A major new entertainment venue is coming to downtown Lafayette.

In about a year the first floor of the Whitney building will be home to the New Orleans-based Rock N’ Bowl.

And the owners say they are excited to bring the family business back home.”

“We’ve been looking for a long time, we’ve had a lot of things fall through and this one was finally just right and we pulled the trigger,” owner Johnny Blancher told News 10.

Rock N’ Bowl, a well-known New Orleans bowling alley, first opened it’s doors in 1989.

Over the years the family friendly business has been looking to open another location right here in the Hub City.

“The culture of Lafayette and the culture of New Orleans have a lot of similarities. There is really more similarities than there are differences and we just think it’s a great fit for a Rock N’ Bowl,” Blancher explained.

He said Lafayette is his family’s second home:

“We evacuated here after (Hurricane) Katrina. My mother is from Vermilion Parish and so we had family here so this was a natural spot for us to go and really ever since then we’ve wanted to come back to Lafayette.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Rock N’ Bowl–it’s not your typical bowling experience.

“We’re a bowling alley we do live music five nights a week. We are a family venue, we’re all ages. We do parties of any kind you know anything from wedding receptions to birthday parties.”

Abigail Calico and Austin Dehart are looking forward to having a new option for night life.

“Yea it’s exciting. They play live music a bunch and are open really late, like later than the bowling alleys here so it should be fun,” Calico said.

“Yea, me and my co-workers definitely go bowling a lot so hopefully soon we will be going there and having some fun,” Dehart added.

Blancher hopes to be up and running by Christmas 2017.

The family has already begun booking parties for next year’s holiday season.