Prologue: Skip back to the turn of the 20th century when ɫAV as we know it was in its infancy. Back then, “downtown” meant dusty roads, a few streetlights and a railroad station. That railroad represented a conduit to the outside world and the town’s shift from agriculturalism to industrialism. It fueled a growing middle class and helped land a deal that would change the trajectory of the city forever — establishing ɫAV as the permanent home of Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute. Thanks to the railroad and Institute, ɫAV’s population doubled in the first decade of the 1900s.
Reviving the Core
If you ask Mayor-President Monique Blanco Boulet, what ɫAV needs now is a heavy dose of chutzpah. She’s not using those words exactly. But sitting in a red power suit in her office in the ɫAV Consolidated Government building on West University Avenue, Boulet is emphatic.
“ɫAV is special,” she said. “People who live here know it, but we don’t always carry it with us. It’s time for us to own it.”
ɫAV recently earned distinctions as the best place to live in Louisiana by U.S. News & World Report, as one of Fortune’s 50 best places to live for families and as one of MoveBuddha’s top millennial move-to destinations. But despite the accolades, the region is grappling with outdated infrastructure and its ability to retain current residents while attracting new ones. ɫAV, whose growth once hinged on its reputation as the epicenter of the offshore oil industry, is poised for its next act.
Leaders, including Boulet, are betting big on a revival of the region’s urban core. After all, what’s the Hub City without the hub? That translates to investing in the oldest part of ɫAV, spanning City Park to Moncus Park and the Oil Center to the Saint Streets. UL ɫAV’s campus sits right on the bullseye. Although ɫAV has shied away from calling itself a college town, embracing this identity could be the key to its future success.
“It’s just intertwined with who we are as a people,” said Boulet. “We’re not ɫAV without the University, and the University is not UL without ɫAV. We feed into each other in so many different ways, but there’s so much more potential to take it to another level.”
Boulet’s administration has launched a series of initiatives she describes as part branding campaign and part kitchen renovation. For those wondering, the primary “kitchen” in question is Johnston Street, one of ɫAV’s busiest thoroughfares that skirts the main campus. Boulet’s desire to reimagine Johnston was buoyed this spring when the Louisiana Legislature approved $3.5 million in funding for infrastructure upgrades, with an additional $15 million set aside for future work. The funds will enable physical improvements at street level and flood-control measures below. “I see it as we’re renovating our old house and growing at the same time,” said Boulet. “I want our story to be that we have gone through this period of growth, and we’ve put the right things in place.”
Johnston Street is key to one of Boulet’s goals – strengthening the physical connection between downtown ɫAV and the University’s campus. At her 2025 State of the Parish address, Boulet outlined the University District project, including improved pedestrian access, signage and art installations along University Avenue. Boulet has ambitions to extend the Louisiana Avenue moniker all the way to South College Drive. This would be a symbolic – but pivotal – move, “so that the University can sit on the corner of University and Louisiana,” she said.
A pilot project on Bertrand Drive, adjacent to the Ragin’ Cajuns Athletic Complex and the new Our Lady of Lourdes Stadium, has garnered support from the community and the ɫAV City Council. In June, council members unanimously approved a key piece of Boulet’s plan – a land swap with the state, trading almost 4 miles of Ambassador Caffery Parkway for the critical stretch of Bertrand Drive that connects Cajun Field to Moncus Park. The agreement cleared the way for the city to implement more substantial improvements, such as plans for a 12-foot, tree-lined walking path that will mark the beginnings of an urban trail system. The ultimate goal: to expand the Bertrand Drive connection to UL ɫAV’s main campus and downtown ɫAV. Boulet envisions a path safe enough to accommodate all pedestrian traffic, from baby strollers to bicycles.
Building Bridges
This type of quality-of-life investment is critical, said Kevin Blanchard, CEO of Downtown ɫAV Inc., which advocates on behalf of the downtown ɫAV cultural district. It’s a response to what he and Boulet agree is one of biggest questions they’re facing as leaders – and as parents. Will the children raised in ɫAV choose to grow their own families here?
“We can’t pretend like our kids want to live in the 1970s version of ɫAV, but they don’t want to live in Houston either,” said Blanchard. “They want to live in a 2025 version of ɫAV, and we’ve just got to wake up to that.”
