The Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce will explore the implications of Lafayette adopting a comprehensive master plan at its next “Eggs ‘N’ Issues” breakfast presentation beginning at 7 a.m. Tuesday, April 27 at the Petroleum Club.
Lafayette has flirted with a comprehensive plan for managing parish growth and prosperity for more than a decade and has in place a prototype for such a plan — Lafayette In a Century — that lays out many of the prerogatives for such mundane concerns as roads and drainage as well as critical areas such as funding of the arts and parks-recreation. The LINC plan, generated through the work of city-parish planners as well as dozens of volunteer residents, has been gathering dust for roughly a decade.
City-Parish President Joey Durel last year made adoption of a comprehensive plan a priority, using his veto pen to restore in the budget $400,000 to hire a top planning firm to create a master plan for the parish. That $400,000 is roughly a third of what a nationally recognized firm is expected to fetch for creation of such a plan, and Durel has said he will include a second downpayment in his next executive budget submitted this summer. Durel is expected in the coming weeks to choose a firm or individual who will write the request for proposals that will be issued to planning firms interested in submitting bids to create the master plan.
Renowned architect Steve Oubre, a cornerstone of River Ranch and other New Urban developments locally and nationwide, will be joined by planning expert Charles Landry, an attorney who shepherded Baton Rouge’s Shaw Center for the Arts into reality, for the event. Both men recently participated in the chamber’s Building Community Conference in March at Toledo Bend.
To register for the May Eggs ‘N’ Issues, visit the GLCC’s Web site.
... written by NORTHSIDIAN SHOTGUN , April 22, 2010 - 03:46 am
I am stunned... you are saying that * Acadian Ambulance has not presented a bid with a newly formed, " LE ELITE PLANNING FIRM ", domiciled in the parish of LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA. Housed in the same locale as the Mean Green GPS MONITORS, INC.
... written by Jason D. Faulk , April 22, 2010 - 08:41 am
Well, as Conrad Comeaux has pointed out, we must set our sights on a comprehensively enforceable comprehensive plan that the owners of large tracts and farm lands can't simply opt-out of by being incorporated into the under or non-regulated small town-cities of Lafayette Parish, only to subject us all to the mutual costs of continued myopic sprawl development when their "farm"lands are converted to subdivision with endless cul-de-sacs and disjointed street networks, failing to provision adequate public spaces, space for parks, schools, churches, and how about reserving land in Lafayette Parish for actually growing food to feed ourselves?
Any plan should also consider the visual quality of spaces to be created through the planning process, lest there be no point to living as we are social creatures after all (Unabomber types excluded of course.)
Perhaps this could be investigated, if the Metropolitan Planning Organization would be an entity with legal authority to enforce such a plan as it would not only be parish-wide in scope, but beyond as it governs planning for some areas beyond Lafayette Parish based on census-data, as mandated by federal law.
... written by ragin_cajun , April 22, 2010 - 11:00 pm
"Any plan should also consider the visual quality of spaces to be created through the planning process, lest there be no point to living as we are social creatures after all"
"to enforce such a plan as it would not only be parish-wide in scope, but beyond as it governs planning for some areas beyond Lafayette Parish"
Sounds great! Let's call Charlie Langlinais and tell him "you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
Let's all of us take a deep breath, and meditate on the difference between "master planning" and "central planning" :)
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MAY 20 This post by blogger CB Forgotston draws parallels between Gov. Bobby Jindal and two individuals he probably doesn't want to be aligned with: President Obama and former governor Edwin Edwards. CB says Jindal's trying to jack up the debt ceiling (an Obama play, according to CB) and buy votes from GOP leges who normally wouldn't go for that (an Edwards play, CB says).
MAY 20 Here's a post in the Baptist Message from an alumnus of Louisiana College. The author, Larry Burgess, calls on the leadership of the private school to take care of some pressing problems. Physical plant issues are critical and unaddressed, some faculty make so little they need government health care, and there is an atmosphere that does not encourage honest discussion, he writes. It's time to get things back in order, he says.
MAY 20 This post in Gambit tells of a benefit concert scheduled to raise money for the 19 people shot during a Mother's Day second line on Frenchmen Street in NOLA. Among them was Gambit blogger Deb Cotton, who spoke frequently about violence in the city and reported on the city's second line culture. Gambit's foundation, along with other NOLA non-profits, also is selling t-shirts to raise money for the victims.
MAY 20 Blogger Robert Mann is critical of the personal interest some legislators take in their work here, sharing the comments one NOLA solon made in explaining his decision to vote against a bill that would require people to stop discriminating against female workers. His wife might lose some salary, so he was going to have to vote against the equal pay bill, Conrad Appel said. Appel and everyone who heard him should have been ashamed, but they weren't, and that's what is wrong in that building, Mann argues.
MAY 20 American Press columnist Jim Beam writes about the budget again here, urging kudos for the House and its efforts to try to fix the budget as opposed to passing on a flawed and messy rubber-stamped document as it usually does. The Senate already is poo-pooing the effort, but instead Senators should be trying to find a way to improve it as well, Beam argues. He also has some predictions in here from LABI and CABL.
MAY 20 Here's a link to the photo gallery from Tulane's graduation this past weekend. Dr. John and Allen Toussaint played together and received honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama was so entranced by their performance he got up from his seat and walked across the stage to stand next to them. He even participated in a second line with his own personal, saffron-colored umbrella. To the graduates, he urged them to think about creating a peaceful, hopeful life and society.
MAY 20 This Picayune story questions the rhetoric of NOLA officials who say the city, aside from having a "murder problem," is safe. The talking points generally are that the criminals are killing each other, but everything else is OK. The police chief there says that even Lafayette is more dangerous than NOLA. But crime experts interviewed here say that NOLA's numbers indicate one of two things: either people are so used to violence they don't report it, or somebody's "fudging the numbers."
MAY 20 The Advocate's Mark Ballard writes about some of the background maneuvering that took place during the development of budget alternatives in the Legislature. From Rep. Joel Robideaux being called a "tax and spend liberal" to robo-call influence, Ballard lets us in on some of the work that happens behind the scenes but usually doesn't make it into the Advocate's daily coverage of the session.
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.
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.
Plains Exploration and Production, the Houston company Flores has been running since 2002, is building a deepwater Gulf of Mexico warehouse and storage facility on Bernard Road in Broussard.
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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presented a bid with a newly formed, " LE ELITE PLANNING FIRM ", domiciled in the parish of LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA.
Housed in the same locale as the Mean Green GPS MONITORS, INC.