Academy 2?

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Sporting goods retailer eyes La. Ave. By Leslie Turk

 Academy Sports + Outdoors, Acadiana’s largest sporting goods retailer, plans to open a second Lafayette store in the Stirling Lafayette Shopping Center on Louisiana Avenue. While Stirling Properties’ website shows a projected summer 2011 opening, it’s unclear if the deal has been finalized.

Culture Wars

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

The self-serve frozen yogurt competition heats up in Lafayette, and locals are lining up to chill out. By Erin Z. Bass Photos by Robin May

It was a combination of Original Tart topped with Fruity Pebbles, Oreos and coconut flakes that caused Kayla Lachney to have a “crush” on frozen yogurt. She was living in Orange County, Calif., at the time and says she couldn’t go without her fix from one of the region’s many yogurt shops each day. “I would be at work and watching the clock, asking my co-workers, ‘When can we go to Pinkberry or Yogurtland?’ It became a routine every day,” she says.

When Lachney came home to visit her family in Lafayette and central Louisiana, she missed her daily cup of frozen yogurt, so much so that she decided to move to Lafayette and open her own shop with the help of her family and fiancé. Her dad attended a seminar for the Tutti Frutti franchise, but the family eventually decided to go with its own concept.

Dynamic Prospect

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A successful business venture between a Lafayette-based energy company and a group of Korean investors blossoms into a friendship.

In February oil veteran Roy Melton, a partner with Lafayette-based Dynamic Exploration Partners LLC, was at NAPE Expo 2010 in Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center. Dynamic was attending the world’s largest upstream expo hoping to find investors for some of its exploration prospects. Melton and his business partners, Dub Rainbolt and David Jones, had big plans for the year, but they needed help to get them going. NAPE provides a marketplace for the buying, selling and trading of oil and gas prospects and producing properties via exhibit booths. NAPE is the premier E&P networking venue — where in two short days you can see what’s going on throughout the entire oil patch.

Multi-Faceted

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Celebrating its Ruby anniversary, Stuller diversifies to weather the downturn and rising price of gold. By Erin Z. Bass

Rubies, at least in terms of what they represent in years, are all the rage at Stuller Inc. this year.

The iconic Lafayette-based jewelry manufacturer, which turned 40 in November, got its start when Matt Stuller decided to sell jewelry parts from the back of his car. The company’s chief executive officer, Matt has grown his business into a $325 million, 600,000-square-foot operation that services independent retail jewelers around the world.

Build It and They Will Stay

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

New commercial development in Youngsville allows residents to shop closer to home. By Walter Pierce

What happens when a bedroom community starts getting its own restaurants, retail centers, medical offices and other services? The bedroom community becomes something else. It’s like putting a mini fridge, cable and computer in a teenager’s bedroom; you don’t see her in the kitchen and the den as much.

Youngsville is becoming that something else. The fastest growing city in Louisiana for more than a decade in the 1990s and 2000s and still one of the fastest growing due mainly to an explosion of residential development, the once sleepy hamlet nestled among south Lafayette Parish’s cane fields is getting some serious momentum thanks in large part to new traffic arteries — Chemin Metairie Parkway and the Ambassador Caffery extension chief among them — that beckon commercial developers anxious to cash in on the city’s robust and affluent commuter population. Build it and they will come.