A long awaited theatre which will be part of the Acadiana Center for the Arts complex is back on track after a hiatus of a year, after bids came back under budget on Wednesday. “We’re exuberant,” says ACA executive director Gerd Wuestemann. The Lemoine Company of Lafayette’s low bid of $11.2 million will even allow art center executive architect Steve Oubre to add back in three design elements that had been designated as optional in order to keep costs down. “They were aesthetic options,” says Wuestemann, “but really important to the integration of the theatre to the streetscape downtown. It’s going to be one of the most beautiful public facilities in the region.”
The theatre is the second phase of the art center, which moved from cramped quarters on Lee Avenue four years ago to the renovated LBA Bank building on the corner of Jefferson and Vermilion. When bids came in 50 percent over budget last November, Oubre redesigned some elements of the new theatre, and the new plans went out for bid in August. Approximately $14 million in state funding is secure, so as soon as the bid is approved by the city, Lemoine can begin breaking ground, possibly by January 2009.
“This is more than a second phase for the art center,” says Wuestemann. “It allows us to become a truly integrated facility, incorporating visual arts, performing arts, education and community development. It will be a hub for this community and a focal point for downtown.”
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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