A group of developers wants to use a federal tax break program to bring private investment into one of Lafayette’s poorest areas.
Pride Opportunity Developers Group is outlining its plan to use opportunity zones to spur development in North Lafayette and to show investors the potential it sees for the area.
The group is led by Ravis Martinez, Royal Hill, Peter Williams and city council District 1 candidate John Ford. The team is focused on making development more appealing in Lafayette’s Census Tract 11, which generally covers the area between Interstate 10 and Simcoe Street east of St. Antoine and West Grant streets.
The area is one of the poorest parts of Lafayette, with a median annual household income of $26,200, well below the $53,950 median for Lafayette Parish. The area lags behind the parish in educational attainment as well, with about 70% of adult residents having no college experience at all, compared to 42% of the parish as a whole.
POD wants to be the vehicle for that investment and is trying to take advantage of the area’s opportunity zone status — which allows people who have made money selling assets, like buildings, stocks or businesses, to invest in projects in poor areas to avoid taxes on those earnings. The opportunity zone status could help to stimulate new business ideas and real estate development in the area.
“The idea of POD was to bring the community together,” said Ford, POD’s CEO. “The stakeholders and the strategic partners that are within this side of the community, to say, ‘Hey, let’s set down and intentionally design a plan for redevelopment of North Lafayette.’”
POD already is bringing plans for parts of the area to the table, including ideas to redevelop the closed Walmart facility on Evangeline Thruway into a hemp-growing business, build a mixed use development in the Pride Plaza medical building and put a new hotel where the Royal Inn on Evangeline Thruway used to be.
Ford pointed out the power of investments like those to bring jobs to the area, which suffers from an estimated 10% unemployment rate, according Census Bureau estimates. He also said POD plans to do more than support its own plans and ideas, and will help to support and bring investors to other plans can have a powerful impact on the community.
“We have to make sure we’re getting the best projects that the community can provide,” he said. “POD ideas are just a few of the ideas. There may be someone else that has a project that is a lot stronger than a POD project, and that’s the project that we’re going to support.”
POD hosted a forum this week in which many of the community’s development leaders spoke on behalf of spurring investment in North Lafayette, including LEDA CEO Gregg Gothreaux, Downtown Development Authority CEO Anita Begnaud, One Acadiana CEO Troy Wayman and Acadiana Planning Commission CEO Monique Boulet, who has been a regional advocate for using opportunity zones to bring sustained investment to the area.
Boulet said bringing opportunity zone-based investment requires a plan that will pay off long-term because the benefits of the investment are greatest after the money has been kept in a project for 10 years. That is what gives the system the potential to be a solution in areas devoid of meaningful, sustained investment.
“At the core of this, you have to have a solid business plan. You have to have a revenue stream. It has to make sense for it to work,” she said. “The great beauty of this program is that it is not a quick flip. It is not an easy dollar to make. It is a long-term, sustainable investment in a community.”