By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – A recent discussion among St. John the Baptist Parish Council members at the council’s last meeting prompted fresh debate regarding appropriate future use of the parish’s Community Center in LaPlace.

Councilman Art Smith said with high school graduations coming up later this month, some of his constituents have asked about renting the facility.

“I just want to figure out what we’re going to do with the building,” Smith said. “We need to have something in this parish that people can use as a community center.”

Parish President Natalie Robottom said rental fees for the facility totaled $312,000 for 2011, all of which came from leases to motion picture companies for filming. With the addition of $130,000 from the parish’s hotel and motel tax, she said total revenue for the building topped out at $444,015, which is about $100,000 more than the building’s annual expenses.

“If we can market it as a sound stage and get reasonable revenue for it, something that’s worth our while, we need to consider how we are going to utilize those funds, such as building something our residents can actually use,” Robottom told the council. “Revenues are covering expenses, as well as debt owed.”

Robottom said the parish recently took steps to cut operating costs for the facility, including tinting windows in the atrium and installing a new heating and air conditioning system that allows specific areas to be cooled or heated on an as-needed basis. She said the parish obtained an energy efficiency grant from the state to pay for the improvements.

Robottom also told the council the parish recently raised the rate for use of the 47,000-square-foot building to $40,000 per month with a three-month lease, plus cleaning costs.

The previous rental rate was $25,000 per month. She said when the rates increased, industry representatives who were considering use of the building “didn’t bat an eye” at the new rate. She said it showed that the parish was not charging what it should have been charging. The parish recently entered into a contract with a major production company for use of the building from May 7 until Aug. 6.

Councilwoman Cheryl Millet raised questions about how the parish markets the center. She said many residents in her district are looking for something that they can use regularly.

“I don’t like that it’s locked out for a sound stage, and you can’t use it at all,” Millet said. “That’s not what the intention was when the voters voted for this. My concern is, are we marketing this for anything other than a sound stage?”

Robottom said representatives from the parish and the Tourist Commission recently solicited information from other facilities to evaluate pricing for the center. She said the parish is considering a tiered pricing system that would give discounts to functions for parish residents and for non-profits, although she said many of the requestors want to use the building for free.

The $7 million building, which was paid for by a voter-approved bond issue in 2002, was initially envisioned as a facility that could host parish recreational and social events along with community meetings and high school graduations. As project costs increased, parish officials realized that they had to market the building to paying tenants such as the film industry.

“Clearly as a council and an administration, we have to decide where we want it to go,” Robottom said. “We’ve invested money in a sound stage. The problem is when it’s used as a sound stage, it takes it out of commerce and our residents can’t use it.”