“This has been a long-standing vision,” Bayou La Batre Mayor Henry Barnes Sr. said Monday as he joined other officials in breaking ground for a project that will transform public access to the city’s waterfront.
The City Docks Redevelopment Project is a $24.4 overhaul of a public dock at the south end of the city’s industrial waterfront, almost at the mouth of the bayou as it opens onto the Mississippi Sound. As it stands, there’s not much there: Rough boat ramps and unpaved parking, a small fishing pier and a protected basin that for years has been occupied mainly by two mothballed casino barges. (One has already been moved, with plans afoot to repurpose it as a fishing reef.)
After about two years of work, the same basin will be a destination. Plans call for it to have pavilion and other facilities that allow it to function as a seafood marketplace; a full-service marina; and a four-lane concrete boat ramp with courtesy docks and abundant paved parking.
All this sits just north of another major post-Deepwater Horizon project, the restoration of acres of protective tidal land at Lightning Point…