The Downtown Lafayette organizations are repeating their opposition to a pending Conditional Use Permit that would allow a new Jefferson Street bar.
At issue is a permit application filed by the current operator of Rooftop 116, a two-story bar in the old Masonic temple on Vermilion Street, to operate a daiquiri bar next door to NiteTown in the 500 block of Jefferson Street. In Downtown Lafayette, permits for bars are handled differently than in other areas of the city; the Conditional Use Permit process is designed to look at any prior business performance of the applicant. It grew out of concerns that too many bars were choking out other downtown uses - like residential, business, etc. - several years ago.
A city zoning board approved the CUP, but the Downtown Development Authority and Downtown Lafayette Unlimited opposed the permit, and CEO Kevin Blanchard has sent a detailed memo about the organizations' opposition to the City Council. The council is set to consider final approval of the CUP at its meeting tonight. You can read the memo by scrolling down.
To read our story about that, click here.
"The conditional use permit system exists to give the decision-maker, the City Council, the right tools to make exactly this kind of judgment: a full-picture evaluation of the operator, their experience, the location, and the public safety consequences of approval. The record in front of the Council includes an operator with three apparent permit violations at their existing location in nine months, a proposed site in the district's most active block, and a formal police recommendation against approval. We respectfully submit that this record speaks for itself," Blanchard's memo states.
We reached out to the permit applicant, Marlon Haynes, but haven't heard back yet.
In his memo, Blanchard lays out the data he found about police calls in the area of the Rooftop 116 establishment.
"The Police Department has also formally recommended against approving the 522 Jefferson Street application. This recommendation was grounded in data. As their report shows, the 500 block of Jefferson Street has recorded approximately 258 in-progress disturbance calls between 9:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. since 2021-compared to approximately 105 in the 400 block and 72 in the 600 block. The proposed location would sit adjacent to NiteTown, a club with a capacity exceeding 800 patrons," the memo states.
In particular, Blanchard points out two incidents at the Rooftop 116 bar: a fight and a noise violation.
"The question the Council faces is straightforward: if an operator is struggling to maintain compliance with the two conditions of their existing permit, should they be granted a new permit at a second location? The DDA's position is that we would like to see some positive progress on the part of this operator to correct some of these violations before we can support a new application," Blanchard writes.
Here's Blanchard's memo:
