A Place for the People

Smack dab in the geographical center of Lafayette—of Acadiana, really—is a place. Its stream, the Coulée Mine, holds centuries of memories—deep in its soil—of its prehistoric hunters and their settlements, of magnificent creatures (the mastodon!) that no longer exist. For centuries, its sprawling oaks have watched, lazily, as immigrants, speaking a strange language, staked their claim. Beneath the hands of these newcomers, the land shifted, its wildness tamed in exchange for sustenance, emerging into a new era under a new name: “the farm.” And just as the strange modern world started to close in, buildings getting closer and closer together to hold the city’s growing masses, this place—100 acres of it—was reserved for its riches, purchased by the Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) for use as a dairy farm, and then, years later, as an equestrian center. 

“The Horse Farm” remained so-called long after the horses were gone. One of the lone wide-open spaces left in the growing metropolis of Lafayette, the university then used the property for ROTC training, for Plant and Animal Science courses, and as a testing ground for the Engineering department’s “Cajunbot”. 

But mostly, the place was unused, untouched, and left wild, with its gate wide open: Lafayette’s best kept secret. 

“I’ve been going to the Horse Farm since I was thirteen years old,” said lifelong Lafayette resident Victoria Billeaud. “It was this little sanctuary right in the middle of the Johnston Street chaos, Lafayette’s own Central Park, known only by the locals—a perfect, natural place to stop by and eat your lunch, set up a hammock, walk your dog. 

“The Horse Farm didn’t offer much—just open land and beautiful trees, really, but it was simple and really pure.” 

Saving the Horse Farm

Fifteen years ago, Danica Adams, then a student of Environmental and Sustainable Resources at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, made her home on the Horse Farm. In an agreement with the university, she lived in the property’s small white farmhouse, known as the Comeaux House, in exchange for performing property maintenance and part-time work at the Ira Nelson Horticultural Center. 

Adams’ best friend, Elizabeth “EB” Brooks, who was also studying Environmental and Sustainable Resources at ULL, was set to move in with her in the fall of 2005. But that summer, without any explanation, the university unexpectedly asked Adams to move off of the property. Months later, both Adams and Brooks were sitting in the late Dr. Griff Blakewood’s Community-Based Planning course when he brought in the newest edition of the Independent Weekly, which broke the news that the university was planning to  do a land swap, trading thirty-six acres of the Horse Farm for around four acres connected to campus, surely dooming the land to a future of commercial development.

“We both got really upset,” remembered Brooks. “Really emotional, just burst into tears. We went and sat on the steps of Hamilton Hall, and we made a pact to do whatever we could to save the Horse Farm.” 

Looking back, the fortunate synchrony of the pair’s personal relationship with the property, their enrollment that semester in Dr. Blakewood’s course, and their leadership roles in the campus group, the “Society for Peace, Environment, Action, and Knowledge” (SPEAK), where Brooks was President and Adams Vice President, set the perfect stage for one of the region’s largest grassroots movements yet.

For SPEAK’s next meeting, Brooks and Adams organized a public forum, inviting community members to attend and speak on what they did and didn’t like about the university’s plan. More than sixty people, including community leaders and media, attended to voice concerns and offer support. “We discussed what we knew, what we needed to learn, and we broke off into factions about the different issues surrounding the use of public property,” said Brooks. “People wanted more input, more public process.” 

For the rest of the semester, Dr. Blakewood’s Community-Based Planning class dedicated itself to the project of rallying the community behind what became called the “Save the Horse Farm” movement. 

“But it was way more than a class project,” said Brooks. 

For the next three years, she and Adams led weekly “Save the Horse Farm” community meetings. Together with concerned students, community leaders, and Lafayette residents, they adorned the city in posters, yard signs, and bumper stickers. 

“We canvassed neighborhoods, walking down streets and knocking on doors,” said Brooks. “We had petitions arguing that the university should reconsider, and we got over 4,000 signatures. We had multiple meetings with stakeholders, and just treated it as a high-profile awareness campaign, educating on the need for more park space in Lafayette. We even had some of the University’s architecture students draw up what a park might look like, rather than a strip mall.

“And you know, this serendipitously happened right around the time that social media launched. We were actually maybe one of the first activism campaigns in Louisiana—maybe even in the country—to use social media as an engagement tool.” 

As a result of these efforts, then City-Parish President Joey Durel recognized that the Horse Farm was one of the very last significant parcels of undeveloped land left in Lafayette. Alongside “Save the Horse Farm” supporters, Durel began to promote a vision of transforming the raw, under-used property into a true state-of-the-art central park for Lafayette. 

