Zoning seems to be the regulation du jour in Acadiana. Carencro sailed through the vote to adopt a land use ordinance at the beginning of the year, while Breaux Bridge is still in the throes of figuring out how best to control development. Now Broussard is putting zoning on the table, looking at an ordinance to regulate what gets built along the new Ambassador Caffery corridor. “We don’t want to have a big box store with a pipe yard next to it,” Broussard City Councilman Keith Rousseau told The Advocate.
Crafting a zoning ordinance that pleases all the property owners in an area is a tricky matter. Land owners hate to be told what they can do with their property, that is until a neighbor gets ready to open, say, a junk yard next door. Then even the most recalcitrant laisse faire Louisianian goes running to his city councilman to find some way to protect his property values.
A land use ordinance works differently than traditional zoning. A zoning ordinance categorizes neighborhoods as residential, commercial or industrial, and then lists what sort of activities are permitted in each zone. Land use creates buffer zones to divide neighbors with widely divergent uses. The more noxious the use, the bigger the buffer, which can in effect make it impossible to build some businesses in locations with small lots.
Broussard is opting for the more traditional zoning approach as the city council eyes the approaching four lane road, and the commercial development that will follow.
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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