Residents of the West Bank Will Have Easier Access to New Orleans
New home owners and new business owners alike don’t have to travel to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain to find the perfect lifestyle. With the Huey P. Long Bridge expansion, residents on the West Bank have easier access to New Orleans. Jefferson Parish houses some of the areas greatest attractions such as the TPC Louisiana Golf Course, NOLA Motorsports, Churchill Farms Technology and Business Park, Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology 
Academy and the future River City Campus for Delgado Community College. Parish President John Young believes the project will increase Jefferson’s population so much that it will exceed East Baton Rouge.
“We find a lot of people leaving and going across the lake for a different kind of lifestyle,” Young said. “But we can give them that kind of lifestyle in Jefferson.”
The reasons for his accolades of the area are based on the anticipated 2,000-acre project located in the Fairfield Study Area. Southern Lifestyle Development is seriously looking to build a mixed-use development on the land which sits between and south of Avondale and Westwego. Prescott Bailey, an area President for Southern Lifestyle Development, has already started to meet with area officials as well as the multiple landowners about the property.
“We’re looking at it as an opportunity to essentially create a small city that would have different products for everyone: all types of commercial, all types of multi-family, as well as single-family,” Bailey said.
The development could potentially house 20,000 to 30,000 residents which will include new single-family houses, new condominiums and new townhouses. The beauty of the planned, mixed residential and commercial development is the privacy that residents will enjoy because of the large green spaces that will make the project feel more private and not so densely populated.
This is not the first time a builder has been interested in building a large mixed-use development in this area of West Jefferson. KB Homes partnered with The Shaw Group of Baton Rouge in 2005, planning to build new construction consisting of 20,000 condominiums, townhouses and single-family homes along with 3,000 retail stores. With Katrina hitting a few months after and the downturn in the national housing market, KB Homes pulled the plug on the project.
Southern Lifestyle Development is a solid company whose previous projects include Village of River Ranch which is a successful mixed-use development in Lafayette. Young hopes the deal will be made by the second quarter of next year and with the rise in the housing market, the odds are in favor for the “small city”.
