East Bank Bridge Park expansion would include $4.4 million gym

With council approval of the East Bank Park expansion, St. Charles Parish plans to build a $4.4 million gym in Destrehan.

The gym will be 21,700 square feet with a full court and seating for 1,000 people with telescoping bleachers, said Joey Murray, of Murray Architects of Hahnville. It also will include shower and locker rooms for home and visiting teams, concession stands, meeting rooms, public restrooms and office space. The gym will be set up with two half courts to allow practice games on either side.

“There has been a huge need that’s been lying there for years with the people who are currently using the East Bank Bridge Park and the ball players,” Murray said.
Another one of those needs is safety, Murray said.

Parking for the park’s current two baseball fields is becoming dangerous as traffic increases, he said. People are parking on the levee and crossing the heavily trafficked River Road in what Murray described as “a disaster waiting to happen.”

The nearly $7 million park expansion would triple available parking space, Murray said. In addition to the gym and parking space, the expansion will include a restroom, concessions and two more baseball fields.

“There’s a big demand for baseball fields,” Murray said. “St. Charles Parish has been very successful with its program and bringing kids to these fields, which is a good thing.”

The parish has a gym at the Edward Dufresne Community Center, but also uses gyms owned by St. Charles Parish Public Schools that can pose scheduling conflicts. Murray said the parish wants its own gyms, which would include basketball courts.

Murray said the parish tried for years to get the property for the park expansion.

Work has been underway removing trees and vegetation from the 6.1-acre site, which the parish bought for $12,400 from P&L Investments IX in the fall of 2018. The property’s appraised value is $940,000.

“It was difficult to find the land and didn’t have it until (the landowner) sold it at a greatly reduced rate and that’s when the parish budgeted money to get this done,” Murray said.
Washington, D.C., attorney Gary Silversmith, who bought the land from BP, made the project possible by selling this portion of it to the parish for the park.

At last Monday’s council meeting, the project was approved despite Parish President-elect Matt Jewell’s request for a moratorium on parish projects until he came into office in January.

Jewell, who will take the oath of office on Jan. 12, said he and new council members will review this project, as well as the $2 million West Bank Splash Park and baseball quad that the council also approved at the meeting.

Council members maintained they’d worked on the park expansion for at least four years and should be the ones who make it happen. In an 8-to-1 vote, they approved Murray’s architectural agreement with the parish to initiate the work on Jan. 1 because it will require 2020 budget funds.

In an 8-to-1 vote, they approved Murray’s architectural agreement with the parish to initiate the work on Jan. 1 because it will require 2020 budget funds.

 

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