The clock is ticking for a new business in Downtown Lake Charles to figure out what to do with its facade, paintings on which some community members find to be visually unpleasant and disruptive to the neighborhood’s character.
The combination tattoo shop and life coaching business, “Bound by Ink and Metal” and “Swanner Life Solutions,” opened in July, complete with graffiti-style art on its exterior walls, featuring a tattoo gun, spider webs, barbed wire and the two businesses’ names.
After public backlash prompted the city’s planning and zoning commission to deny a variance that would have permitted the facade paintings, the owners proposed to make changes to the designs, which will now have to go before the Lake Charles Downtown Development Authority’s board for approval.
The business sits right in the center of Downtown’s historic core, nestled behind the Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
It’s that location in particular, across the street from the “mother church of the Diocese of Lake Charles,” that adds to the offense, says opponent Larry DeRoussel, a former director of the Lake Area Industry Alliance who maintains a close relationship with the diocese.
“If this is approved, it’s going to be a scar on the beauty of the Downtown historical district,” DeRoussel told planning commission members at a meeting last month.
Historic preservationists and developers have also expressed concerns.
“Nobody said it’s bad art,” Donna Richard told the commission ahead of its decision on Oct. 12. “It’s just art that, those of us who live in the neighborhood, those who drive by every day — it does not make me feel good.”
Richard and her husband, Oliver “Rick” Richard, have been major contributors to the redevelopment of Downtown and beyond, including the restoration and reuse of the Calcasieu Marine National Bank and Noble buildings downtown, and the Cash & Carry Building in the Nelly Lutcher Cultural District.
Their real estate development and consulting company, Empire of the Seed, is currently in the process of turning the diocese’s former chancery into “a gathering place for coffee and conversation” with upstairs office space, according to the company website. The project, dubbed “Iris Hall,” sits right next to the new business at the center of the debate.
“I don’t have anything against the tattoo parlor,” Richard emphasized in her plea to the commission. “It’s just the artwork with the black on our historic wall. I’m a conservationist, and I like things to stay as much as they can.”
Lake Charles resident John Robichaux took a similar approach, noting that “art is in the eye of the beholder,” and “graffiti has its place, but I don’t think the historic district is one of them.”
When the business first opened this summer, city officials quickly flagged the paintings on its facade as a violation of the Lake Charles SmartCode, the rules and zoning that govern the Lakefront Downtown Development District. The owners filed a variance request the same day and paid a $200 fee.
After being denied the variance necessary to keep the wall art up, Swanner Life Solutions proprietor Victoria Swanner-Aaron told the commission that she planned to alter the artwork from what the city considered signs into two murals, striking a different visual tone than the current art work.
Unlike signage, murals fall under the oversight of the DDA, rather than the planning and zoning commission.
But, speaking to The Current, Swanner-Aaron also wondered if it was truly the artwork that was causing offense, or the nature of the business itself.
In his comments to the commission, DeRoussel said the business — or at least its exterior — created a “negative, inappropriate, unwelcome distraction for the neighborhood of the church that is frequented on a daily basis by families.”
“It’s no longer about [whether] we need to change the business name and make it art. Now it’s, ‘we’re an immoral facility and we’re distracting their children,’” Swanner-Aaron tells The Current. “That is harassment.”
“Because it’s going through the public review process, we’ll give them probably 30 to 45 days to either remove the violations or make [an] application to correct it,” City of Lake Charles Planning Director Doug Burgieres tells The Current.
The Lake Charles Downtown Development Authority meets Monday, Nov. 2, at 5 p.m.
According to Burgieres, no application to appear before the DDA had been filed by press time, but the matter may still be discussed. At the time of this article’s publication, “Potential mural review and approval process” appears on the agenda for the upcoming DDA meeting.
