BATON ROUGE — The Delmont Economic Development District Board met Tuesday as they worked on an ongoing revitalization of the Plank Road corridor that officials and business owners hope will bring more interest and investment back to the North Baton Rouge community.

Community members and business owners attended the meeting as progress continues on the Revive Plank Road initiative, a $20 million investment along Plank Road.

Councilman Darryl Hurst, representing District 5, said that this is "the strongest effort to change North Baton Rouge, probably in the last 10 years." 

The $20 million won't just go to fix roads, lights and other more traditional infrastructure, he said. 

"It goes to change the facade of the building, to make this community investable and to make it a place where people desire to live, work and play," Hurst said. 

Darren Pizzolato, the third-generation owner of Tony's Seafood, which has been in business along the corridor since 1959, says the goal of the board is to work toward solutions to "get 70805 back to what it was."

"Unfortunately, 70805 gets kind of a bad rap sometimes," Pizzolato, the recently elected vice chair of the board, said. "We're still here, we're still a community, we still have good businesses here. We just want to bring some people back over to us."

Pizzolato says he wants to attract people who haven't frequented the area to return to the community along Plank. 

"Come back and see us. We're still over here," he said. 

He says that signage and lighting are a key component of the revival because these things "bring safety." 

"Anytime you've got good lighting and good signage, it lets people know what's going on and what's around the area," Pizzolato says.

The meeting was held at the Charles R. Kelly Community Center along Riley Road. The board will meet again on Oct. 15.