Real estate company scouts area for possible new hotel

Local Ville Platte officials, as well as people from the community gathered Wednesday to discuss the possibility of a new hotel in the City of Ville Platte.
Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine spent two and a half hours Wednesday morning with representatives from NAI Latter & Blum, a New Orleans based real estate company, touring 22 possible locations to build a new hotel.
Following their tour around the city, Latter & Blum representatives and Mayor Vidrine met up with local officials such as: judges, state representatives, police jury members, and Ville Platte council members; as well as individuals from the community to discuss what the process of building a new hotel here would entail.
NAI Latter & Blum Senior Managing Director for the Hospitality Division Lenny Wormser used his time addressing the people to better explain what his company does, before allowing questions to be asked.
Wormser opened up with informing the crowd that “Latter & Blum is the biggest real estate company in the south helping to develop boutiques and hotels.”
Latter & Blum’s mission is to find the right brand and management for a hotel if one is built in Ville Platte.
Wormser said, “With the right brand and management a hotel will be successful here.”
According to the Latter & Blum representative, the process would go as follows: “First a feasibility study would be done to determine how many rooms would be feasible to have in a hotel here, which would help determine what kind of hotel should be built. Then we would begin work on finding a franchise that would want to have a hotel here, and then an entity would need to be found to develop the hotel.”
According to Wormser, “once the hotel is built, it will take six months to a year to financially stabilize.”
The entity that would develop the hotel could be a private owner or it could be an entity such as The City of Ville Platte.
When Wormser opened up the floor for questions and discussion, the majority of those in attendance pointed out the reasons why a new hotel is needed.
Ville Platte Chamber of Commerce employee Sonia Ardoin said, “We have to send people to Eunice or Opelousas to find a hotel to stay in when they come here for festivals. We also have a lot of queens that come for our festivals but they can’t stay here.”
At the meeting, Slap Ya Mama owner Jennifer Walker also shared the need her family’s business has for a hotel in Ville Platte.
Walker said, “We often need to find somewhere for business people to stay that are in town sometimes for two weeks. We always have to send them to Eunice or Chicot State Park, if something is open there.”
Mayor Vidrine pointed out that “Eunice only has about 3,000 more people than Ville Platte, but yet they have five hotels.”
Representative Bernard Lebas felt he had an explanation for why the barely larger City of Eunice has four more hotels than Ville Platte.
Representative Lebas said, “The four lane road that takes you to Eunice, which is Highway 190, causes more traffic through their city.”
If a four lane road will increase the traffic through Ville Platte, then a hotel may become even more of a need here. That is because according to Representative Lebas the federal government should be “releasing money for roads soon.” Lebas then informed the group that with federal money they are looking into turning “the highway that runs to Ville Platte from the interstate into a four lane all the way to Oakdale.”
Following the crowd’s open discussion concerning a new hotel, the mayor closed things out by stating, “This was just a preliminary meeting to see how you guys felt about a new hotel here. Now we can continue working to make this happen for The City of Ville Platte.”