The Lafayette City-Parish Council will likely get an earful Tuesday evening before it votes on an appeal of an October approval by Planning, Zoning and Codes for a residential development in Scott. The plan has drawn impassioned support and opposition.
On Oct. 12, by a 3-2 vote, PZC approved a preliminary plat approval for Woodgate Subdivision — 64 residential lots in a 14.5-acre site off Tabb Road. In approving the plan, PZC placed additional requirements on the developers including installation of a sewer system that serves each lot.
Since the development acquired the necessary approval, more than 160 residents living nearby have signed a petition seeking to overturn the approval. On the petition, residents cite concerns such as too much traffic and drainage issues. At that Oct. 12 meeting, dozens of supporters and opponents of the development were present, among them, District 1 City-Parish Councilman Purvis Morrison, who said he was opposed to the project and cited concerns over inadequate infrastructure and poor drainage resulting from the development. Residents in the rural area have also complained that the development will ruin the quiet setting they sought in moving to the area.
But the planning department has also since received dozens of letters and e-mails — many of them from area builders and real estate agents — expressing support for the development. To see documents related to the development and the dispute, click here.
Also at Tuesday’s CPC meeting, council members will vote on an ordinance for final adoption that would rezone roughly 56 acres on Ambassador Caffery Parkway between Dulles Drive and Guilbeau road to make way for a traditional neighborhood development. If the rezoning is approved, Cafferytown would be a mixed-use neighborhood similar to River Ranch, with residential and commercial properties along with green spaces sharing a high-density area. However, according to architect Steve Oubre, who was hired by the partnership that owns the land to create a plan for the TND, there are no immediate plans to begin construction of Cafferytown; securing the TND zoning for the land is “a positive step that will pave the way for future development,” according to Oubre.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
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.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
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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