Community leaders urge quick action on Immaculate Heart site as resilience hub; council to revisit next week

Community speakers told the City Council that the Immaculate Heart of Mary parcel is a prime location for a FEMA-aligned community resilience hub and pressed the council to stop delaying purchase decisions.

At the meeting, Fitzgerald Darbone described the site as a functioning command center during disasters that has supported feeding, potable water distribution and a mobile kitchen. “We fed 3,500 people a day for 3 months at this location,” Darbone said, and called the parcel “the prime location for this FEMA community resilience hub.”

Darbone asked council members why plans to acquire the parcel continue to be delayed and asked for answers at the following week’s meeting; a council member responded that the item would be on the next meeting agenda and promised answers then. The chair earlier had read a resolution authorizing an amendment to the city’s CDBG-DR action plan to move a proposed Lake Charles Fire Department campus from Sixth Avenue to Broad Street and to authorize purchase of a vacant lot (parcel 00751405) from Immaculate Heart of Mary for a community resilience hub.

Darbone also criticized visible derelict vehicles on the parcel and urged the city to remove dismantled trucks on the site. The council did not vote on the purchase during the agenda meeting; staff and council members said the matter would be addressed at the next regular meeting so the public could get fuller information before a vote.

What happens next: the resolution and any purchase request tied to the Immaculate Heart parcel will return for formal action at the next council meeting; staff said the matter would be discussed in more detail then.