New Iberian Mayor Freddie DeCourt hopes to explore marketing ideas for the city’s collective museums and attractions once the new and anticipated museums around St. Peter and Jefferson streets are open.

Cane River Pecan Company’s pecan museum will be located in the company’s building at the corner of Main and Jefferson streets and is expected to open in late April or early Spring. Teche Growers Association recently purchased a half block of property on St. Peter Street with the intent to transform it into a museum and agricultural center.

DeCourt said that once the new pecan museum and agricultural museum are complete and open for business, they could be marketed along with the city’s other attractions.

“As soon as those (agricultural museum and pecan museum) are up and running, my idea is pretty simple — basically between Konriko, the Bayou Teche Museum, the Shadows, the Cane River Pecan museum, and the agricultural museum and Teche Growers, I do plan on collecting everybody together and the city becoming some kind of partner as well where we can market all of our attractions,” DeCourt said. “We would finally have enough attractions that visitors would end up staying more than a day.”

Cane River chief Jady Regard is hopeful that the new additions to Cane River Pecan Company — the pecan museum as well as the pie bar and cafe — and other new developments in the downtown area will attract other future businesses to set up shop in New Iberia too.

“I hope that (the endeavor) is so successful that other people start saying, ‘Well, Cane River’s open now, and the Bayou Teche Museum is getting bigger, and Rodrigue Park is down there, and Freddie’s trying to put a kayak dock down there at the bayou, maybe I should go open a business down there,’” Regard said.

“Who knows, 10 years from now they’ve got five or six other buildings taken over down here (for new businesses). That’s what we need to have down here. We need to have some economic stimulus so other people can come down here with their ideas. I’d love for something to open across the street, or down the street, or wherever,” he continued.

Cane River’s pecan museum will be self-guided. Plans are for exhibits that include artifacts from the pecan industry, a reproduction of a shed used by Regard’s dad for his office and storage space for the family pecan business, a pecan cracking and shelling area that people can try as well as a short film to watch.

“People who are into museums can come down here and enjoy that,” Regard said.

Museums appeal to a specific market of tourists, Bayou Teche Museum Director Marcia Patout said.

“We do promote all the time, the mayor and Jane Braud, the director of planning and zoning, that we’re in the historic district, and we’re very proud of that,” Patout said.

“But the people who come to museums are museum buffs. They seek them out. We’re on that historic path with (Konriko and the Shadows), you can get reduced admission. The three of us together you can get one ticket and just take it to all of them.”

The more that tourism centers, or museums, can co-promote, the better off they all are, she said.

“I’d love to do another path, a museum path with them,” Patout said. “But Jady’s a good promoter of all things New Iberia, as is the mayor. Any cross promotion is only going to help all of us.”