Lakeshore Playground, the busiest youth sports hub on the East Bank of Jefferson Parish, is in the middle of a multi-million-dollar makeover that will strip out all of its grass fields and replace them with synthetic turf. Playground leaders expect the work to wrap up this fall, giving more than 2,000 registered young athletes a new home field free of the rain delays that have long plagued the Bucktown facility.
The project will replace 75,000 square feet of existing grass with turf, according to Fox 8, which reported that the new multi-use field will pack in a full-length 100-yard football field, two baseball fields, a soccer field and track lanes onto the same footprint. Located at 1125 Rosa Avenue in Metairie's Bucktown neighborhood, Lakeshore Playground already houses four baseball fields, three batting cages, two tot lots, an indoor gymnasium and outdoor workout facilities, according to Jefferson Parish Parks & Recreation. While construction is underway, Lakeshore's football teams and cheer squads are traveling to Johnny Bright to practice and play, per the same Fox 8 report.
Underground Wiring Paves the Way for Night Games
Beyond the surface swap, crews are laying eight miles of new underground electrical conduit as part of the overhaul, the station's report notes. That conduit will power new field lighting, an upgraded scoreboard, and fans installed for the dugouts — upgrades aimed at making the park more comfortable and functional for the families who fill its stands most weekends.
Charles Cusimano, president of the Lakeshore Booster Club, is among the local leaders overseeing the project, and Jefferson Parish Councilman Hans Liljeberg has also been involved, per the same account. The parish council is set to receive state grants covering roughly $2.5 million of the project's costs, funding that traces back to Act 776, a 2024 measure passed by the Louisiana State Legislature that directly appropriated $2,496,000 from the State General Fund to the Lakeshore Indians Booster Club for the playground's improvement.
A State Senator's Annual Playground Pick
According to Fox 8, Louisiana Senate President J. Cameron Henry Jr. has made a habit of selecting a playground each year for improvements, and Lakeshore's turn arrived this cycle. Henry represents District 9, which covers portions of Metairie and the East Bank of Jefferson Parish, according to the Louisiana State Senate. The Lakeshore Indians Booster Club Inc., the nonprofit receiving the state grant, is a registered 501(c)(3) organization that manages youth athletic programs and runs concessions at the park, according to nonprofit filings compiled by ProPublica.
The turf conversion is designed to reduce downtime after rainstorms and improve drainage, addressing a persistent headache for a park that hosts games nearly year-round. It fits into a broader parish strategy: officials have said Jefferson Parish plans to keep finding funding to build better places to play across the parish, per Fox 8's reporting.
Part of a Parish-Wide Turf Push
Lakeshore is not the first Jefferson Parish facility to make the switch. The parish previously converted soccer fields 7 and 8 at Lafreniere Park in Metairie to synthetic turf in a $3 million project that used specialized subsurface drainage grids and earned a 2022 Distinguished Multi-Field Facility Award from the American Sports Builders Association, according to The QSM Group. In January, Jefferson Parish opened the $45 million John A. Alario Jr. Youth Sports Complex in Avondale, featuring four multipurpose artificial-turf fields built to eliminate rain cancellations and host multi-sport travel tournaments — a project Hoodline detailed in January.
The parish's appetite for artificial surfaces extends further still. Reporting in June revealed Jefferson Parish had allocated roughly $6.9 million in state capital outlay funds toward a planned new baseball stadium at Jefferson Playground in Metairie, according to Youth Sports Business Report, underscoring just how much state money is flowing into Metairie's athletic infrastructure at once.
The Heat Trade-Off Worth Watching
Synthetic turf's advantages come with a well-documented downside in a climate like southern Louisiana's. A 2024 systematic review published in the International Journal of Biometeorology, which analyzed 23 studies, found that synthetic turf surface temperatures in direct sunlight run consistently 17°F to 60°F hotter than natural grass, according to findings hosted by the National Institutes of Health. That gap is a factor parish and booster club leaders will need to manage as young athletes take the field under the region's summer sun.
The turf overhaul also follows on the heels of accessibility upgrades at the same park. In December, Jefferson Parish Councilman Hans Liljeberg and Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng cut the ribbon on a newly updated, all-inclusive tot lot at Lakeshore Playground built specifically to accommodate children with disabilities, according to a Jefferson Parish Government post. Between the inclusive playground work, the turf conversion, and the parish's other Metairie investments, Lakeshore is emerging as a centerpiece of Jefferson Parish's broader push to modernize youth sports facilities without adding new burdens to local property taxes.
