Home » Our Work » Land Bank » Building Blocks Portal

Building Blocks Portal

Build Baton Rouge tracks its land bank and vacant, blighted, and adjudicated property throughout East Baton Rouge Parish through the use of BuildingBlocks, a cloud-based land intelligence tool that aggregates a multitude of parcel-level data and allows it to be viewed and analyzed to further comprehensive land planning and land management goals. BuildingBlocks is developed by Tolemi, a Boston-based software firm specialized in working with local governments to unlock the power of municipal data. Baton Rouge joins innovative governments like Louisville, KY; Sherman, TX; and High Point, NC, that are leveraging data and technology to combat blight.

Prior to utilizing Tolemi’s solution, City-Parish staff had to aggregate and standardize records held across nineteen different agencies including the Baton Rouge Police Department, the EBR Sheriff’s Department, Build Baton Rouge, and the City-Parish Department of Development. Each source of data was different, requiring significant time and resources to compare key vital signs and make determinations about the condition and status of each. Department staff estimate time savings of 15 to 20 hours a week in some cases.

The BuildingBlocks software has already mapped the 9,750 blight service calls in the past two years. It has also calculated that blighted properties account for just 3% of the overall stock but over 10% of all police incidents. By taking an innovative, data-driven approach to tackling blight, Mayor-President Broome aims to curb crime and revitalize Baton Rouge’s neighborhoods.