St. Tammany News

The Mandeville Planning and Zoning Commission assembled Tuesday night to discuss the future of what used to be Cinema IV in Mandeville.

Chad Bordelon, owner of the Causeway Shopping Center located on North Causeway Boulevard, requested a variance from the commission to approve additional construction and renovations of the vacant theater to create an events center in its place. In order to approve the variance, according to the commission, Bordelon needs to provide additional parking spaces to accommodate the additional square footage he is proposing to build.

The Mandeville Planning and Zoning Commission met recently and discussed the fate of the old movie cinema. (Staff Photo by Chad Ruiz)

Bordelon's current plan includes a 38,000-square-foot structure that, by law, requires approximately 205 parking spaces. Currently, there are 155 spaces constructed resulting in a parking deficit of 50 spaces.

However, he argues that a considerable amount of the entire square footage will be used as support space for storage. If this support space is accounted for and subtracted from the event area square footage, it will decrease the parking requirement to 173 spaces.

Ultimately, no motions were made, and the commission decided to place it back on the agenda for further discussion.

Another item on the agenda Tuesday night concerned the approval of a variance given to Dr. Timothy Brown to allow the construction of an additional 456-square-foot structure to his already 1,222-square-foot building located at 2124 Monroe St.

With the additional square footage, Brown is required to provide a total of 10 parking spaces.

He presented the commission with a proposed site plan incorporating the needed parking. The commission deemed it sufficient, and a motion was made and the variance was approved. With this approval, Brown can now apply for an occupational license.