“To get one hundred acres of continuous land in any other city would involve bulldozing something else down,” said Durel. “And we had this, right here, this land that I had grown up playing Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on as a kid. It was just such a unique opportunity for Lafayette.” 

With the support of the City-Parish council, he began negotiations with ULL’s President Dr. Ray Authement, then later with his replacement Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, to transfer the farm to the city.  

In 2012—seven years after Brooks and Adams had spurred the “Save the Horse Farm” movement—the Lafayette City Government came to an official agreement with the University to purchase the entire 100-acre property. For the official property transfer, Durel and Savoie rode into the ceremony—fittingly—on horseback. 

A Community Vision 

With the Horse Farm now in the hands of the city, the property was no longer in danger of housing a future Walmart or strip mall. And while residents still enjoyed the untamed, sprawling space in an unofficial capacity, dreams of a functioning public park still felt far from reach. The city simply didn’t have the funds to develop the property. If there were going to be a park, the community would have to once again stand up and will it. 

In 2013, through the Community Foundation of Acadiana, local leaders formed the independent 501c3 nonprofit Lafayette Central Park, Inc., (LCP), which would lease the land from the city with the mission of building and operating a future world-class community park. 

With $2.6 million, funded by the Lafayette Public Trust Financing Authority, to hire a master planner, LCP began an extensive nation-wide search for the right partner. 

“That same energy that had been so integral to saving the property continued in people’s eagerness to develop it." 

—Elizabeth "EB" Brooks

 “After all the energy this endeavor took—all those thousands of voices so invested in the property’s future, we deliberately sought out a master architect who had experience in community engagement, as well as environmental sustainability,” said Brooks. 

After eliminating over fifteen world-class firms, LCP hired the international design firm Design Workshop based out of Austin, Texas. “Design Workshop had a lot of experience in engagement, and they really saw how important it was to us to capture the community’s vision.” 

Brooks, who had stayed involved in the project’s developments even after she moved to Austin in 2009 to attend a Master’s Program in Urban Design at the University of Texas, moved back to Lafayette to serve as LCP’s Director of Planning and Design in 2013. “We immediately started the public planning process,” she recalled. “Once again, we organized a bunch of public meetings, asking the community what they did and didn’t want in a public park.” 

Over the course of the next two years, LCP’s various committees and staff—along with the designers and planners of Design Workshop—oversaw twenty-seven public workshops and online surveys, engaging more than 7,400 members of the community to share their thoughts on park elements including: walking trails, bike paths, ponds, amphitheaters, a dog park, and green lawns. “That same energy that had been so integral to saving the property continued in people’s eagerness to develop it,” said Brooks. “Thousands and thousands of people came to tell us what they wanted. It was so fun, there were old people offering their opinions, and then five-year-olds telling us what they wanted too.” 

In May 2014, the official master plan for Lafayette’s new Central Park was unveiled to the public at a fundraising festival called “Party in the Park.” The result—an ambitious work of intentional, collective artistry—would take millions of dollars of funding and decades to complete. But it would be, more than any other institution in Lafayette, for the people. And the people, as they had so many times already, would stand up  together to make it happen. 

Breaking Ground 

With a plan in place, LCP jumped into an intense four months of fundraising. Phase 1 of the Master Plan would require a total of $15 million to cover the construction and operational costs, with an estimated $30 million cost for the entire project. 

The very first, and largest, gift came from retired Lafayette businessman and philanthropist James Devin Moncus through his foundation, which has contributed to other major initiatives in Lafayette and beyond, including the Acadiana Center for the Arts. 

Fred Werner, who today is the nonprofit’s incoming board chairman and a friend of Moncus’s, remembers a conversation in which the philanthropist was deliberating whether or not to contribute. “I told him, ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have a park named after you, and to do a lot of good for hundreds of thousands of people in Lafayette for the next hundreds of years.’” 

In May 2016, at another Party in the Park, the first tangible step in the Horse Farm’s evolution took place with the announcement of its official new name—Moncus Park at the Horse Farm. “We would never be where we are today without Mr. Moncus’s gift,” said Brooks, who was named LCP’s second Executive Director in October 2015, and currently holds the position. “It was incredible and such a positive foot to get started on.”

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After raising over $11 million through silent fundraising efforts focused on large private donors, LCP launched its public fundraising campaign in November 2016. Still running today, the campaign has raised $22 million to date, and gives supporters the option to contribute online through general donations or by directing funds to specific park features, including an option to “leave your mark in the park” by purchasing a board for the boardwalk along the lake, inscribed with a name or a message. 

