N.O.R.D. fails to provide recreational activities so our kids organize a sport of their own, killing.
City Officials do not care about our kids, all you have to do is look around to see that.
Juvenile crime continues to dominate headlines in New Orleans and it is no secret that our criminal justice system has failed both victims and perpetrators. When a juvenile comes into the system, we expect that meaningful rehabilitation efforts are made to prevent escalation. That is not happening. But long before they are arrested, juveniles have few alternatives to a life of crime. City officials stand behind podiums and cut ribbons for the camera, but blocks away in neighborhoods all over the city, the failure of programs they fund tell the truth.
The greatest tool we have to reach young people in the community is sports and recreation. Recreation activities with great coaches and mentors can teach leadership, teamwork, the benefits of hard work, and taking pride in your achievements. It is no secret that our recreation department has failed the youth in New Orleans. But no one realizes just how bad it is. It is time we talk about NORD.
A visit to several NORD parks around the city made it very clear why we have a juvenile crime problem. This is Perry Roehm park, a NORD playground. It is located at 2939 Touro Street in Gentilly. According to the NORD website, it has a field with lights and a stadium. It does have a baseball field. The “stadium” around that field looks like it was hit by a bomb. There is a concession stand that appears to have caught on fire long ago and was left as is. The bathrooms have trash scattered and feces inside broken toilets. The electrical box, which presumably powered the outdoor lights at some point, is on the ground. It is open, exposing live wires, with a plant growing from inside. There are also remnants of a water fountain. A storage unit with the door left open has various trash and old equipment scattered everywhere.
This is Easton Playground in Mid-City at 3141 Toulouse Street. The field is currently being used for soccer. Parents have complained that the field is not maintained and there are holes in the grass. The grass is uneven, there are holes in the mud, and hay is piled on various parts of the field to fill in large gaps. Children attempt to play soccer in the dark on the field with no lights. The NORD website indicates that the field does have working lights. It does not. The bathrooms are locked shut.
This is Carver Playground. It is located Uptown at 7410 Prytania Street. The NORD website claims this park has a fenced baseball field with lights and a basketball court. The seating on the bleachers is missing, and the fence in front is collapsing. Another part of the fence was damaged, and left with a large hole. At one point a parent attempted to put a net over the hole, and that has collapsed as well. The electrical box caught on fire and is left open and exposed. There is hardly any paint left on the basketball goal and it has no net.
This is Larry Gilbert Playground in Hollygrove. It is located at 8400 Olive Street. This field is advertised on the NORD website as an available baseball field with lights. It is far from that. There is no baseball diamond at all; there is only grass. Dilapidated bleachers that would have been considered completely rotten years ago, remain. Part of the fence appears to have collapsed long ago and now has grass growing on top of the fence where it fell. There is a homeless man with all of his belongings and a bike living near the bathrooms, which are all locked. A woman is living in an encampment set up nearby in the NORD facility. For a year and a half, she, her 2 kids, and an elderly man have been living there. The park has a strong odor of urine and feces.
This is Norman Playground in Algiers at 3301 Elton Street. On the website this playground lists a covered basketball court and field lights. As seen in the photos, the outdoor basketball courts have no basketball rims. The outdoor field has large holes possibly from a truck being stuck in the grass. There is an abandoned tire that the grass is now growing around. The covered basketball court has a leak in the roof and water on the ground. There are no lights or even light bulbs under the covered court. Inside the bathroom, there is no running water, and it is being used as a storage closet. There is a very strong smell of feces inside the bathroom.
This is Hunter’s Field. It is located at 1659 North Claiborne Avenue. According to the website this playground has outdoor basketball courts, fields with lights, and play equipment. There are no basketball courts. The field is coned off with crime scene tape. There appears to be a water line break and the grass cannot be cut around it. There is standing water on the field. The play area has piled up trash, including a crate full of small cartons of milk. The main building is padlocked and all the storm window and door coverings are down.
This is St. Roch Playground. It is located at 1800 St. Roch Avenue. The baseball field holds water on a continuous basis. Before practice or games, the teams have to attempt to remove the water themselves.
This is Robert Playground. It is located at 4700 Lonely Oak Drive in New Orleans East. The NORD website claims it has outdoor basketball courts, baseball fields, and play equipment. Only one of the basketball goals has a net. The swing set has no swings. There are huge holes in the field in various parts of the field. The play equipment is roped off with crime scene tape because the equipment is broken apart and presumably hazardous.
And the list of abandoned playgrounds goes on and on.
According to the NORD website, there are 109 NORD facilities available to the public. The website indicates that there are “No Upcoming Events” for any of the following programs: Arts, Dance, After School Programs, Fitness, Senior Activities, Special Events, Teen Programs, and Youth Programs. If you click the Family Programs and Activities, Music, or Theatre Programs, the website indicates, “Page Not Found: Someone dropped the ball!”. The only locations that seem to be advertised on the NORD website are: Joe Brown Park, Gert Town Natatorium, Sanchez Multi-Purpose Center and the Atkinson-Stern Tennis Center. Other than water aerobics, lap swimming, and tennis, no other daily activities are listed as available.
In March of 2022 WDSU ran a story titled, “Some New Orleans Baseball Fields in Bad Shape: Games postponed because of conditions”. In response to that story NORD CEO Larry Barabino, Jr. stated, “I apologize for the condition the field was found in, but we will do better moving forward.” Two fields listed in that article in 2022 were Larry Gilbert and Perry Roehm, which were photographed above in December of 2024.
