City of Abbeville will host Community Visioning Meeting on May 5

The City of Abbeville will host a community town hall meeting to discuss the development of Downtown Abbeville and reuse of the former Audrey Hotel. The event will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on May 5, 2022, at the Vermilion Parish Library — Abbeville Branch and is part of a week-long study done in partnership with the Acadiana Planning Commission, Louisiana DEQ, and Kansas State University – Technical Assistance to Brownfields (KSU TAB).
These partners will visit Abbeville the first week of May and will host focus groups with different strategic professionals to develop a market analysis. They will work with locals to generate ideas for reuse and present to the public for community feedback in the town hall meeting on Thursday, May 5.
“I have had many conversations with members of the community who are enthusiastic about potentially putting the upper floors of City Hall to use,” Abbeville Mayor-Elect Roslyn White said. “I am excited to work with this dynamic team to learn more about programs available to us in the redevelopment of our community.”
The initial program and assessment will focus on reuse of Abbeville City Hall, previously the Audrey Hotel, as a potential redevelopment property, but will open discussion for the community’s wishes for downtown Abbeville. At the end of the process, the City of Abbeville will have ideas on viable projects to pursue funding and start putting vacant properties into use.
“It is our hope that this project becomes a catalyst for redevelopment throughout the City,” White said. “Once we finish this phase, we will have a blueprint on how to use incentives and LDEQ Brownfields Program funding to put other vacant properties back into use and make that plan available to our community and investors.”
The program is planned to be the catalyst project for the new Imagine Abbeville Campaign. Learn more about the campaign by visiting ImagineAbbeville.com. Residents can now submit ideas for the City of Abbeville anytime by emailing them to ideas@iloveabbeville.com.
About DEQ Brownfields Programs: Addressing potential environmental issues, especially financial and regulatory hurdles, is often intimidating, creating a barrier to the redevelopment or expanded use of these sites. LDEQ’s Brownfields Program helps convert these properties from community liabilities into community assets by assisting local governments and communities navigate the environmental process from investigation to cleanup and redevelopment.