Hope For Opelousas Expands

Hope For Opelousas Expands

BOBBY ARDOIN

St. Landry Now.com Editor

Hope For Opelousas is creating additional space for high-school and junior high mentoring programs, as organization officials announced on Thursday that they have purchased the former Herbert Brown commercial property on South Union Street.

Loren Carriere, the executive director for the non-profit initiative which offers after-school assistance for about 135 students in grades one through eight, said the acquisition of the 30,000 square-foot property also provides Hope For Opelousas with additional revenue from three tenants who are currently occupying commercial space on the property.

There is additional square footage on the north side of the building which Carriere says will be renovated and converted into occupancy for the adolescent students associated with the Hope For Opelousas program.

Carriere told those at the unveiling event that Hope For Opelousas will spend revenue in order to repair the roof, signage,facade and parking lot.

The property was purchased for commercial use during the late 1950s by Opelousas businessman Herbert Brown, who at the time owned Eckerd Drugs.

Several of the original, locally-owned retail businesses included an A&P grocery store, upscale ladies dress shop and a Benoit-family barber shop, which at the time completed the commercial complex.

“For the last two years (Hope For Opelousas) has been working on negotiations with the Brown family. They have now sold it to us and the family also agreed to contribute to it,” Carriere said.

Carriere said Hope For Opelousas also plans to rent food truck space on one corner of the parking lot in order to collect funding that augments the payments made by the tenants who are already occupying buildings.

The purchase of the property is the largest made by Hope For Opelousas during its 18-year existence, according to Carriere.

Hope For Opelousas owns several houses that the organization has refurbished in the Madison and Walnut Street areas.

Most of those properties are used to facilities the after school programs offered by Hope For Opelousas, while several of those have been converted into rental properties, said Carriere.

Work on the houses has been performed each summer by college students as part of their ministry programs, Carriere said.