Local Southern Mutual Help Association officials are proud these days and for good reason.

Five model homes are ready and more are being built at the Teche Ridge residential development SMHA recently showed off in grand style on the eastern portion of New Iberia. As SMHA’s senior advisor and fiscal project manager said last week in The Daily Iberian, Teche Ridge is more about building a lifestyle than homes.

“Teche Ridge isn’t just a neighborhood full of houses. It’s really about a fuller quality of life, which does include cultural and artistic elements,” Denise Galatas said. “So as the developer, Teche Ridge is doing things to bring more folks to the neighborhood and to get more attention to the development.”

The project isn’t the typical subsidized housing project. Rather, it more closely resembles modern developments such as Sugar Mill Pond in Youngsville and River Ranch in Lafayette, according to Lorna Bourg, co-founder and CEO of the SMHA, a nonprofit group.

“There’s an idea, especially in the Deep South, that all nonprofits are the same, and they’re really not,” Bourg said during a speech this past week to the Teche Area Builders Association at the Ramada Inn Convention Center.

“We’re a Community Development Corporation, which is really a different thing. This is about economic development. If we want to attract these big companies that pay high wages, we need houses and communities those people will want to live in.”

In other words, to borrow a time-worn phrase, “If you build it, they will come.”

SMHA is building it after four years and $450,000, of which the latter doesn’t include one penny of government money, Bourg said. Investors and donors are responsible.

Bourg said it was a lengthy process that required time and attorneys to set the stage for building. Iberia Parish building codes were scrutinized and rewritten the past several years.

The nonprofit group also invested millions of dollars in the infrastructure — bringing water to the development,  carving out water drainage and retention and bringing in utilities.

Bourg said all lots and homes in the development sell at a market rate with price ranges designed to attract people from different socioeconomic walks of life. There are many high-end, luxury homes, she said.

SMHA wants to bring a walkable neighborhood theme to the city, where welders and CEOs and artists and attorneys live side by side, enjoy the same cafes and retail shops in the community and have fun at a central park that will play host to farmer’s and artisan’s markets, outdoor yoga classes and live music.

It’s all about the neighborhood, Bourg and Galatas stress. 

Time will tell about the degree of success the local development has in the heart of the Teche Area. The underlying theme is promising.

DON SHOOPMAN

SENIOR NEWS EDITOR