INDReporter

Chamber to address comprehensive plan

by Walter Pierce

The Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce will explore the implications of Lafayette adopting a comprehensive master plan at its next "Eggs N' Issues" breakfast. 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.