The Environmental Protection Agency will pay for a study of the vacant St. Luke Hospital in Arnaudville, St. Landry Parish President Bill Fontenot said Friday.
The EPA will contract the study and pay up to about $200,000 to do environmental studies, he said.
The two studies are to assess the needs and mitigation costs at the hospital.
The grant application was through the Acadiana Regional Planning Commission, which Fontenot serves as chairman.
The plan is to return the building to commerce possibly with a non-profit group promoting French immersion.
There is no plan to convert the building into a juvenile detention center, he said.
Using the vacant building as juvenile detention center was mentioned by Sheriff Bobby Guidroz at the Aug. 15 Parish Council. But Guidroz backed off that idea after the meeting.
“This is really a grand slam home run,” Fontenot said of the EPA grant. “You really don’t get many opportunities for this type of grant.”
Fontenot attributed the EPA grant, which is effective in October, to the possible use of the building for preservation of the local culture that includes French, Cajun, Creole and American Indian.
The building in Arnaudville is the responsibility of the parish president, he said.
The hospital was once the focus of a hospital district that included portions of St. Landry and St. Martin parishes.
The parishes agreed in 2017 to dissolve the district with St. Landry Parish receiving the hospital and about 35 percent of $1.1 million.
Fontenot said the hospital district money is invested in certificates of deposit and would yield more interest if left there rather than be transferred to the parish’s account at this time.
But it was a comment by Fontenot that the money might be used for road work in District 7, which includes the hospital, that drew a rebuke from Councilman Harold Taylor of the north St. Landry Parish District 5.
Fontenot said he had discussed using the money on roads with the District 7 Councilman Alvin Stelly.
Taylor said, “If I’m correct when this all happened two years ago we were cautioned about doing this because the people in that district should have voted on what they wanted to redirect this money to, but now on the backside we are going to do it anyway.”
Fontenot suggested using the money on roads would meet the concerns of the residents of the former hospital district.
“How are we going to maintain the building?” Taylor asked.
“The whole parish is going to pay them maintaining the building,” he said in questioning using the money on roads.
“We’ve got an albatross. We have a building that is full of all kinds of stuff and now we’re going to make roads with this money. Mr. Fontenot, this isn’t what we talked about two years ago. You were going to lease this building out to somebody,” Taylor said.
Fontenot said he intends to sell the building, but Taylor countered that the parish may have to tear the old hospital down.
Stelly joined with, “Mr. Harold I think the money should stay in my district.”
Fontenot said the building has been “shopped around.”
The last appraisal of the hospital valued it at about $300,000, Fontenot said.
St. Luke Hospital, which was in the First Hospital District of the Parishes of St. Landry and St. Martin, had been sought as a French immersion facility.
The facility closed in 1990 and has been in decline since then. The hospital district was formed in 1963.
An Arnaudville group led by Mavis Arnaud Frugé, director of the Jaques Arnaud French Studies Collective, and members of NuNu’s Art and Culture Collective lobbied the Parish Council to to acquire the building.
Fontenot said the group is seeking a way to afford the building.
The empty hospital parallels the empty former Moosa Memorial Hospital in Eunice, which has been vacant for more than 10 years.
Newton “Chip” Thibodeaux, chairman of the St. Landry Hospital Service District 1 board, said there has been no change in the status of the facility.
The governing board does not have enough money to deal with issues such as asbestos in the old hospital.
Thibodeaux said the National Guard, which once considered demolishing the building, has again been contacted about removing the facility.
On Friday, Fontenot said of St. Luke, “This is totally not going the way of the Eunice hospital. This is why I’m taking this initiative.”
