For over three hours on Wednesday night, the Lake Charles City Council and community members discussed what would be the best location for a new sports complex within the city limits.
The original agenda item was to select the former Capital One Tower as the location of the new facility, which is being funded by a grant.
Ultimately, after hours of community member public comment and council deliberation, the city council voted to explore the feasibility of the Capital One Tower and also look into a more than 7-acre property on N. Goos Boulevard, which was offered to the city as a donation, rather than committing to a single site at this time.
“The resolution is to help the administration get the pulse of the City Council of where we need to place this facility, so we can start looking at procuring designs of facilities and move forward to development of it,” City Administrator John Card said Thursday after the meeting. “So, in each site, depending on the site, it may be designed a little bit differently. That’s why we were trying to put an item on the agenda saying: This is our recommended site, and see if the council supported it.”
The city of Lake Charles has been working on the concept of bringing an indoor sports facility to the area since 2023, before the application deadline for Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds.
After submitting the application, the city received approximately $23 million in grant funds. Cardone said they already have approval for an additional $5 million from a group and will also be seek additional funding sources.
The plan is for the city to build the facility with eight basketball courts that can be converted into volleyball courts and pickleball courts as well as a fitness center.
The proposed resolution on Wednesday was to build the facility on the former Capital One Tower site, which the city owns. Previously, the site was considered for a new ampitheatre.
During the meeting, Visit Lake Charles CEO Kyle Edmiston said he believes building an indoor sports complex along Interstate 10 in downtown Lake Charles would make Southwest Louisiana an epicenter for youth and amateur sports.
“When the Capital One Tower came down. I heard from so many of our citizens that we needed to replace it with an iconic structure,” Edmiston said. “Under the leadership of Mayor Simeon, this is that iconic structure. This facility will drive visitation downtown, both from our local citizens on a daily basis to our visitors who come in from basketball, volleyball, pickleball, cheer, dance, any of those types of competitions.”
The city initially considered several properties for the complex.
One of the sites was on Fitzenreiter Road, a location that some council members and community members were fond of. However, the property’s owner wanted $1.2 million for the site, while the city couldn’t exceed its appraised value of $830,000, according to Cardone.
However, on Wednesday night, District A Council member Ronnie Harvey and many community members discussed what having the complex in north Lake Charles would mean for the Gossport community.
“As far as the vision and commitment for our community, we’ve wanted this for years,” Harvey said. “Residents of Gossport have dreamed of something premier, not just a facility, but something premier, where there’s a concept or an idea to be built in the heart of their neighborhood.”
In fact, seeing importance in bringing the indoor sports facility to north Lake Charles, Greater Saint Mary Community Development Foundation and Greater Saint Mary Missionary Baptist Church, Rev. Samuel Tolbert offered to donate the 7.5-acre property on Goss Boulevard.
“We’re offering the property as an option if you can’t work out negotiation of the Fitzenreiter site,” Tolbert said. “I like the Fitzenreiter site better because it’s right on the lake … but the site we’re offering is not far from the lake, also.”
When it came to making a decision, Harvey suggested an amendment to have the city continue to look at all three sites and the viability of them all as well as include him and two other council members in a meeting with the owner of the Fitzenreiter site all before the next meeting.
The council approved the amendment four to three, with Harvey, Council President Craig Marks, District B Council member Donald Fondel and District G Council member District G Matthew Vezinot in favor.
However, after a majority of the audience left and the council started to move on to the next item, staff reminded them that they needed to vote on the item after it was amended, and it fell short with Vezinot voting against the item.
Fondel then suggested an amendment to look at just the former Capital One Tower and the Goss Boulevard site. The amendment passed four to three with Fondel, Harvey, Marks and District C Council member Tommy Bilbo in favor. The then amended item also passed four to three with District E Council member Stuart Weatherford voting in favor and Bilbo voting against.
Simien said the city will be looking at the same assessment for those two sites as they did for the others previously.
“We’ll look at what’s the pros of those sites, what kind of challenges they would have and the biggest thing is going to be the timing because we’re on a time period that we have to get these funds,” Simien said.
Simien said the city is up against time constraints to get this facility built, as they have to spend the Community Development Block Grant funds by August 2027.
City of Lake Charles Public Information Officer Katie Harrington said the goal is for the staff to have a recommendation back to the council in two weeks.