Louisiana Boardwalk Adds Music Venues, $13.5M in Investment

Construction crews have already torn out the interior of the old Joe's Crabshack on the Bossier City riverfront. In its place: The Parish Standard, a restaurant, bar and music venue developers compare to Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, according to the Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate.

The project is part of a larger push to remake the Louisiana Boardwalk, the mile-long riverfront complex in Bossier City. The centerpiece is The Louisiana Grandstand, a new music venue set to open at the Boardwalk in 2027, the Advocate reported.

"Music is so deeply ingrained in our local culture," said Abigail Simmons, business development manager for KSM Marketing, which works with Bossier City and the Boardwalk, according to KSLA. "The Grandstand has been an incubator for so many artists who have launched massive careers out of this area, and being able to say that we have that incubator right here at the Boardwalk is incredibly exciting."

Simmons pushed back on criticism the property has drawn on social media. "It's not a ghost town," she told the Advocate. "There's community programming. There's events. There are tenants."

Justin Hagler, pastor of The Simple Church at the Boardwalk, laid out the numbers behind the turnaround. Tenants have put $13.5 million into the property over the past two years, he said: $5 million from the adjacent Marriott hotel, $5 million from Simple Church, and $3.5 million from the new Picklr indoor pickleball courts and the soon-to-open Brine restaurant, per the Advocate. Another $3.5 million has come from city and private spending on infrastructure, painting, signage and landscaping, Hagler said.

The Boardwalk currently has 23 retail tenants and seven commercial tenants, according to the Advocate. Three more letters of intent are pending for additional space, officials said, though they aren't ready to announce them.

Simmons said the goal is to build what she called an "interconnected set of investments" with both daytime and nighttime draws, not to recreate the Boardwalk of a decade ago. "Whether you come in the morning with your kids or for a date night in the evening, we want this to be the one-stop shop for experiences in Shreveport-Bossier," she told KSLA.

She said the plans are driven partly by nostalgia. "People are so passionate about this property; it's fueled by memories of being here as kids," Simmons said, per KSLA.