Weekend gridlock on Highway 30 and the spillway has locals fuming — some say the sales-tax revenue is worth it, others say no shopping trip is worth adding 45 minutes to a 10-mile commute. Which side are you on?
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Add your commentThe real issue nobody wants to say out loud is that Ascension Parish approved a massive commercial draw without funding the infrastructure FIRST. You don't build the magnet before you build the roads. This is basic planning 101 and our local government skipped that chapter entirely. I went to LSU for urban planning and left the state for work, but I still have family there and watch this stuff closely. It was foreseeable. It was foreseen. And they did it anyway.
Born and raised in Gonzales, and I will tell you flat out — I remember when you could drive from the Laplace bridge to my mama's house on Hwy 30 in under 15 minutes on a Saturday. Now? I left my house at 11am last weekend to get to her place for lunch and walked in at 12:47. For a 6-mile drive. I am 58 years old and I have never in my life seen this parish treated like a parking lot for people from Jefferson and Orleans parish who couldn't find a Polo shirt closer to home.
I challenge any commissioner who voted to approve that development to live off Hwy 30 for one month without using I-10 as a bypass. One month. Then come talk to me about quality of life.
Okay I'll be the unpopular one. Tanger brought real jobs to this parish. Not just retail — logistics, construction, food service. My nephew manages the Chick-fil-A that opened nearby and he's supporting his whole family on that income. Y'all wanna talk about 45 minutes in traffic, fine. But don't pretend economic development has no value to the people who actually need those paychecks.
Ruined? RUINED?? My cousin can't get out of her own subdivision on a Sunday afternoon without sitting through three light cycles at the Airline Hwy intersection. She called me crying last Easter because she missed the family dinner. Over outlet mall traffic. If that's not a quality of life issue I don't know what is.
Sales tax revenue is fine and dandy until your ambulance is stuck behind a line of minivans trying to exit at Tanger. That's not hypothetical by the way. A neighbor of mine had a medical situation last fall. I'll leave it at that.
Moved here from Baton Rouge two years ago specifically to get away from the traffic and now... well. Jokes on me I guess.
What gets me is the people defending Tanger always live on the OTHER side of the parish. Easy to love the economic development when you're not the one turning a 10-minute grocery run into a half-hour ordeal every single weekend from October through January. Come live in my neighborhood for one holiday shopping season and then let's have this conversation.
my grandpa used to call gonzales the jambalaya capital of the world and i feel like hes rolling in his grave watching us fight over whether a michael kors outlet was worth it
Fun fact for people who dont know: the spillway backed up LONG before Tanger. The I-10 interchange at Sorrento has been a nightmare since like 2009. Tanger made it worse sure but acting like it was paradise before is revisionist history. I drove that stretch every day for 11 years before I moved to Walker.
Nope. Hard disagree with the doom and gloom crowd. Gonzales finally has something people come TO instead of driving through. That matters for a town that spent 30 years being a gas station stop on the way to New Orleans.
the tax revenue argument would actually hold up if any of it went back to fixing the roads people are sitting on for 45 minutes lol. where is it going exactly? serious question
Just to correct something I keep seeing — Tanger does NOT pay Ascension Parish a flat yearly fee like someone in another thread claimed. The revenue comes through state sales tax sharing formulas and it is considerably more complicated than people are making it sound. I'm not saying it's worth it or not worth it, just stop spreading wrong information.
honestly yall need to touch grass. its an outlet mall. drive a different route or go on a tuesday. problem solved. not everything needs a town hall meeting
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