I Wanna Be Where the People Are

As a vibrant community of local merchants, Downtown Lafayette continues to thrive.

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A 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.

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.” 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 twenty-one-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 the titles “Best Overall” (top score from the judging panel), “Crowd Favorite” (people’s choice), and “Best Seller”. One dollar from the sales of each sandwich went towards the efforts of DLU. When it was all over, the local restaurants had raised $50,000 in chicken sandwich sales alone, not including appetizers or drinks or other meals. “It started a new model for what cooperatives and agreements and working together as a neighborhood can look like,” said Hebert. “It didn’t just create sales, which was the point,” said Begnaud. “And it didn’t just succeed in supporting our restaurants or in marketing the district, which were also the points. But it was also successful in building community among the restaurants.” In the fall, DLU repeated the model, hosting the Burger Battle Royale, which was equally successful. 

The spirit of community in the district, particularly between business owners, has long been a defining factor of Lafayette’s downtown, setting it apart from other parts of the city and from the downtown areas of other cities in the region. With a scene so overwhelmingly local and chain averse, and product lines and ingredients sourced so often from vendors you could find at the farmer’s market down the road—it’s refreshingly easy to run into the moms and pops running the shops, and to share common ground with them. “We share and help each other all the time,” said Ezell of the relationships between restaurant owners in the district. “We’ve got this running list, this environment of who borrowed what.” Events like Downtown Alive!, Festival International, and monthly Artwalks have played a big part in developing a united identity in Downtown Lafayette. But in the last three years, under Begnaud’s watch, an even more cohesive sense of community has emerged in the area. 

[Read Managing Editor Jordan LaHaye Fontenot's story on Festival International from our April 2021 issue.]

When she was being interviewed for the CEO position in 2018, Begnaud said, she made a point of meeting with many of the downtown business owners she’d be working with. “I took these notes,” she said. “I still have them, a stack. I sat down with all these people and asked ‘What do you think the DDA should be doing?’ One of the things that I heard was that while people often felt a connection to their adjacent neighbors on the street, they didn’t necessarily feel a connectivity across the district, with people off of Jefferson or on the other side of it.” 

Begnaud took that as a call to use the DLU to more intentionally bring the area merchants together, and she set about developing opportunities for everyone to run into each other and interact. “The way I look at community building,” she said, “it is actually very simple. It’s about bringing people together. And when you do that, their ideas will spark more ideas. The collaborations are going to be what create the genius ideas and beautiful partnerships. So, it’s very simple, but it’s also very layered. We started bringing people together and set a little spark, and it all took off and now they’re really doing it on their own.” 

Over the past year especially, collaboration has arisen as a particularly resounding theme in downtown Lafayette, often occurring, as Begnaud noted, totally independently of DLU. Last Christmas, Basin Arts Dance Collective presented a “Window Wonderland” series, an effort to bring performing arts back to Lafayette in a safe manner. The series of dance installations was presented over two Saturdays, in which founder of the organization Clare Cook performed in the window displays of downtown businesses Wild Child Wines, Hub City Cycles, and Handy Stop Market.

[Read more about Basin Arts in this article from our April 2018 issue.]

“Everyone is always going inside and outside of each other’s shops, eating at everyone’s restaurants, buying records at Lagniappe, getting haircuts at Mon Reve or Joie de Vivre. And we all talk shop and look out for each other a little bit. It’s very natural really. All the people I’m meeting downtown, I genuinely like. There’s something about them. We all share a common mission, this love for Lafayette.” —Katie Culbert 

Since January, Mitzi Guidry has hosted three breakfast pop-up events at her concept thrift and coffee shop, Lilou—which opened in September 2020. Serving fresh coffee along with funky vintage finds, Guidry’s pop-up events served up a modge podge local breakfast experience involving other local vendors like Scratch Farm Kitchen, Wild Child Wines’ pizza pop-up sister Only Child Pizza, Lucia Bakehouse, Kiki’s Juicebox, Root Floral, and SOLA Violins. Similarly, earlier this year the businesses on the 400 block of Jefferson—Central, Tula Tacos, Handy Shop, The Grouse Room, Genterie Supply Co., Marley’s Sports Bar, Legends, and La Caretta—all came together to start hosting a series of Sunday brunch block parties, blocking off their section of the street to set up pop-up shops, food and drink specials, and live music. On smaller scales, these businesses promote each other’s products on social media, donate portions of their sales to support organizations like Basin Arts or the Acadiana Center for the Arts, and simply shop at each other’s stores. 

[Read our profiles on Lafayette businesses Wild Child Wines, Scratch Farm Kitchen, Kiki's Juicebox, and SOLA Violins.]

When Pop-a-licious first opened downtown in August 2020 (after relocating from the Acadiana Mall), owner Justin Cormier described the experience as family taking you in. “People reached out to us, as a new business in the area,” he said. “They’d come as neighbors, like ‘If you need anything, just come over here and ask!’ Now we’re hanging out at each others’ houses, shooting around ideas. I love the vibe.” 

“Everyone is always going inside and outside of each other’s shops, eating at everyone’s restaurants, buying records at Lagniappe, getting haircuts at Mon Rêve or Joie de Vivre,” said Katie Culbert, co-owner of Wild Child Wines, which opened in January 2020. “And we all talk shop and look out for each other a little bit. It’s very natural really. All the people I’m meeting downtown, I genuinely like. There’s something about them. We all share a common mission, this love for Lafayette.” 

