The Downtown Development Authority is asking the city council to amend an ordinance to limit how late people can carry open drinks in Downtown Lafayette.
In a letter to Mayor-President Monique Boulet, DDA CEO Kevin Blanchard suggested a ban on open containers after 9 p.m., amending the current cutoff of midnight. The concern comes from what Blanchard views as a growing “tailgating” culture, where people bring their own alcohol from home, leading to “criminal behavior”, fights and increased litter.
In the Friday letter, Blanchard is also asking the council to pause issuing permits for new bars in Downtown, citing what he believes has become an increasingly lax process. The request comes in response to the city zoning commission’s approval of a newly proposed bar at the corner of Jefferson and Cypress Street.
A longstanding moratorium on new bars Downtown means bars must obtain a conditional use permit if they anticipate alcohol to make up a majority of their sales.
The letter references a recent Downtown brawl that gained significant traction on social media, which Blanchard attributes to adding too many bars in the downtown area and spreading police presence too thin as those new bars open.
The approval that triggered the DDA’s request was for a permit for Plush Syndicate, which seeks to open a bar located at the former Bliss Cocktail Lounge. Blanchard also submitted to defer the board’s decision.
LCG staff recommended the approval of the application and require the business to adhere to:
The city council provides final approval for all proposed bars in Downtown Lafayette.
“The application is advancing without basic information about how the nightclub will actually function,” the letter reads, adding that the bar has not come up with a security plan for large crowds in its application. “A healthy, common sense bar permitting process would not allow an applicant to proceed with all the still-open questions.”
In an application to Lafayette Consolidated Government, the business says a manager will be present at all times and that security will scale with attendance.
The board’s approval suggests a permitting process that has become increasingly relaxed, Blanchard writes. The original intent, Blanchard believes, of the ordinances that created the permitting process was to balance nighttime and daytime businesses in Downtown – in an effort to lessen the burden on police and allow for cleanup.
One example of a less stringent permitting process is the recent issuance of “BYOB permits”; which act as a “loophole” that lets bars operate before receiving final operational permits, alluding to a permit that was granted to a Downtown cigar lounge that operated as a bar for months before receiving its CUP permits, Blanchard writes.
BYOB permits allow businesses to let customers bring unopened containers of alcohol to consume on-site.
The cigar lounge, Ashes II Ashes, received approval from the council to sell alcohol in July. The owner of the lounge, Marlon Haynes, had a second location, a daiquiri shop on Jefferson, turned down by council members previously. The council denied the permit after Lafayette police raised concerns about the high number of incidents at Haynes’ other business, Rooftop 116.
Haynes, who is Black, has argued the denial was racially motivated.
Blanchard is asking for more public engagement before permit applications can go to the zoning commission. He also wants to require findings from police on ongoing security measures downtown and whether they can accommodate another bar open after midnight.
