encourage safe physical activity, and access to healthy destinations.

For nearly 250 years, Ville Platte, Louisiana, has been home to a diverse mix of peoples, resulting in a rich cultural heritage that defines the city. Ville Platte is known for its distinct culinary traditions, music, and annual festivals which attract visitors from across the region. Despite this cultural richness, the Ville Platte of today faces many challenges. It is among the poorest metropolitan areas in Louisiana and is divided along racial lines. Although current residential patterns paint a more complicated picture of racial distribution, the separation of races on either side of the “tracks” is clearly evidenced by recent US Census tract data. This planning process has been founded on the premise that the condition of the physical environment has profound impacts on social and health outcomes, and the separation of Ville Platte residents is the impetus for designing the Unity Parks. The city currently has four parks within its boundary: Henry J. Vidrine Memorial Park, Gloria S. Frank Hope Park, Ville Platte Northside City Park, and Chief Romeo Hargrove City Park. While these parks are valuable amenities, they are roughly distributed along the city’s perimeter, leaving the heart of the city with virtually no public space. By designing and implementing flexible public spaces in easily-accessible, neutral locations, this plan aims to combat the city’s racial division and build a shared sense of community.

Ascension Parish’s rapid growth over the past several decades has had mixed impacts. Development pressures— combined with much of the parish’s land being located in flood-prone areas—have revealed issues with land use, housing, wastewater, transportation, and stormwater management systems. Recognizing the need for coordinated planning, parish leaders commissioned the Ascension Parish Master Land Use Plan to coordinate needed improvements and to provide a framework for future parish investments over the next 20 to 25 years. The planning team held four sets of workshops and open houses and provided other opportunities for public input, including surveys and online comment forms.

For the future, parish leaders, residents, and stakeholders want to ensure that the parish keeps its high quality of life and stability, while gaining more good jobs and diverse housing options to retain the community’s young workers. Guided by this vision, the plan concentrates on how land is developed or redeveloped, the types of housing available, recreation and open space needs, and how to create a stronger economy. It builds on previous plans and also incorporates recommendations from other plans currently under development, including how to improve transportation and how to better manage stormwater.

CPEX led a consultant team who reviewed various existing plans that informed and influenced the Campus Master Plan, including 2015 Strategic Plan, enrollment data, national and local trends in the Episcopal Church, as well as existing conditions of the physical campus and mechanical systems to determine expansion capacity. 

St. James' campus master plan provides a long-term vision to guide future growth and investment, create lasting value and ensure individual decisions are part of a larger framework supported by its members. It also establishes a framework for decision-making and development for next 15 to 20 years, providing the necessary space to grow the programs prioritized in the 2015 Strategic Plan. 

In 2016, Baton Rouge Area Foundation embarked on a master plan for restoring the Baton Rouge Lakes, which are in need of structural and design improvements to be optimized for enjoyment by future generations. CPEX's expertise was called on to design and implement a community outreach process, including gathering public input and managing media relations.

CPEX worked with Gonzales residents, staff, stakeholders, and elected officials to create a vision and guiding principles of the plan that reflect the core values and supports residents’ and stakeholders’ desires for the future of Gonzales. The comprehensive plan specifically addresses the city’s land use, urban design, downtown redevelopment, transportation, housing, neighborhoods, and a prosperous economy. 

CPEX led a consultant team who reviewed existing strategic and architectural plans and landscape designs, researched educational and religious campus trends, interviewed community stakeholders, developed a campus vision to guide the planning endeavors. The result was a plan that improves safety, access, and cohesion around a central campus green, accommodates future church and school growth, and facilitates community gathering and learning. The final campus plan provides guidance for growth and investment over the next 15-20 years.

CPEX provides technical expertise and project management for coastal communities' resiliency planning and implementation efforts. CPEX assisted with the selection of a planning firm and conducted public outreach to engage citizens in the planning process. The Lafourche Parish Comprehensive Resiliency Plan mines the cultural, historic, demographic, environmental and economic landscapes throughout the parish to identify policy and implementation recommendations along 8 overarching topic areas.

CPEX provides technical expertise and project management for coastal communities' resiliency planning and implementation efforts. The town's leadership, in partnership with CPEX, pursued grant funding to develop a proactive strategy to diversify their economy, increase employment opportunities, celebrate their history, protect the health of the bayou, prepare for storms, and foster the area's unique local culture at a time that presents both challenges and opportunities. 

CPEX facilitated a process for developing a vision and code update that engaged the public in forming a common development vision, which informed updates to the land use map, zoning ordinance, and subdivision regulations. 

This three square mile area of approximately 11,800 residents between downtown Baton Rouge and Louisiana State University is both culturally and historically rich, but suburban growth and increased mobility has led to a steady population decline over the past several decades.

Over its history, CPEX has worked with residents and stakeholders of Old South Baton Rouge to identify opportunities for growth and enrichment, including developing a Pattern Book of architectural styles distinct to the neighborhood; an implementation plan for activities outlined in the strategic plan; and an implementation manual detailing strategies for successfully enacting projects. 

In 2007, St. Charles Parish decided to take action to update their 1980 comprehensive plan that focused on growth management—no longer an issue in the parish. A suburb of New Orleans that occupies land on both sides of the Mississippi River, St. Charles found itself urbanizing in spite of slow growth, and due to natural and industrial conditions, little land in the parish was available for expansion.

In 2009 the City of Zachary had a number of disparate design elements, lacking theme or connection. The park and trail systems that constituted the city needed a cohesive vision to illustrate what recreational aspects of the community could become.

In 2009, the town of Jena, LA turned to CPEX for a master plan to address and embrace residential growth and to accommodate and capitalize on proposed changes to Hwy 84. CPEX helped assemble a Core Support Group that was the champion and sounding board for the consultant team during the nine month planning process. The Town Master Plan was adopted January 26, 2010 and includes both a policy component to guide incremental change over time and a design component to guide physical improvements. 

After hurricane Rita devastated Lake Charles – closing businesses, destroying homes across the city, taking out thousands of trees and sending a storm surge up into the businesses and homes that call the lakefront downtown area home, Lake Charles Mayor Randy Roach stepped up and determined that a long term plan for recovery and growth was in order. Beyond just planning for dealing with the acute recovery needs from the hurricane, the plan would need to account for long-term economic growth and sustainable development in downtown Lake Charles.

Elizabeth "Boo" Thomas, President/CEO of the Center for Planning Excellence, was the Director for the Plan Baton Rouge effort in 1998. The plan has guided the growth that has been catalyzed by the State of Louisiana's ambitious building program occurring in downtown Baton Rouge. It has been nationally recognized for its implementation success. Following ten years of successful implementation of the original plan, CPEX, in partnership with the Downtown Development District and the City of Baton Rouge, embarked upon the ambitious Plan Baton Rouge Phase II update process in 2008.