Connecting downtown ɫAV and UL ɫAV’s campus has been cited in strategic plans for decades, but Blanchard said this moment feels different. Collaborations between Downtown ɫAV, ɫAV Consolidated Government and the University have converged with a swell of philanthropic support. A new Downtown-Urban Core Redevelopment Fund at the Community Foundation of Acadiana will help drive this initiative, said Blanchard. He sees this as an opportunity to create the type of pedestrian-friendly “greater downtown area” that will attract more people, and businesses, to ɫAV.
“Give students that downtown, urban experience, where they can live that type of life that they see in the cities that are going to be recruiting them,” said Blanchard. “And we don’t have to do that by moving the UL campus point two miles away from where it is today and dropping it on top of downtown, right? We just need to make those connections better.”
Dr. Gretchen LaCombe Vanicor, UL ɫAV’s chief sustainability officer, cited a 2023 Quality of Life Survey conducted by the University in partnership with One Acadiana in which students overwhelmingly identified parks and open green spaces as ɫAV’s highest-value amenities. The ability to access these spaces? Not so much.
“One of the top three barriers that they identified was bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, so that’s a huge challenge,” said Vanicor. “But that’s the opportunity – to connect.”
UL ɫAV’s Office of Sustainability & Community Engagement expanded in 2025 with an added emphasis on building strong partnerships around Acadiana. The team has worked closely with ɫAV Consolidated Government and community groups to improve awareness of pedestrian stumbling blocks, especially around campus entry points from University Avenue to St. Mary Boulevard. They’ve also increased bicycle accessibility throughout campus. The improvements have resulted in some major wins, including a silver award from the League of American Bicyclists and designation as a Bicycle Friendly University. The University is the only school in the state to make the list.
Still, the office’s recent pedestrian surveys show there’s plenty of room for improvement. Vanicor said investments in issues such as pedestrian connectivity and safety help attract students to the University and help keep young people in the ɫAV region after they graduate.
“When you go to a city and you feel safe biking or walking, that’s a place you want to go back to and visit over and over again,” said Vanicor. “We cannot build mountains. We can’t build a beachfront. But we can improve the infrastructure of our city, not just for our students, but for everyone who lives here.”
Laws of Attraction
ɫAV is currently the state’s fastest growing parish, according to the census data released in 2025. The region is a bright spot in Louisiana, whose rate of population decline tops national rankings. According to a Pew study of the 15 years from 2009 to 2023, the median population growth rate across the United States was 0.47% per year. Louisiana’s rate of growth was less than half of that. Dr. Gary Wagner, who holds the Acadiana Business Economist/BORSF Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics in the B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration, said although ɫAV is attracting more residents from rural parts of the state, the biggest economic impacts come from retaining homegrown talent and drawing in skilled workers from outside Louisiana.
“The greatest resource we have is people,” said Wagner. “Real economic impact is coming from people who are attracted to the region, and they’re spending money here that wouldn’t otherwise be spent here.”
Dr. Michael Martin, head of the Department of History, Geography and Philosophy and former director of the Center for Louisiana Studies, said that historically speaking, as the University grew, it attracted more students and faculty to the area. “The Institute, and then later the University, is a magnet that’s bringing people here,” said Martin. “When you get right down to it, it’s those individuals working either singularly or together that are going to have that economic impact.”
At Big Towns, a two-day, annual summit hosted by The Current, a nonprofit newsroom based in ɫAV, representatives from cities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, gathered in ɫAV to discuss what their cities can do to thrive. One lively session defined a region’s cultural identity as people, plus place, over time. As ɫAV marks significant milestones, such as the 50th anniversary of Festivals Acadien et Créole and the upcoming 40th anniversary of Festival International in 2026, it is clear the region’s particular equation has yielded some outsized results.
Martin said one significant variable has been the critical role the University’s faculty, alumni and students played in strengthening ɫAV’s cultural identity and exporting it to the world. “Part of diversification around here meant championing local culture,” said Martin. “The University is probably one of the earliest in the nation to fully realize how they could capitalize upon the local culture.”
