Airline Highway Park

Occupying 133 acres at the southern boundary of East Baton Rouge Parish where Ward Creek meets the historic Bayou Manchac, Airline Highway Park is a regional park that currently hosts the Greater Baton Rouge State Fair, an array of diverse recreational facilities. Today, its landscapes experience regular nuisance flooding. In collaboration with TBG Partners and a larger team, SCAPE helped advance the landscape architecture and ecological design for a reimagined Airline Highway Park—aiming to reduce flooding, preserve space for flexible programming and environmental education, restore a fragmented tree canopy, and showcase the rich natural history of Bayou Manchac and south Louisiana.

Green infrastructure is incorporated into the park alongside strategies to restore historic ecologies that once existed on site, to mitigate stormwater runoff and to protect trees that are more than 100 years old. An existing oxidation pond is decommissioned and replaced by a restored pond, wetland and stream meander where visitors can learn about local flora and fauna in an outdoor classroom and boardwalk. A water access point provides a tie-in to Bayou Manchac and Wards Creek for boaters and kayakers, anchoring the site to a proposed ‘waterway trail’ that will connect several regional waterways. Throughout the park, new facilities, recreational areas and concessions include sports courts; event and multi-purpose lawns; a splash pad, dog park, and adventure play zone; and a zip line and ropes course. Airline Highway Park aspires to become a world-class community park informed by months of socially-distanced input from residents and stakeholders—providing a renovated open space network, restored ecological function, clarified circulation, and new recreational opportunities for residents of East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.