“This is really a legacy project,” said Brooks. “Anyone involved in making it happen, in any way—large and small—is part of something we’ll have for generations.” 

On March 12, 2018, with enough funds raised to officially enact Phase 1, the first shovel-ful of Horse Farm soil was turned. Based on the community’s priorities and available funding, LCP focused its initial efforts on the front sixty acres of the property. Over the course of the next year, construction efforts included practical infrastructural elements like a two-way entrance, a parking lot, water lines, sewer lines, and power. Even these elements were approached creatively, said Brooks, with a special focus on sustainability. For example, “All of the irrigation is irrigated with pond water,” she said. “We also have a rain garden, which provides naturally sourced rain to irrigate all of the lawns.” In addition, in October 2019, LCP announced their partnership with the Louisiana alternative energy systems provider ClearWorld, which will provide advanced solar LED lighting systems to light up the park. 

The first year of construction also saw the development of the park’s major landscaping initiatives, which included a four-acre wetland pond filled with native plants—including eight hundred irises donated by the Louisiana Iris Society—and a series of hills built up from the displaced soil, which will serve both as flood control and as a barrier between the park and nearby neighborhoods. One hill, called “Prospect Mound,” rises sixty feet above sea level as the now-highest point in Lafayette Parish.

In addition to the property’s twenty-five live oaks—the lifesource, many might say, of the Horse Farm’s enduring magic—LCP has overseen the planting of more than 250 new native magnolias, oaks, and cypress trees on the property. Many of them, along with newly installed benches and water fountains, line the two miles of new, handicap-accessible walking paths and running trails, which wind their way throughout the diverse terrain—over hills, beside the pond, and, one day, through the still-undeveloped forested twelve acres in the back of the property. 

“In the back, there is this amazing, wooded ravine playland, where kids will one day be able to go and just get dirt under their fingernails and skin their knees,” said Brooks. “I really look forward to the wild aspects this place will offer.

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“But also, it’s so important that this place be accessible to everyone. And being able to enhance the natural landscapes in this way, we’re finding ways to allow people to enjoy them, people who wouldn’t have been able to before.” 

One of the first major elements completed—something that was at the top of the Lafayette community’s list—is the off-leash dog park. “That was a big priority for everyone, something that people were really very passionate about,” said Brooks. 

By February 2020, these “bones of the park,” as Brooks describes it, are all in place. The wide-open space, sculpted a little here, polished a bit there, holds centuries of potential. Over the course of the next decade or decades, elements will be added as they are sponsored.  A recent influx of funding has postponed the planned spring opening to fall of 2020 as construction gets underway with major installations including: an amphitheater by the lake, a playground and splash pad, and a tree house designed by Animal Planet’s “The Treehouse Master” Pete Nelson. And still, the Master Plan holds space for future botanical and sculpture gardens, a Veterans’ Memorial Garden, a mini golf course and carousel, and a new pavilion to host the Lafayette Farmers and Artisans Market. 

“In fifty years, one hundred years, people will have moved onto the next technology,” said former Lafayette mayor-president Joey Durel. “They’ll laugh about fiber. But these trees, preserved on that land, they’ll be one hundred years older and that much more beautiful.”  

It’s a vision of epic proportions, a sort of utopia crafted for a community uniquely connected by culture and heritage, by generational ties to the natural environments of the land they live in. Dreams of children rolling down hills, living out their imagined worlds, running wild; of couples strolling under magnolia trees or kayaking down the Coulée; of Lafayette’s creative community coming together, again and again, to celebrate they way Acadians do—with music, and dancing, and festivals. You can almost smell the crawfish boils to come. “Not to mention all of the local collaborations with museums and organizations and musicians to use the space in amazing new ways,” said Brooks. “I don’t think we can imagine all the possibilities.”

Durel, whose twelve-year term as Lafayette’s mayor-president ended in 2016, is perhaps best known for overseeing the launch of Louisiana’s first city-owned fiber-optic service, LUS Fiber. However, he’ll counter that his legacy truly resides in saving the Horse Farm. 

“In fifty years, one hundred years, people will have moved onto the next technology,” he said. “They’ll laugh about fiber. But these trees, preserved on that land, they’ll be one hundred years older and that much more beautiful.”  

Standing on Prospect Mound, you can see almost the entire park. With its new terrain, its hills and its miles of walkways, the wild pastures of the Horse Farm are almost unrecognizable. But in the far corner are those same oaks—hundreds of years old—still embracing each other in their groves, watching as this place’s next era unfolds all around them. 

moncuspark.org