ST. MARTINVILLE — The St. Martinville City Council approved a motion to move forward with the sale of some bayouside property Thursday evening. 

The property includes the old Talley Ice House and land directly east of it, between New Market Street and the Bayou Teche. The expected buyer is Chip Durand and Durand Enterprises Inc. Durand has shared plans to open a restaurant, a gift shop and a food processing operation at the location with council members.  

“It looks like you’ve done quite a bit of work on this already,” Councilman Craig Prosper said to Durand at Thursday night’s meeting. “It’s pretty impressive, going through the presentation you did.” 

Councilman Mike Fuselier also was supportive, with some caveats. 

“I think everybody that heard Chip’s plans are excited,” Fuselier said. 

However, Fuselier said he wanted to know if there would be a timeline required for progress on the project. 

“We don’t want to sell it and then have somebody just sit on it,” he said.

City Attorney Allan Durand said council members could set up benchmarks for progress. 

“Then we can sort that out later,” Fuselier said. 

Durand, the attorney, said once the council decides to go ahead with the sale, they must advertise it for three consecutive weeks in the Teche News and, if there are no objections or public comments, the council can then authorize the mayor to sign off on the sale.  

The motion to move forward with the sale — to begin advertising it — passed unanimously. City Councilwoman Debra Landry was absent.

Prosper said all proposals for the purchase need to be turned in by Jan. 10. 

“Anyone can submit a bid by the 10th of January,” Prosper said. 

In a separate agenda item, Fuselier proposed a visit at the next meeting by attorneys from a Mississippi-based law firm representing litigants in a class action lawsuit involving opioid distributors. 

Fuselier said he’d spoken Wednesday with lawyers from the law firm Langston & Weems, of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, who wanted the city of St. Martinville to sign on with their class action lawsuit.

“This is a big, big class action lawsuit against opioid distributors. It’s four big companies. I don’t know if y’all saw the ‘60 Minutes’ recently,” he said, referring to the news program’s recent collaboration with the Washington Post, which documented the role of several large medical distributors in the current opioid crisis. 

“The opioid epidemic is costing the cities and the parishes and states billions of dollars nationwide,” Fuselier said. 

He said joining the lawsuit will not cost the city any money, and could bring settlement money directly to the city instead of filtering through the state.