CAJUNS LEGEND VERDIN RECALLS IMPACT OF 1982 OPENER WITH RICE 1C THE
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S u n d ay, au g u S t 24, 2025
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“You just never know what’s going to get thrown at you. I wouldn’t have moved to Lafayette on my own accord. ... I couldn’t have drawn this map.” SCOTTy WEEKS
FINDING HOME
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Landry’s port plan has early success Panel works deal for supplying Hyundai Steel plant
BY ANTHONY MCAULEY Staff writer
STAFF PHOTO By BRAD BOWIE
Scotty Weeks and his wife, Hope, display a decorative plate from their wedding that survived Hurricane Katrina in the sanctuary of Trinity Church, where Scotty is now a deacon.
As Hurricane Katrina sent evacuees seeking refuge in Lafayette, many decided to stay KATRINA STORIES
BY ADAM DAIGLE
Acadiana business editor In the days after Hurricane Katrina leveled southeast Louisiana in 2005 and flooded his lower St. Bernard Parish home, Scotty Weeks was so overcome with emotion that he had to take a walk alone. The storm surge off Lake Borgne put at least 10 feet of water in his home, and it sat for days. Everything that he and his family were not able to pack in their Toyota Corolla was in that house. In Baton Rouge with relatives, he was overcome with anger, frustration and paranoia. So he took a walk. And that’s when it hit him. “I realized for the first time in my life I
leans, he inquired about a job in Lafayette in manufacturing. ä Traumatized by Katrina at 12, he found He got the job, and he and his family safety in Lafayette. moved to Lafayette in early 2006 and later built a home in Maurice. He and his wife, ä Nurse brought to Lafayette for work, but Hope, will mark their 36th anniversary community kept her here. this year. Their two children, Faith and Page 12A Keith, are adults with successful careers. Weeks is now an ordained deacon at had no earthly commitments,” he recalls. Trinity Anglican Church in Lafayette. “I had nothing to my name. We couldn’t “You just never know what’s going to get to our bank because all the banks get thrown at you,” he said. “I wouldn’t were closed. Other than the generosity have moved to Lafayette on my own acof others, at that moment in time, we had cord. But at the same time, I did a lot of nothing.” things I wouldn’t have seen myself doing, It was a good time, he realized, for a re- including being in an Anglican church start. Weeks was a machinist, and after and getting ordained. I couldn’t have he and his family initially moved into an ä See HOME, page 13A apartment on the West Bank in New Or-
The $5.8 billion Hyundai Steel plant that’s set to rise in Ascension Parish is a key project for Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration. And to make it work, Hyundai and state officials have long known they would need a new port facility to bring raw materials in and send finished goods out to the Korean automak“What made er’s assembly plants. the deal The answer between to that logistics Port of South problem came Louisiana last month, and Baton when the Port of South Rouge that Louisiana was much easier tapped to build to accomplish and operate a is that the new $25.5 milports have lion deepwater dock. The been meeting project, how- regularly since ever, is on land late 2023.” controlled by the Port of JOE TOOMy, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Ports which in years and Waterways past may have Investment raised thorny Commission questions of control and oversight that could’ve turned into a political brawl. But under the newly established Louisiana Ports and Waterways Investment Commission, which has been tasked with directing public funds to important economic development projects, the ports hashed out an agreement. “What made the deal between Port of South Louisiana and Baton Rouge that much easier to accomplish is that the ports have been meeting regularly since late 2023,” said Joe Toomy, the shipping industry executive and former chair of the Port of New Orleans who has been overseeing the Waterways Commission’s efforts. If the Hyundai dock project is
ä See PORT, page 11A
Richland Parish exploding with growth from Meta center ground on a $10 billion ar- ty, paying 20 or 30 times more than Changes concerning broke tificial intelligence data center in they would have a year ago. Recreational vehicle parks and the middle of a cornfield in nearby to some residents Holly “man camps” are sprouting up in Ridge.
BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer
RICHLAND PARISH — The S Mart in Bee Bayou has always done a brisk business. It’s the only convenience store for miles amid the corn and soybean fields that line the old twolane La. 80 in rural northeast Louisiana, and the only place to get heaping to-go plates of fried chicken gizzards with mac and cheese. But everything suddenly changed this year — ever since Facebook parent company Meta
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Now the store is slammed. Construction workers in neon safety vests stream in nonstop for food, ice, cigarettes and gas. Sales have more than tripled. Store manager Ann Watson, 70, a Bee Bayou native, can’t hire enough workers to staff the store’s shifts. “We’re so busy we don’t get a break,” Watson said as she boxed personal pizzas fresh out of the oven and stacked them in a warming case. “They start lining up before 6 a.m.” The boom isn’t confined to the S Mart. Across Richland Parish, where the Meta site is located, land speculators are buying up proper-
small towns nearby to accommodate the 5,000 temporary workers beginning to arrive in a parish with a population of 20,000. New business permits have tripled since the beginning of the year. Three new hotels and a Dollar General are in the works. And all day, every day, construction vehicles, big rigs pulling flatbed trailers and deep-bladdered dump trucks rumble up and down the country roads. “The traffic and the noise don’t stop,” said Watson. In a place where life has always
STAFF PHOTO By SOPHIA GERMER
The S Mart in Bee Bayou has seen sales triple from food, ice and gas ä See META, page 8A since Meta broke ground in Richland Parish.
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................2B Nation-World................2A Classified .....................2B Living............................1D Opinion ........................4B Commentary ................5B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
101ST yEAR, NO. 55