Lafayette plan aims to extend city’s center to include UL, Oil Center – video of presentation

Claire Taylor, Daily Advertiser, Feb. 8, 2014

Imagine a day when residents can walk to the Central Park horse farm on a Saturday morning, safely stroll down Johnston Street to Bertrand Drive to catch a University of Louisiana at Lafayette football game and, after the game is over, walk to their condo across the street.

That’s exactly what could happen with a combination of ideas outlined in the university’s master plan and Lafayette’s proposed comprehensive plan.

Steve Oubre of Architects Southwest in Lafayette was the featured speaker Friday at a Plan Lafayette Week event to introduce the Lafayette comprehensive plan. He helped design the UL master plan, which has been approved by the University of Louisiana System leadership.

“Our task is to create models here that other places in the state can use,” he said.

The core of the city has long been considered downtown, Oubre said. For the last 25 years or so, the focus has been on improving downtown and making it a vibrant center again, he said.

But today, the city’s core is much more than just downtown, Oubre said. It includes the Oil Center, UL and the Lafayette Central Park horse farm and it’s time to look at the various districts as one, provide for more mixed use, combining housing and retail and linking them in a way that safely accommodates pedestrians and bicyclists as well as automobiles, a design called complete streets, he said.

Everything Lafayette is doing to turn the former UL horse farm into a first-class park ties in with the university and the Oil Center and will be great for the entire region, City-Parish President Joey Durel said. A master plan also is underway for the horse farm with forums planned for March and April.

Under UL’s master plan, the complete streets concept could transform a four-lane section of Bertrand Drive between Johnston Street and Cajun Field into an attractive street lined with trees, complete with wide bicycle lanes and sidewalks and mixed-use housing and retail buildings, Oubre said. It could be built using existing rights of way and utilizing existing water, sewer and streets, he said.

The master plan also envisions a new look for Congress Street, which would become a boulevard with brick pedestrian crossings, Oubre said. At Congress and Cajundome Boulevard, the plan calls for doubling the size of the convention center and constructing a 110,000-square-foot performing arts center with several venues, including one that seats 2,100, one that seats 700 and a third that seats 500.

Market studies also support 200,000 square feet of commercial mixed-use space and 600 condominiums for young professionals in that area, he said.

With the university suffering from state budget cuts, UL President E. Joseph Savoie said university leaders need to look for ways to generate their own revenue. The university has a lot of land — about 785 acres in the center of the city — but needs to partner with the private sector to create business ventures, he said.