Culbert is one of the owners of downtown’s eighteen 2020 businesses and is also an example of a trend Begnaud referred to as “boomerangs”:  “People who grew up here, moved away to a big city, then moved back—people who got out and saw other communities and other successful concepts, and were like ‘I want to come home and bring that here,’” she explained. Among them are Mitzi Guidry at Lilou, Stephen Verret at Spoonbill, Justin Cormier at Pop-a-licious, Culbert at Wild Child Wines, and Colby Hebert from The Cajun Hatter, who “had his shop on Magazine Street, had a son, and wanted to raise him where he grew up, so he came back and brought the shop to Jefferson Street.” “These are all examples of the young, creative, entrepreneurial people in Downtown Lafayette who are willing to take risks in their own community.” 

[We chatted with Colby Hebert back when his business, The Cajun Hatter, was back on Magazine Street in December 2017. Read all about it here.]

“Growing up in Lafayette, you set up this pedestal that you need to move to bigger cities, that you need to get out,” said Culbert. “I had this vision of Southern California being the most magical place on earth. And it was, and it wasn’t. It made me realize how wonderful Lafayette was; we’re cool too.  And as a business owner, it’s an amazing opportunity to be down here, where you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, but also offer something we need here. You can build this community up, and give everyone options, and put life into this area.” 

Many of these “boomerangs” are the owners of Downtown’s eighteen new businesses, who either opened just before the pandemic or right in the thick of it. It’s a counterintuitive trend that’s been observed over the last year—a combination of clean slates, high emphasis on supporting local, and migration to smaller cities that has resulted in business owners putting their all into smaller, more boutique enterprises within their communities. And with its ready-made community of fellow creative entrepreneurs, its walk-ability, its outdoor spaces, and the support of the DDA and DLU—Lafayette’s downtown was the launchpad of choice for many looking to open their new business in 2020, or to relocate their existing one. In addition to the district’s eighteen new businesses, thirteen existing downtown business owners either expanded or relocated to more strategic spots within the district in 2020.

There are also economic draws to opening a business in downtown Lafayette, thanks to the efforts of the DDA. In addition to attractive incentives such as the Façade Improvement Grant program, the Storefront Awnings program, and the Blade Sign program—which all offer financial support to businesses willing to invest in improving their buildings—the DDA introduced a new grant in 2021 designed to entice retailers to the area. The Retail Tenant Improvement Program will offer up to $3,000 in grants to support interior renovations for retail businesses in the district. 

But even more than businesses, Begnaud emphasized that the DDA is working to attract residents to the area. “As these businesses continue to open, we want there to be residents down here who are their daily supporters, not just people who are coming into work or coming in to visit. We want to develop a strong base of people whose lives are centered around here to support the business base.” 

While there are improvements to be made as far as residential opportunity, the draw is already there. “There aren’t a lot of neighborhoods like this in the region,” said Bienvenu, who currently lives in her great grandmother’s 120-year-old house downtown. “I like to be in the center of everything, and just love the neighborhood vibe of being able to just walk out and grab dinner, walk around town, run into people I know.” Katie Culbert and her husband Denny have lived in the area for over ten years now, and she said that the pedestrian-friendly nature was a draw for them as well. “It’s very European. We’re raising our kid downtown, starting our business downtown, walking our dog downtown. Everything we need is right here. It’s a dream.” 

For Liam Doyle, another longtime resident of the area, the accessibility of downtown’s offerings is an enormous factor in his decision to live there. Doyle, who is wheelchair bound, doesn’t drive. “I loved all of the activity downtown, the programs, events, restaurants, and I wanted to be part of that,” he said. Doyle has served in various roles advocating for disability affairs with Lafayette Consolidated Government since 2015—most recently as ADA Coordinator—and as a DLU board member since 2017. He’s worked closely with Begnaud and the DDA to oversee projects to make the Downtown area more accessible not only for traditional pedestrians, but for people with disabilities as well: repairing sidewalks, putting in curb cuts, moving obstructions when possible, and spreading general awareness. “I love this place,” said Doyle. “I’ve championed downtown for years and being involved in making it better, and working with people who are always trying to make it better, and having that mentality echoed throughout your day to day visits, is fantastic.” 

As cities across America look at strategies to re-animate their main streets and downtown areas, downtown Lafayette stands as an example of a community doing something that is working—even in the face of a pandemic. Begnaud, who before her time at the DDA and DLU was working with One Acadiana, identified three main pillars of development for a successful downtown district. “Education is where you start,” she said. “People need to know that this is important and can make an impact in their town.” Then, intentionality: “Be intentional about the outcomes you want to see and ways to fund them.” (In Lafayette, she said, community members did this by appointing the DDA and taxing themselves: “Downtown Lafayette has someone who wakes up every day and thinks about getting things done.”) Finally: Engagement opportunities. “That’s what makes the energy pop,” she said. “You get the people, the business owners, and the property owners involved in growing the energy base.” 

And the energy, Begnaud said—the energy is everything. Listening to a panel with One Acadiana years ago, she wrote down in her notebook the advice: “You need to create a place where people want to be and love to be.” “We’re building that,” she said, “a place that we love. People invest in places they love.”  

downtownlafayette.org.