By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LAPLACE — With the television series “Memphis Beat” leasing the St. John Community Center for its soundstage and set, St. John the Baptist Parish residents are left looking elsewhere for spaces to hold large community events.

The LaPlace Lions Club, for instance, has to move the Krewe du Monde ball outside of the parish, and some of the building won’t be available for use during the upcoming Andouille Festival.

Several members of the LaPlace Lions Club attended last week’s council meeting in Edgard to voice their frustration over not being able to use the Community Center.

“The building was built as a community center and the public is being shut out of negotiations to use it,” said Woody Norsworthy, a spokesman for the Lions Club, which annually puts on the Krewe du Monde parade and carnival ball. “It is not there for us and it was intended to be there for us.”

Norsworthy said moving the ball to a site out of the parish will take a larger chunk out of the club’s annual budget, which they use for various causes throughout the parish. He said the parade suffers without the support from the carnival ball.

“If we have to regularly take this out of the parish the parade will die, and I don’t think anyone in the parish wants to see that happen,” Norswothy said. “This isn’t just about us. This is for every group of residents who would like to use the building for its intended purpose.”

The community center is off limits to residents because it is being used as a soundstage and set for the television series “Memphis Beat,” recently renewed for a second season. The company has built elaborate sets inside the center that cannot be moved in and out at will. Councilman Ronnie Smith said he toured the set after a recent council meeting to get an idea of what was constructed.

“This is a million-dollar set inside the building, and it just can’t be taken apart and put back together,” Smith said. “We are to a point where the community center cannot pay for itself without the film industry dollars.”

Since its opening in 2006, the 47,000-square-foot community center has struggled as a profitable building in the parish.

The $7 million construction price tag was $2 million over the estimated budget, and the parish has often had a hard time finding clients who can afford to rent the building.

The parish is expecting to receive $135,000 in rental fees from the production company, and it will also get about $130,000 from state appropriated hotel/motel taxes. According to the 2010 budget, the building will cost the parish a little over $314,000 to operate.

“It is a building that is overbuilt,” said Councilman-at-Large Steve Lee, who was on the council at the time the parish voted to build the community center. “Our plan for it didn’t work, and now we can’t keep the lights on.”

Lee has said the parish needs to consider selling the building to a private company or film studio that can do a better job of managing and booking it. He reiterated those thoughts after the meeting.

“We could use the proceeds to build a community center that the community can enjoy,” Lee said.

Norsworthy said prior to the community center being built, the Lions Club held the ball at the East St. John High School gym. He said the ball has grown since then, and the organization moved the event to ther community center in 2008.

He said last year’s ball attracted more than 1,000 people, and proceeds helped fund numerous activities the club engages in throughought the year in the community.

“We are moving it to Kenner to the Pontchartrain Center this year, and we feel like attendance will suffer,” he said. “It will not generate as much money, and our group and the groups we help will suffer.”

St. John Parish President Natalie Robottom said the parish needs to come up with a method to schedule outside rentals around community events such as proms and carnival balls. She said the production company signed the lease last year without knowing how successful the series was going to be.

“They need to understand that events like the du Monde ball are historic to our community,” Robottom said. “We need to come up with a way to cater to these film productions while also paying attention to the wants and needs of the community.”

The parish did say this week the studio’s occupation of the community center will not affect too many festivities surrounding the upcoming Andouille Festival next month.

St. John Chief Administrative Officer Marie Brown Mercadel said the parish would still be able to use the building’s atrium for the festival’s gumbo cookoff and Sunday Jazz Brunch.

Mercadel also said a handful of craft booths would be housed in the atrium, but the parish would no longer have access to the soundstage area, which previously housed more craft booths and a petting zoo.