High crime rate bad for Baton Rouge area business
by Skip Descant - Advocate (excerpt)

The Pelican State Supply building stands on Plank Road, a little past Club Raggs and the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store. The block-long, modern-era building with boarded-up plate-glass windows and small trees sprouting from the roof has been vacant for five years. DXP Enterprises, a company dealing in industrial equipment, was the last tenant.

The Pelican State Supply building and others like it — a Family Dollar is close by, and a CVS pharmacy sits across the street — are part of what may be Baton Rouge’s most decaying and crime-ridden commercial strip. Both the Family Dollar and CVS store have roll-down shutters protecting the front doors, and customers are met by the eye of a security camera when they walk inside.

Business activity in neighborhoods around Plank Road in north Baton Rouge has been declining for at least a decade, while criminal activity is rampant, Census and crime data show.