Restaurateur eyes St. Martinville property

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, September 20, 2017

A bold commercial development was presented at the regular meeting of the St. Martinville City Council earlier this week.

On Monday night, St. Martinville restaurateur Chip Durand approached the council to express his interest in buying a piece of bayou-side land from the city government, including an out-of-use icehouse, to transform into dining, retail and food processing space.

Durand currently owns the popular St. John’s restaurant, on North New Market Street in St. Martinville. That riverside restaurant is currently housed in a former pecan warehouse on the bayou that Durand previously bought and refurbished.

Durand plans to build another restaurant on additional land. In the former icehouse, he intends to build a storage and freezing facility, coupled with a fishery and hydroponic vegetable operation, and an additional greenhouse, to supply the restaurant, St. Martinville Mayor Pro-Tem Mike Fuselier said.

On a separate piece of land across the street, Durand plans to build a small retail space to run a country store selling his own food products.

Fuselier said he’s excited about what he heard Monday night.

“I’d really like to see more commercial development there. I kind of see something similar to what’s happening at River Ranch,” he said, referring to the mixed-use development in Lafayette.

“We have the mayor’s authority to get an appraisal on the property. That’s the first step we have to do if we’re going to sell it,” Fuselier said. “If we do sell it, we’ll stipulate a timeframe for construction, and he’ll have to begin construction and hit benchmarks within a certain time or else have to sell it back to us. We don’t want the property sitting empty.” 

Fuselier says that’s about the only undeveloped land in the city.

“We bought that property about 15 years ago and always wanted to do something with it, but we’ve never had the funding — all municipalities are struggling a little bit right now,” he said. “But now we’re getting started. We need to add to our tax base.”

Fuselier said the current St. John restaurant employs about 44 workers, and that the new plans may bring that up to 100 once completed.

Also discussed was a $1 million sidewalk project throughout the historic district. Council received updates from the mayor regarding the contractor’s progress on that project, which will build sidewalks along five blocks of Main Street, and sidewalks on Bridge and Evangeline Streets.