Tuesday, June 7
June 7, 2011
Economic life of LA1 businesses in limbo
June 9, 2011
Five-year-old Allie Matherne flings a rubber ball across the gym. Her smirk transitions to grimace as two balls are returned to her, one of which is on point and coming at her knees. The other, thrown by a teammate, soars over her head and comes to a halt near the wall, next to another misfired ball.
Allie is playing bombardment, a chaotic version of dodge ball hopped-up on pure youthful energy. Treason is welcome and there are no discernable boundaries in the frenzied mess, at least through the eyes of a novice on-looker at the Larose Civic Center.
Today, it’s summer camp, and it’s senior citizens are guzzling coffee and chirping at one another in a back room. It’s the host site of a business luncheon in a few hours. Quiet please, the governor’s speaking. It’s an impromptu basketball game or recreation-league baseball out back. It’s swimming laps at 4 a.m.
All the while, the gym where Allie is playing is on stand-by, ready to become a shelter for up to 800 people if a hurricane enters the Gulf and bears down on south Lafourche. The Larose Civic Center, like bombardment, has few boundaries.
Thirty years after it was opened, the civic center draws an average of 500 citizens per day, according to Jasmine Ayo, the executive director of the Bayou Civic Club, and the continuance of such an encompassing operation is a testament to selflessness, creativity and philanthropy.
“I think to run a facility like this without designated funding, A, it’s bananas, and B, I don’t know how we do it sometimes,” Ayo said.
The Bayou Civic Club keeps the center running with corporate sponsorships, two keystone festivals and a litany of fundraising events, which range from the popular Wild Game Supper and other thematic community events to business luncheons and chamber of commerce banquets.
Fundraisers run smoothly because of volunteer help. The civic center only has four staff members on payroll, and is always welcoming volunteers to join its core of 300.
“Our main core of volunteers are aged 60 to 90,” Ayo said. “One day they’re really going to want to stay home and just drink coffee and not come here and work like dogs for us. We’re trying to get younger people involved.”
The civic center celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, quite a feat for an establishment that manifested out of little more than a community dream. It started with a Coastal Energy Impact Grant, never before or since awarded to a group of residents.
Now, one month into its 31st year, a bevy of donations have paved the way for a project that costs as much as the center’s annual $1.2 million budget.
BP recently donated $334,000 to the civic club to complete the civic center’s fundraising effort for a multi-purpose pavilion. BP was the lead donor in 2008 with a $175,000 contribution, and Apache, Chevron, Exxon-Mobile and Shell contributed in the meantime, Ayo said.
The concrete has been laid, permits secured and the exterior supplies are en route. Construction should begin within the next month, Ayo said.
“We won’t have to rent tents for our festivals,” Ayo said. “When the parish or whoever needs to distribute supplies during evacuations or emergencies, that site can be used for it. We intend to do a farmer’s market under it when we have summer camp. We have meetings in the gym because we’re trying to bring in extra revenue, and we don’t want to put 80 kids outside in the park. [With the pavilion,] they’ll have a covered area to play in.”
Like most south Louisiana communities, the Larose Civic Center is so intertwined with the June-to-December hurricane season that it has become an integral part of its identity. An official evacuation shelter since it was built in 1981, the civic center gymnasium housed 800 people for eight and a half weeks for Hurricane Katrina refugees. During Gustav, it provided shelter for 400 for four weeks.
And it was Hurricane Juan in 1985 that served as the catalyst for the nearly realized pavilion. As the Bayou Civic Club was planning to host the French Food Festival, Juan had lower Lafourche in its sight.
“It was Friday night, the tent was up on the property,” Ayo said. “We had 3,000 people here and the weather started to come in. We cut down the tent. We pulled down the lights. We had purchased $50,000 in fair food to serve, and we had no fair.
“The Monday after Hurricane Juan, we owed $163,000 in bills. The building had 300 evacuees in it, and we had no festival. We were like, ‘This cannot happen again,’ because French Food is our biggest fundraiser.”
Twenty-six years later, due to persistence and philanthropy, construction on the multi-purpose pavilion is set to begin. It will no doubt further expand the civic center’s boundaries.
Children at the Larose Civic Center summer camp participate in arts and crafts. The summer camp, which is open to kids from 5 to 13 years old, is one of many services the civic center offers to an average of 500 people per day. ERIC BESSON
