Overview
Located just east of New Orleans, St. Bernard Parish is one of the largest and richest wetland ecosystems on the North American continent. When Hurricane Katrina hit the coast in 2005, a 42-mile swath of St. Bernard Parish was flooded, and the majority of homes in that area were destroyed. St. Bernard suffered more flooding damage from Hurricane Katrina than any other Louisiana parish, but over the past four years, the St. Bernard Community Foundation has made great strides in rebuilding.
In partnership with the Plaquemines Community Foundation, the SBCF hired nationally renowned Healthy Neighborhoods founder, David Boehlke, to bring together a cross-section of residents and business leaders with the purpose of identifying community assets and creating a strategy to market them to current, former, and future residents and businesses. This group has reached out to real estate agents active in the parish, to public and private schools, to residential and commercial developers, to neighborhood associations, and to economic development entities. The SBCF also hired Donald Poland, an urban planner and expert on smart codes, parish zoning regulations, and economic and demographic changes to update the parish’s zoning codes.
Whether they were collaborating with experts to chart a map for recovery or creating the Southeast Louisiana Fisheries Assistance Center-also in partnership with the Plaquemines Community Foundation-the SBCF has laid a solid framework for current and future initiatives.
