Slidell Fishing Pier Park
Imagine watching the sunrise over Lake Pontchartrain one morning, and then taking a leisurely walk through a park on your way to a quiet morning of angling for speckled trout from the new fishing pier.
This is an artist’s and architectural’s rendering of what a park on Lake Pontchartrain would look like that would connect to the proposed fishing pier next to the new Twin span. (Courtesy of Sen. A.G. Crowe’s office)That’s the vision of state Sen. A.G. Crowe. He presented his idea along with some conceptual drawings at Tuesday’s meeting of the Slidell City Council.
“The fishing pier is already agreed upon, and this could be the best way to access it,” Crowe told the council.
The parish and the state have entered into an agreement, where the state will transfer ownership of about 1,200 feet of the old Interstate 10 Twin span to the parish. The old span would be turned into a fishing pier. Crowe said that there is a service road on the west side of the proposed pier, but he said that after talking to residents in the area and the Department of Transportation Development, designers realized there just wouldn’t be enough room for cars and people to access the pier.
“At first it sounded logical, but then we realized there would be traffic problems,” Crowe said. “It’s too small, not enough room for parking, and it would block the St. Tammany Yacht Club. We also found out there is an important fiber optic cable going through there.”
So Crowe and others started to think of another approach. He found out the parish owns a strip of right-of-way on the east side of the new twin span that goes right to the lake. The state owns the lake bottoms and the park can be as large as 20 acres or more and so there will not be a need to have to purchase expensive real estate. The park could be built to go under the new span and connect up to the fishing pier. He would like to call it Sunrise Point, as a counterpoint to Sunset Point in Mandeville.
“There is no reason why we can’t do this here,” Crowe said. He pointed out that Kenner has a similar park on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain at the end of Williams Boulevard and in Metairie, land is being re-claimed at Bonnebel Blvd.
He said he has talked to the DOTD about it and they see no problem with the park going under the new bridge. He said the DOTD could put up fences along the new bridge to keep things from falling onto the pedestrian’s in the park.
Crowe asked the Slidell Council to set up a steering committee to look into ways to fund the park, such as applying for grants. He said that this is all in the conceptual stage, and there still needs to be public hearings and getting approval from the DOTD and the Department of Environmental Quality before anything is done, but he sees the park as a real tourist draw along with the fishing pier.
Councilman Sam Abney was enthusiastic about the concept. “It’s a great idea. Let’s start a committee to see how to do this,” Abney said.
Council President Landon Cusimano then appointed Abney to head up the steering committee to work with Senator Crowe.
