Plans to build a new, $100 million replacement for Lafayette’s Heymann Performing Arts & Convention Center have a political battle brewing among city leadership over its location.
Efforts to replace the Heymann Center have been quietly underway for the past year, but the location of a new performing arts center has been a sticking point from the start.
The 62-year-old Heymann Center has been criticized as outdated, and the land it sits on has long been eyed by neighboring Ochsner Lafayette General for expansion, leading Mayor-President Josh Guillory to quietly allow the healthcare group to appraise the facility in 2020.
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While a stakeholder group demonstrated last year that local political will had aligned to build a replacement facility, the issues of deciding where to build it and how to pay for it kept much progress from being made.
Efforts to plan a new performance center were led by former Mayor-President Joel Robideaux, now a lobbyist for Ochsner among others, with input from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and local arts advocates.
For the location, the Lafayette Economic Development Authority commissioned a site study that ultimately landed on a vacant field owned by the university across Congress Street and CajunDome Boulevard from the CajunDome.
While that selection fit within UL’s master plan, downtown Lafayette stakeholders pushed back on recent efforts by Guillory and UL to move ahead with an agreement between the city and the university to build the new facility near the CajunDome instead of downtown.
This week, Lafayette’s Downtown Development Authority released a new location study examining a handful of lots in downtown Lafayette that could support a performance center large enough to replace the Heymann.
The study found that more than 100 businesses in downtown Lafayette would benefit directly from bringing the performance center there thanks to their walkable accessibility, while just a dozen businesses near Congress Street and Bertrand Drive would see a meaningful economic impact from a new facility at UL’s location.
“Not only could a performing arts center ‘fit’ downtown, we believe that a downtown location provides the highest return on investment from the public’s perspective,” DDA CEO Anita Begnaud said in a statement about the study.
“An entertainment venue like a performing arts center is only truly successful as part of an overall quality experience for visitors. This is why the national trend over the last several decades has been to locate performing arts centers in downtowns,” she added, pointing to similar downtown venues in Asheville, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; and Pensacola, Florida as examples.
Guillory, who was rehired as an adjunct professor at UL in 2020 and whose wife also joined UL’s adjunct faculty this fall, announced plans to submit an ordinance to Lafayette’s City Council for an agreement with UL after the University of Louisiana System Board greenlit the idea in October.
But so far his ordinance has not materialized, and some City Council members are hesitant to embrace plans to build a $100 million city facility without opening up a thorough public dialogue first.
“It gives the impression that this is some kind of a done deal,” Councilman Glenn Lazard said at the council’s first meeting after Guillory’s announcement.
“I just want to reassure the public that this is not a done deal,” he added. “There is a process that still has to be, in my opinion, should be and will be followed.”
Council support for any new performance center will be critical, as Guillory is powerless to put a tax before voters that would be necessary to pay the city’s estimated $25 million share of the project, which will be bolstered by some $75 million in state funding.
Only the City Council can put a new tax on the ballot for city voters to consider. Next year’s October council elections suggest a tax won’t be put to voters until 2024, since officials typically don’t like to run for reelection while taxes are on the ballot.
But election timing isn’t the only factor that may slow plans to build the new performance center on UL property, as support for revising the site location process appears to be growing among City Council members.
“There are still a few more things that we should determine about the location for this thing before we settle on just what’s easy,” City Council Chair Nanette Cook said Friday.
“Maybe that’s an easy decision at UL. The property’s there. We get it for nothing. We could plop it right there. But is that really the best location?” she added. “I feel like we need to take one more look at some other options through a different lens to see what they look like before we sign on the dotted line.”
