The Lafayette Downtown Development Authority (DDA) met on June 8, 2026 at 6:01 PM. The meeting covered updates on the Second Fridays in Lafayette branding, a discussion on developing a street closure policy for Harrison Avenue and Simpson Street, and the introduction of a comprehensive wayfinding program for Old Town. The board also approved prior meeting minutes, awarded a Dig grant, and received staff updates.
Executive Director Bridget Keating introduced the brand update from the Alchemy Collective (Gail Wolf and Diane Paulie) for the Second Fridays initiative, a business-led promotion during off-months of Art Night Out. The presentation included brand guidelines, a logo, and potential taglines. Key discussion points:
Keating presented the need for a policy to manage temporary street closures in these areas, which are seeing increased event interest (e.g., Juneteenth, Fall Harvest Festival). Currently, closures are governed by the city's community event permit process without a DDA-specific framework. Two options were presented: continue with the existing process or develop a DDA policy.
Keating introduced Phase 1 of a wayfinding strategy, funded at $180,000 in the DDA budget. The project includes community engagement, conceptual design, and a roadmap for implementation (future phases: construction documents and installation). Timeline: draft RFP in summer 2026, release in September, award in November, start work in January 2027.
The light of the thing was like directly on the approach. And are we good on this? The magic sounds like a couple hi everyone. Hi everyone. Welcome to the June 8th, 2026 meeting of the Lafayette Downtown Development Authority. The time. Oh, I don't have to do the time to start, right? No. 6 01, we're starting. Executive Director Keating, may we have a roll call vote, please? Director Barnes. Good evening. Chair Kagan. Here. Director Hardy. Director Hubard. Here. Director Lako. Here. Director Mundy. Here. Here. Okay. First on the agenda is public input. If any member of the public wishes to speak, you can state your name and you'll have five minutes. Okay. Seeing no members of the public who wish to speak, I'll now close public input. Next, move on to the approval of the May 11th, 2026 meeting minutes. Are there any corrections? Would someone like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the May 11th, 2026 meeting minutes as written. Is there a second? Second. Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, that passes. Moving on to regular business, the first agenda item is Second Fridays in Lafayette brand update and feedback. Hand it over to executive director Key Dee. Great. Thanks, everyone. I want to welcome Geely, Lynn, and Suzanne for coming back and giving us an update for the second Friday's promotion. We're going to be looking at brand guidelines logo, and the team would love to get some feedback from y'all about a potential tagline. So tonight's really a presentation of reporting out of the work that we've been doing, especially since the DDA is funding this partnership. And then we'd love to hear some feedback. So I'm going to just give a couple slides to refresh our memory, and then I'm going to hand it over to Geely. So we're all very familiar with R Night Out. It's held May through September on the second Fridays. It has really become a marquee staple in our downtown with live music, artists, booths, local food, beer and wine, and we really see thousands of attendees each month. It's a really quality event run by the city's arts and cultural resources department.