Since receiving funding from the 24CP, the Acadiana Rain Garden team has initiated the following tasks:
1. Successful receipt of funding from donors to the UL Lafayette 501 c3 fund.
2. Initiated conversations with LCG Environmental Quality diviison
3. Initiated conversations with Project Front Yard regarding their goals to create 10,000 rain gardens
4. Confirmed locations for installation with Girard Park (Parks and Rec) and the fountain at City Hall (LCG)
5. Completed an 811 survey of the Girard park site for underground cables (i.e. call before you dig)
6. Obtained blue prints of drainage for fountain site at City Hall
7. Met with Engels & Volkers who expressed interest in us creating educational materials for home owners on rain gardens and water management.
Our next steps and new goals include a charette with several landscape architects for mid-November. At this work session we will design the layout of the rain gardens. After the charette, we will price and purchase plants, and any additional materials necessary for successful implementation of the two proposed rain gardens.
We are still on track to our original timeline and plan to install the rain gardens in Spring 2018.
As far as ‘lessons learned’, our project depends on the same 3 pillars of real estate: ‘LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION’. We are lucky to have found two sites that meet our project goals: 1. they are subject to high saturation and water runoff and 2. they are in public spaces with high traffic.
As you may recall during the 24 Hour Citizen Project, our immediate push following the event was to obtain musical instruments through drives and donations. Since then, we’ve learned that a musical instrument drive is not the best way to obtain donated instruments. The best way is to personally reach out to friends and acquaintances and obtain the instruments my making appointments directly with them. That said, since funding during the 24 Hour Citizen Project, Team MIBrary raised an additional $700 at a benefit concert in September held at Artmosphere. The Al Berard Foundation also donated $2000 to the project. Team MIBrary now has approximately $8000 to spend on musical instruments.
In November 2017, Team MIBrary held a musical instrument donation drive at Downtown Alive! Although we received no donations, we were able to get the word out to the public about our cause. Through efforts of the team members, we have acquired 5 musical instruments (2 keyboards; 3 electric guitars) to start our musical instrument library. Each member has a goal to acquire 5 instruments, making it a total of 20 donated instruments. We will then spend our funds on additional instruments not obtained through donations. Once all instruments have been donated, we will work with the Downtown Library to set up shop! We’ve been updating the library of our progress, and to date, have not spent any funds awarded during the 24 Hour Citizen Project.
As of Spring 2017, this project is completed. The garden is maintained by the Acadiana Recovery Center, and all crops are donated to St. Josephs’s Diner to feed the poor.
It’s hard to believe that nearly a year has gone by since the first 24 Hour Citizen Project! We picked Safe Pass Underpass as a way to continue to improve Mickey’s Loop as one of Lafayette’s first cohesive bicycle paths. Mickey’s Loop is an 8-mile long trail consisting of bike lanes, sharrows, and sidewalks that tracks through the core of the city.
One of the most difficult spots on the pathway is a short leg on South College Road. There is an underpass for bikes there that is in need of better maintenance, and so we pitched that we would clean it up to continue to improve the Loop.
Our project has been slow in starting because we applied for a Transportation Alternatives Grant to enhance our original plans. We found out in late April that we didn’t receive it, so we have been refining our work and scope since then. Since that time, local firm Land Architecture has agreed to design the site improvements and apply for the DOTD permit (because we are required to have a licensed landscape architect apply for the permit). And to keep up momentum, we have conducted regular cleanups at the site, including a major cleanup following the August 2016 flood where we removed debris from the site. Most recently, a group of us participated in an annual bike ride to commemorate the establishment of Mickey’s Loop, an event that drew out about 75 riders, including Mickey’s parents.
