A storied playground that once stood at the heart of the St. Bernard neighborhood will soon be restored as a $35 million athletic field and underground stormwater storage system, after years of stalled progress.
At McDonogh 35 High School last week, New Orleans officials broke ground on Willie Hall Playground, a project that aims to reduce chronic flooding in the area and expand the city’s stock of public recreation fields.
“This project speaks to the future of the city of New Orleans in a community that we know in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina took on a lot of water, and that’s why we focus heavily on these spaces to ensure we can mitigate flooding by learning how to live with it,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who was flanked by Chief Administrative Officer Joe Threat, and City Councilmembers Eugene Green and Oliver Thomas, among other officials at the site.
Led by the New Orleans Office of Resilience and Sustainability, the three-phase project will first see massive water tanks constructed below the 5-acre site that are capable of storing up to five million gallons of water, officials said. The underground tanks would connect to the city’s drainage system and alleviate pressure from the city’s aging, constrained pumps during heavy storms.
On top of that, and adjacent to McDonogh 35 High School, will be a new football field, lighting and bleachers, among other amenities. Later phases include rain gardens, a kayak launch, walking trails along Bayou St. John and a new multi-use recreational facility.
“It’s just taking water out of the drainage system,” said the city’s Urban Water Administrator Meagan Williams.
Once complete, the new athletic fields will be shared between the New Orleans Recreation and Development Commission and McDonogh 35 under a partnership between NORD and the Orleans Parish School Board.
The project is part of the Gentilly Resilience District, a series of green flood control projects in Gentilly that have been repeatedly delayed since the city received a $141 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2016.
The groundbreaking marks the return of Willie Hall Playground to the St. Bernard neighborhood. That playground, which was dedicated in the 1960s to serve Black youth in the area when NORD had segregated parks and facilities, was relocated to Pontchartrain Park following major flooding in the St. Bernard area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The St. Bernard neighborhood has since seen a spate of multimillion-dollar investments over the years, including a state-of-the-art building for McDonogh 35 High School built in 2015.
Stalled progress
Before now, progress on the Willie Hall site had been slow, as had progress on the entire Gentilly stormwater management project. In fall 2023, HUD named New Orleans a “slow spender” because only about 15% of the grant money had been used then.
The city has until 2029 to spend the grant money, and officials have completed only a handful of projects. Others are in progress, such as the $31 million Mirabeau Water Garden, which will transform 25 acres of vacant land into a recreational space designed to hold up to 10 million gallons of stormwater.
For Willie Hall, NORD and the school board signed an original five-year agreement in 2018, armed with a $5 million HUD grant for stormwater management.
Initial designs accounted for a water storage capacity of 2 million gallons, but engineers later determined the project would require larger tanks, which nearly tripled cost estimates, said project manager Stephanie Dreher.
Getting federal clearance for the change took time, she said, as did several standard environmental and archeological surveys and title research to determine jurisdiction over the property.
Still, movement on the project remained largely stagnant. With the agreement due to expire in 2023, the School Board, aided by community efforts to resurrect the project, amended the terms of the agreement to be approved by Cantrell’s city attorney in 2022.
The new agreement details a joint operating plan between NORD and McDonogh 35, such as the school giving up a portion of its parking lot in the evenings, but also giving the school priority in the event of scheduling conflicts. NORD’s default schedule for the property is after 6 p.m. on weekdays and after noon on Saturdays.
The intersection of Foy and Roneagle Way photographed in the St. Bernard Area of New Orleans, Friday, Nov. 14, 2025. Plans for a $35 million athletic field and underground stormwater storage system in an empty field next to McDonogh 35 College Preparatory High School are expected to move forward. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Full-circle moment
Willie Hall Park, along with the St. Bernard Projects, which were formerly New Orleans’ largest public housing development, were central to the St. Bernard neighborhood before Katrina in 2005, said NORD CEO Larry Barabino Jr., who grew up in the area.
For Barabino, who attended school, played for the playground’s football team and later coached in the neighborhood, the groundbreaking marks a pivotal full-circle moment.
“I was always here. This playground, this site was a safe haven to me,” he said. “This was the only green space that served, pre-Katrina, thousands of kids. But now, there’s no green space in this community anymore because it’s gone,” he added.
Construction on the first phase of the project is expected to take 18 months.