In June of 2022 Nola.com ran a story titled, “Most New Orleans Outdoor public pools will stay closed this summer; city cites lifeguard shortage”. According to the organizational chart of NORD, there are 8 senior lifeguards, 32 year round lifeguards, and 23 summer lifeguards on payroll. NORD waited until June to announce that there was somehow a shortage of lifeguards for the summer. Of the 15 pools that should have been available to kids in 2022, 4 actually opened. In 2022 New Orleans was the murder capital of the country, with 22 juveniles killed that year alone. The failure to maintain pools has remained an issue with NORD, as juvenile crime continues to dominate the headlines.
In September of 2023 WDSU ran a story titled, “NORD explains delay in pay for teens who participated in their summer programs”. This story came after parents were outraged that kids who participated in the NORD job program were never actually paid. According to the story, Barabino first claimed that the kids were never told that they would be paid. Later he claimed those who were not paid did not fill out the forms properly. Ultimately, payments were made.
NORD received $20.1 million for its annual budget in 2024. According to the budget, NORD submitted to the city council, $3.6 million of that is allocated to administrative salaries, $4.9 million goes to maintenance of the facilities, $4.2 million goes to the recreation centers, and $2 million is for aquatics. This city council has increased their budget by $5 million since 2022. According to the organizational chart produced by NORD, over 230 people are on the NORD payroll. Without any accountability for why these facilities have been totally neglected, the city council continues to increase NORD’s budget.
Several non-profit organizations identified in the graphic above have stepped up to fill the void for kids in our community. These non-profits rely on fund raising to provide recreational activities for our young people. Private citizens and businesses step up and donate money to these organizations to provide services that we, the citizens, are already paying the city to provide. These organizations, as seen above, are servicing more kids than NORD with one tenth of the budget NORD is given. If a nonprofit can provide recreation activities for 11,000 kids on a $2 million dollar budget and with 11 employees, there is no justification for the failure of NORD and city officials.
It is glaringly obvious that there is a total lack of accountability for spending in New Orleans. City officials ignore neglect and increase budgets year after year. They are telling the taxpayers, “we expect incompetence and we don’t care”. And victims of crime pay the price for it since juveniles have no alternative to a life of crime.
Noticeably missing from these playgrounds are families and neighborhood kids. How we maintain our city sets an example for our kids. If we take no pride in our facilities or our community, why should they? City leaders send a clear message to our kids with abandoned parks, dilapidated equipment, filth, and closed pools: “we don’t care about you”.
I play in a few leagues throughout the city. Let me say that although I appreciate your sentiment, the coverage of this ongoing, open disdain for public trust has only made things worse. Non-city affiliated leagues have long been the caretakers of these spaces. As these stories came out a few years ago, the city's response was to end all CEA's with private leagues and to send cease and desist letters to leagues operating on NORD fields, until they could negotiate and pay exorbitant fees.
One league had their CEA discarded, then had to pay $5,000 per year for access to a field that is not even fenced completely, full of holes, little or no amenities, and is poorly lit. The league pays that fee, but has seen little or no improvement in the field that the league has maintained out of its own pocket for 15 years. I looked into our league moving to City Park, and the official I spoke to mentioned that nearly every league in the city was receiving similar treatment.
I am in a baseball league that has played St. Roch, Larry Gilbert, and Perry Roehm:
At Perry, the city signed that CEA with St. Aug, and it is appreciated that St. Aug has done some work on the field such as repairing the mound and batter's box. That CEA also resulted in the field becoming less accessible to anyone as it became heavily locked up. Neighborhood kids only have access when other people are renting the field. The lights are an open hazard and games that reach dusk are non-playable. The city has done nothing regardless of the moneys the collect from renters.
Larry Gilbert was a mess. Constant water leak from the bathrooms, the whole place stank of piss. When the WDSU article came out, the field was locked beyond our access. The lights are also a hazard. The field is rarely cut. Again, many in the neighborhood would like to use this space (many people from Latin America that would enjoy soccer or baseball) are reduced to feeling like visitors asking for access from us when we have things going on. Again , zero amenities.
St. Roch is a controversial field for us in that some teams will still play games there. Our team and some others outright refuse. Between the condition of the field being deplorable and the crime in the area, it is simply too dangerous to play there. We have seen cars broken into while we're playing. We have heard gunshots and murders from a block over. The dugouts have been covered in bullets and shell casings. The lights at one point were on non-stop, causing the neighborhood to have to petition the city to fix the issue.
The city, and NORD admins have been in open contempt of private leagues playing on fields, or using the facilities at all. The ending of CEAs, the lack of accountability, the retributive nature of their behavior, and the absolute disdain they have for their fields and neighborhoods is absolutely appalling. This isn't just a typical New Orleans "we're inept and a bit corrupt, but we mean well!" sort of thing. This feels like "we're corrupt and far from inept. Rather, we want to actively hurt the city."
Unfortunately, in our private messaging, when we saw your post, we figured "well there goes our field to play on". I hope we are wrong in our concern there. As deleterious to our continued existence as we fear you and others coverage may be, I am still thankful that someone is airing out this unfortunate and unacceptable behavior by the city. If by shining a light on this we may be able to restore safe, hygienic parks to neighborhoods and inculcate the values that come from sports in the next generations and thus save the soul of our city, then I'd gladly give up my rec leagues.
Your definitely a lie because the cheerleaders are in the building and the basketball team has been practicing indoors at starling gym on cold n rainy days and since it has been reopened I have yet to sed a needle or skater and I’m there daily .