This week, Mayor-President Monique Boulet will begin public engagement on the first segment of a Johnston Street revamp that will focus on a segment of the road that hems Downtown Lafayette. It’s the M-P’s most recent street-focused project, and an ambitious one at that, including tackling drainage for Downtown, moving overhead electrical lines and modernizing the major arterial roadway.
But a look back at projects like University Avenue and Bertrand Drive raises questions about whether she can build the coalition necessary for a project as large as Johnston Street to actually happen.
The administration has scheduled several meetings in the coming months to garner input and drum up support for the Johnston-Louisiana Avenue Revitalization project, which aims to modernize an 8.5-mile stretch of the roadway.
The administration invited several stakeholders and partners, including Bike Lafayette and UL Lafayette, to join the public engagement process. One Acadiana and the Community Foundation of Acadiana were also invited to participate, as were several business owners along Johnston Street, including Legends owner Jared Doise and Blue Moon Saloon owner Mark Falgout, both of whom appear list of stakeholders shared with The Current via email, but did not respond to requests for comment. UL Lafayette did not respond in time for publication.
What’s almost as interesting as who’s on the list, is who isn’t. Conspicuously absent was one of the major players downtown: the Downtown Development Authority.
Boulet plans to start with a segment that skirts Downtown Lafayette from Lewis Street to the railroad tracks, according to a flyer sent by the administration. The downtown section has been pitched as both a drainage and road project, intended to address persistent flooding of downtown businesses and nearby homes.
“It does not make sense to me why the input of the DDA has been avoided,” DDA’s CEO Kevin Blanchard tells The Current. “I truly do believe that if we’re involved in the project, it’s going to be a better project.”
Blanchard and Boulet have stood on opposite sides of multiple debates throughout the M-P’s tenure, and she’s made it all but obvious that she’s not eager to collaborate with the agency, not least when she vetoed a well-funded Downtown redevelopment plan spearheaded by the DDA in April. The plan has been on ice since.
As a result of what appears to be growing animosity, Blanchard says his organization has been shut out of processes it would have typically been included in, such as the redesign of a major Downtown road.
While the DDA is not on the list, the meetings are open to the public and they are invited to attend and provide feedback, Boulet tells The Current, defending her decision not to invite the major stakeholder by saying she was looking for fresh perspectives.
“I wanted new voices,” Boulet says. “I would like [the DDA] to show up and participate.”
Blanchard says he couldn’t throw his support behind a project he knows little about, and warns that Boulet’s “top-down” approach to planning is what has led to other Boulet proposals and projects either being stalled or dropped — potentially imperiling this one just the same.
“The answer is I have no idea,” he says on supporting Boulet’s Johnston plan. “I’m going to have to show up to the meetings like everybody else.”
The DDA director says the organization has a long-standing history of open dialogue with Downtown businesses, giving them a better understanding of their priorities that could ease relationship-based roadblocks a project might face — as Bertrand did when local business owners rose up against it, effectively halting the project.
He adds that tackling the effective “moat” that Johnston Street creates between Downtown and nearby neighborhoods has been a major goal of his organization for over a decade.
The administration, whether rightly or not, has faced the ire of residents and business owners over how it handled the University Avenue project, with some critics arguing the final product differed from what was originally presented. Boulet has repeatedly emphasized that the design was approved by the previous administration – though Boulet served as director of the Acadiana Planning Commission, which oversaw the project’s funding and public engagement.
The Bertrand Drive Revitalization project, which was originally presented as a snapshot of what Johnston could be, has been put on the back burner as Boulet works with adjacent business owners who have come out against the project.
“That’s basically how the [Johnston] project is going and that’s also unfortunately the way that most projects have gone for the last two years,” Blanchard said. “What I’m mad about is: we’re about to spend — how many millions? — of public dollars in a way that is almost surely going to be designed to fail.”
Public input and design are expected to stretch well into 2027, with groundbreaking scheduled for 2028. Johnston Street will likely be a major project mentioned when Boulet seeks re-election, something she says she intends to do.
The Downtown segment, known as Segment Three, is estimated at $30-$50 million, Jamie Boudreaux, Lafayette Consolidated Government’s chief communication officer, tells The Current. LCG has received more than $50 million for the overall project so far, according to documents sent to partners and stakeholders. Drainage along the Downtown segment alone has been presented at $12 million previously.
One of the partners on the list is Matt Mick, director of Bike Lafayette, a local nonprofit that advocates for cyclist infrastructure, safety and awareness. He tells The Current that he’s looking forward to being part of the process – offering perspective from a cyclist and pedestrian angle.
The expansion of “micromobility” options over the years, like e-bikes and e-scooters, has made alternative modes of travel increasingly popular in the city, increasing the number of vulnerable road users, Mick says.
“Bike Lafayette really hopes to be a voice for the priorities of people who are going to use our roads outside a car… We represent the end user that very much has something at stake in these conversations,” Mick says, adding that he plans on advocating for bike lanes, shared use paths and improving intersections.
Joel Bacque, an invited stakeholder and local real estate agent, tells The Current he plans to offer perspectives from the lens of a lifelong resident and someone with a young family. Bacque does not own any properties along Johnston Street.
“Especially with what went on with the University project…public input is necessary to avoid mistakes of the past,” Bacque says.
Mick and Bacque both agree that Johnston Street needs improvements, with safety for motorists and those outside vehicles as a major priority for both. Mick believes that a better Johnston Street would connect different areas like nearby neighborhoods and UL Lafayette to the downtown area.
“I don’t think it’s an easy project… It’s going to take a lot of working together to make it work,” Bacque says.
Public input meetings are scheduled for the following:
