W H Y D O N ’ T Y O U TA K E M E D O W N T O W N
I Wanna Be Where the People Are AS A VIBRANT COMMUNITY OF LOCAL MERCHANTS, DOWNTOWN LAFAYETTE CONTINUES TO THRIVE
By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
All photos courtesy of Downtown Lafayette Unlimited. Top left and bottom right photos by Paul Kieu. Top right photo by Reece McDaniel. Events like Downtown Alive! and ArtWalk in Lafayette’s downtown district have attracted locals to the area for years now. New collaborative events like the Sunday Brunch block party are being thrown by business owners throughout the district, emphasizing the spirit of community and celebration that Lafayette has come to be known for.
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bookstore with a wine bar; a family grocery founded in 1967 in New Orleans, revived in Acadiana; a restaurant/music venue inspired by Louisiana house dances of old; an energy company; a natural wine shop and tasting room; a web-based golf retailer; a no-waste bulk goods store; a vintage clothing shop serving gourmet coffee; an urgent care; a purveyor of outdoor gear; a gourmet popcorn shop; a spa; a law office; an interior design showroom; a realtor; a Magazine Street hat shop, brought home to Cajun country; a nightclub; and a tavern serving Italian comfort food: these are the eighteen locally-owned businesses that opened their doors in the downtown district of Lafayette in the year 2020. For the first few months of the pandemic, historic Jefferson Street— like other downtown areas across the country—sat quiet and desolate. Restaurants shifted to curbside pickup, retailers moved their focus to online, and the future seemed daunting. “I think not having people on the streets for those few months reminded us how much that is a part of who we are,” said Anita Begnaud, CEO of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and Downtown Lafayette Unlimited (DLU). “I think we had a moment of, ‘What if we didn’t have this? What if this didn’t exist? What would our community be like?’” Begnaud’s role, in a nutshell, is to set the vision for downtown Lafayette through the two entities she oversees. The DDA—funded by property taxes within the boundaries of the downtown district—is a political subdivision of the state founded by the Louisiana legislature in the 1980s to facilitate private and public development in downtown Lafayette.
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Around the same time, DLU was formed as a 501c6 nonprofit to support the DDA’s initiatives through marketing and programming designed to drive people downtown. As CEO of both organizations since October 2018, Begnaud works under two separate boards of directors, developing strategies and managing teams to enact initiatives and support the residents and businesses of the district. “Really, what I do is meet with people a lot,” she said. “I encourage them to invest downtown, figure out what their challenges are, and try to connect the dots for solutions, as well as connecting dots between people who want to achieve similar goals that would be difficult to achieve by themselves.” The COVID-19 pandemic followed a big year for the DDA and DLU. “We titled our annual report for 2019 ‘Momentum,’” said Begnaud. “It was the year of ‘Let’s try everything!’” In 2019, Begnaud oversaw the creation of new programs like a Lunch & Learn series, the first ever Sno-Ball Festival, and a series of holiday events hosted under the umbrella of “A Merry & Bright Christmas” in downtown Lafayette. DLU membership doubled, and the DDA initiated grant programs like the Façade Improvement Program, which resulted in aesthetic and structural updates to over twenty historic buildings in the district. Fourteen new businesses opened, and over 100,000 people visited the district for the over sixty events hosted by the DDA and DLU. It felt like something big was shifting in downtown Lafayette, said Begnaud: “The energy was changing.”
M A Y 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
Dr. Robert Autin, owner of the Acadian Superette in Lafayette’s Freetown neighborhood and his wife Clare Cook, founder of the downtown arts collective Basin Arts, enjoy Central Pizza with their daughter Mathilde.
DLU Director of Programming and Engagement Jamie Hebert grew up in the district and agreed that while the area has always exuded an energy of entrepreneurialism, the last several years have definitely seen a significant evolution. “Downtown was always a place you come, go to work, then go home, and it would be basically a ghost town except on a Friday night or for a festival,” she said. “Now, something is growing, and there is true activity here on a day-to-day basis.” Michele Ezell, owner of the twentyone-year-old downtown institution Tsunami Sushi, spoke to this as well, “Back in the day, we’d shop talk around the idea table, dream about cultivating ‘the downtown space,’ with like a Little Italy and a Little Asia. Have an Italian restaurant, a Thai restaurant. And over the last few years, that’s kind of happened. We didn’t design it, but we’re there. There’s Central Pizza, Pamplona, Spoonbill.” Maggi Bienvenu, a resident of the district and board member, described the disheartening experience of watching the decentralization of Lafayette over the past several decades, and now getting to watch its revival. “It’s so exciting to see things
coming back down here, and people really caring about it,” she said. “Finding people here who care as much as I do about this place was a huge draw to move back to this area.” But last spring, with foot traffic halted and businesses shutting their doors— some temporarily, a few permanently— the momentum built in 2019 seemed at risk of being lost entirely. “We tried to be creative about meeting people where they were,” said Begnaud of the DDA and DLU’s response to the pandemic. “For our restaurant base in particular, we wanted to find a way to build them up when they were feeling at their lowest, asking ‘How are you doing? What can we do to help?’” In the spring, Begnaud facilitated a Zoom call with the district’s restaurateurs, which also gave them the opportunity to talk to each other and exchange experiences. “Then,” Begnaud said, “an idea sparked from one restaurateur like ‘What if we did a competition?’” And thus was born the Chicken Sandwich Smackdown. Held over the course of a month in the summer of 2020, the competition featured sandwiches from fourteen of the district’s restaurants, all vying for
