City of New Orleans Department of Public Works Lincoln Beach Redevelopment

Lincoln Beach is an approximately 15-acre site bounded by Lake Pontchartrain to the north, east, and west and by Southern Railroad/Hayne Blvd. to the south. The site was an amusement park, managed by the City until it was closed in 1964. The site of the former amusement park parking lot is located across Hayne Blvd. The approximately 10-acre lot is currently overgrown and used as an illegal dump site. The Lincoln Beach facilities and structures have remained idle since the 1960s and have continued to gradually deteriorate. The site was most certainly impacted by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, though there has been no official assessment of the site conditions since that time.

The City of New Orleans is prioritizing quality of life issues. In New Orleans East, that means exploring the feasibility of re-opening Lincoln Beach to recreation. The City has completed a Site Assessment showing the current conditions of the beach and identified the kind of mitigation activities that would be necessary to return it to public use.

As a sub-consultant to Digital Engineering, Wingate Engineers has been tasked with the assessment, demolition, and subsequent design of various site civil and structural elements on the Lincoln Beach site. Wingate will provide construction documents necessary to solicit bids from qualified construction contractors to rehabilitate damaged structures at Lincoln Beach. Several of the existing structures such as the exterior brick wall, swimming pool, waterfront stage, and other waterfront structures have deteriorated over time and do not meet current structural codes. Several of the structures will need to be demolished, either on or off site and the salvageable elements of their structures relocated to an offsite storage facility or area. Structures that are in salvageable conditions will need to be repaired or updated to meet the latest International Code Council (ICC), International Existing Building Code (IEBC), International Building Code (IBC), and other applicable industry standards as necessary.

The design task is divided into preliminary and final design phases, which is typical of engineering design documents to allow for owner review and comment at each phase of design. Preliminary design consists of a 30% schematic design submittal, while final design consists of 60%, 90%, and 100% detailed design submittals. Each submittal consists of plans, specifications, and updated construction cost estimates which allow project team to adjust as necessary to meet available constituent preferences and the allocated project budget. This task of the redevelopment has a very aggressive schedule and is expected to be completed within 9 months of the Notice to Proceed.