BAYOU DISTRICT FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
Since its inception in 2006, the Bayou District Foundation (BDF) has led the development of a comprehensive community revitalization effort in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood, with a goal of breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty while giving children and families the opportunity to build better lives and reach their highest potential. BDF works to achieve this mission through a holistic approach to community revitalization that incorporates high-quality educational opportunities – from cradle to college – and access to affordable housing, healthcare, fresh groceries and community programming.
About This Cause
At the nexus of Bayou District Foundation’s community revitalization model is the redevelopment of the former St. Bernard Public Housing Development – a 53-acre site that was previously destroyed and blighted by Hurricane Katrina. In place of the former distressed public housing site, BDF created the Bayou District – a thriving, comprehensive community. At the heart of the Bayou District sits Columbia Parc, an affordable, mixed income housing development with 685 residential units spanning 18 city blocks in the center of New Orleans. True to BDF’s commitment to providing affordable housing as a vehicle for revitalization, 493 of the Columbia Parc households receive public housing or reduced rental rates. In just a few short years, the markers of economic success are already clear: all heads of household (except retired or disabled individuals) within Columbia Parc are either employed, engaged in vocational training, or enrolled in a full-time accredited college or university program; crime has been reduced by nearly 100 percent; and, nearly 300 new jobs have been created as a result of BDF’s revitalization efforts. Educare New Orleans, the city’s premier early learning center, sits adjacent to Columbia Parc and serves as the front end of BDF’s cradle to college educational pipeline, capturing the Bayou District’s youngest residents – and children in neighboring communities – at the beginning of their educational journey. Educare serves 168 children aged six weeks to five years, all of whom are Head Start or Early Head Start-eligible, and outcomes have been outstanding thus far – of the Pre-K students leaving Educare to enroll in Kindergarten, 96 percent consistently meet or exceed the standards for Kindergarten readiness per the nationally normed Bracken Basic Concepts Scale. As a next step in the cradle to college pipeline, BDF has broken ground on a new K-8 school facility in partnership with KIPP New Orleans, which will serve Columbia Parc’s elementary and middle school-aged children, as well as students from across the city. The new 85,000-square foot facility, located at the center of the Columbia Parc development, will serve as the permanent home for the high-performing KIPP Believe K-8 school; an adjacent 7,500-square foot school gymnasium will serve as a community recreation center for both the school and the broader Columbia Parc neighborhood. When the KIPP Believe K-8 facility begins operations within the Columbia Parc campus, more than 800 KIPP Believe students, and their families, will benefit from a top-notch, permanent new facility that consolidates two existing temporary campuses, streamlines curricular delivery, and enhances enrollees’ academic experiences. Educare students will now have the opportunity to continue their education at a K-8 school of national excellence in same community. These same students will have the option of continuing on to high school in the same neighborhood, as McDonogh 35 Senior High School recently moved from its landlocked two-acre site to a larger 16-acre, waterfront site four blocks from Columbia Parc. The addition of McDonogh 35 to the Bayou District’s cradle-to-college pipeline enables BDF to create a tightly focused educational continuum, all within a few city blocks. This continuity of early intervention, Kindergarten readiness, family advocacy, and academic achievement will have profound impact on the growing number of students and graduates in the BDF education pipeline. BDF recently completed construction on a new, 6,000 square foot permanent home for the St. Thomas Health Center at Columbia Parc, providing community residents with onsite access to a permanent health services. BDF is also working to design and build a grocery and drug store proximate to the community garden and senior housing already in place at Columbia Parc. BDF also realized a critical milestone in 2017 with the opening of the new Bayou Oaks South Golf Course, developed in partnership with New Orleans City Park. The golf course will serve as a critical economic engine for the Bayou District, and is expected to eventually generate approximately $500,000 in annual revenue from golf operations to help support BDF’s community programs. The golf complex includes a junior training center and First Tee facility, offering local youths access to a world-class facility operated by the PGA Tour. BDF is governed by a six-member Board of Directors, which is chaired by BDF founder Gerard W. Barousse, Jr. and is comprised of a diverse group of community civic leaders, including BDF co-founders Mike Rodrigue and Gary Solomon. The organization employs one full-time staff member and leverages “best in class” partners in the delivery of the respective areas critical to holistic community success. For more than a decade, robust community partnerships have been the linchpin of BDF’s efforts. BDF has worked with a diverse group of community partners – including Educare, HANO, Kingsley House, Columbia Residential, St. Thomas Community Health Center, Tulane University Center for Public Service, City Park, Purpose Built Communities and the PGA Tour – to turn what was once just a vision for community revitalization into a reality. Because attacking New Orleans’ most complex social problem – intergenerational poverty – requires the alignment of multiple resources, BDF serves as the “community quarterback” amongst these partners, working to accelerate holistic community transformation in the Gentilly neighborhood. Within this model, the broad cross-sector representation of multiple organizations works together under a common agenda – led by BDF – to share measurements, mutually reinforce activities, and continually communicate. BDF is the community leader in engaging community members, building partnerships, securing funding, managing programs and ensuring implementation of the housing, education, and wellness components of the model as part of the community’s vision. The Bayou District development was inspired by the East Lake community redevelopment effort in Atlanta, Georgia, which has been thriving for more than 20 years. The East Lake model has maintained an unprecedented level of excellence and impact, reflected by drastic crime reduction rates, high employment rates, and outstanding academic achievement scores and high school graduation rates. BDF is already seeing similar results here in New Orleans, and is prepared to stand as the new gold standard for other U.S. cities seeking innovative approaches to breaking the cycle of poverty.