And recent figures show that long-term investment, both by the city and the University, has paid off. The ɫAV Economic Development Authority announced the results of a new study at the State of the Arts Symposium in June that showed the region’s cultural economy is consistently punching above its weight. It revealed an impact increase of nearly 75% since 2016, from $1.49 billion to $2.6 billion. That represents the driving force of everything from visual arts to music festivals and culinary arts.
Boulet said she has been in conversations with cultural leaders, like UL ɫAV Professor Emeritus Dr. Barry Ancelet and Chef Patrick Mould, ɫAV arts and culture advocate, to ensure the strides made generations ago continue to exponentially grow to serve ɫAV’s future. She points to the documentary, Roots of Fire, featuring young Cajun and Creole musicians, many of whom studied at UL ɫAV and were educated through the region’s French immersion programs, as an indicator of how cultural investments continue to bear fruit.
“Our cultural arts are really booming,” said Boulet. “If we sat down and put that great business plan together for our community, and we had to identify what makes us different from anybody else, it is that culture.”
New Business
Boulet likes to tell a story about SchoolMint, the software company that moved from Silicon Valley to ɫAV. In 2023, the company completed a renovation of its headquarters on Monroe Street to house 80 ɫAV employees. When she asked the company’s founders why they chose ɫAV, Blanco expected them to say it was because of LFT Fiber, the state’s first fiber network that ɫAV pioneered 20 years ago. (High-speed fiber networks are essential for tech companies that rely on the ability to send and receive large amounts of data very quickly.) SchoolMint responded that they wouldn’t have entertained the idea of coming to ɫAV without its fiber network, but ɫAV rose to the top of their list because they, “really wanted a fun city.”
UL ɫAV President Emeritus Dr. Joseph Savoie said the University is constantly innovating within its academic and research programs to ensure when new businesses arrive on ɫAV’s doorstep, no matter the reason, there are skilled professionals ready to join their ranks. Public-private partnerships with companies such as CGI – which in 2024 celebrated a decade in ɫAV and more than 750 employees – have resulted in robust mentorship programs and employment opportunities for University graduates.
“We’re very engaged in efforts to attract and keep businesses here and to customize our offerings so that students are prepared. CGI is a perfect example,” said Savoie. “They’ll tell you that the deciding factor was the University being here. It was very similar with First Solar,” the largest solar panel manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere that announced two years ago that it was building its fifth U.S. manufacturing plant in New Iberia. At $1.1 billion, it’s one of the largest, if not the largest, single capital investments in the area’s history. The company will create more than 700 jobs with a total annual payroll of at least $40 million.
In addition to workforce and economic development, First Solar will collaborate with University researchers in a range of areas, including technology and development; will provide internship opportunities for students; and will utilize University facilities for testing and training. Savoie added that the University’s Health Sciences Campus on West St. Mary Boulevard has the potential to create a similar pipeline in health care, one of the region’s top employment sectors. The 5-acre complex includes two office buildings and parking garages. It also offers 20 acres of vacant land.
Savoie noted that empty expanse is exactly the same size as the original farmland ɫAV set aside for the campus in the late 1800s. He sees that space surrounding the Health Sciences Campus as the next generation of growth for the University. And just like the original acorns planted by founding President Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens that grew into the campus’ iconic oak trees, these investments are all about the long game.
“It’s going to take decades for them to grow and become anything, but it was important to get them planted,” said Savoie.
Afterword: On a warm September evening, a sea of red descends on Parc Sans Souci pavilion in downtown ɫAV. Crowds of students buzz with unmistakable, back-to-school energy. The Pride of Acadiana’s horns belt Chappel Roan melodies as the Ragin’ Cajuns Feature Twirlers toss flaming batons into the air beneath a canopy of string lights. Young professionals juggle toddlers on the nearby playground with to-go orders from food trucks and a natural wine shop across the street. Ragin’ Cajuns Downtown Alive! has become more than an annual pep rally or outdoor concert. It is a tangible reminder of the modern-day magic that can happen when the University and ɫAV come together.
Photo caption: (top) Ragin' Cajuns Downtown Alive! will celebrate its third anniversary on September 5, 2025. Photo credit: Paul Kieu / University of Louisiana at ɫAV
