‘A great place for a family’
Lifestyle, location make Riverbend subdivision a popular place to live
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of occasional features on neighborhoods in the Baton Rouge area.
Even though it’s minutes from some of the busiest streets in the city, the Riverbend subdivision off Brightside Lane, between River Road and Nicholson, has a quiet, unhurried feeling, with handsome homes and spacious yards.
It may seem a little out of the way — “You’ve got to be going to Riverbend to get to Riverbend,” said resident Hiko Miyagi — but for Miyagi and many other residents who work at LSU or downtown, it’s an incredibly convenient place to live.
Both are less than 10 minutes away. From the entrance of the subdivision, Tiger Stadium can actually be seen.
“We have a lot of LSU coaches, LSU professors and state workers,” said Adrienne Boutté Bowser, vice president of the Riverbend Homeowners Association.
Riverbend resident Mark Lumpkin and his wife, Debbie, have lived in the subdivision for 19 years.
They moved there from Lake Charles at a time when the two oldest of their six children were in college, one at Louisiana Tech and one at LSU, said Mark Lumpkin, who owns the insurance agency, the Lumpkin Agency.
For Lumpkin, who was the place kicker for LSU from 1968 to 1970, “it was a natural to be close to LSU and to the stadium,” Lumpkin said.
“It’s a great place for a family,” he said of Riverbend.
What becomes apparent from talking with residents is how kid-friendly the neighborhood is.
Parents talk about children riding bikes, looking for frogs and turtles along the canals that run through the area and playing football or baseball in the neighborhood’s park.
Skip Bertman, former LSU athletic director, and his wife, Sandy, were looking for a home for their large family when they came to Baton Rouge in 1983, with Skip coming from the University of Miami to be LSU’s baseball coach.
Bob Brodhead, then the LSU athletic director, lived in Riverbend and drove Bertman through the neighborhood. There Bertman and his wife found the five-bedroom home they were looking for.
“I’ve been living here 30 years,” said Bertman. “I was in the first filing of 30 homes.”
“It’s always had a lot of kids,” he said of Riverbend.
“It’s a neighborhood that never grows old,” said Bertman, who spoke with The Advocate in mid-January.
The Riverbend Lakes neighborhood within the Riverbend subdivision seems to especially have a lot of children, said David Heroman, president of its homeowners association.
There might be 10 to 15 children of all different ages living on any given street, he said.
“You might have two to three kids your age ride your bus or be home after school to play,” said Heroman, owner of the Original Heroman’s Florist.
It makes Halloween especially fun in Riverbend Lakes, he said.
The association has a tradition of renting a “train” (on wheels instead of a track) that takes youngsters and their parents around the block and serving jambalaya and hot dogs from David and Lori Heroman’s home.
Santa on a fire truck comes through at Christmastime, and, in years past, there was a well-attended Easter egg hunt in the BREC park, he said.
Riverbend was developed in the late 1970s by Will Ourso, who lives in the neighborhood.
According to an Advocate real estate marketing story of October 1979, the property was once the location of the Hope plantation.
Architect A. Hays Town designed the entrance of the subdivision, which features a rustic gazebo.
There are only a few lots left in the subdivision, Ourso said.
For “the people who have to move, the ‘for sale’ sign is up just a week,” he said.
Eventually, there came to be nine filings in the original Riverbend subdivision, which has homes in the 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot range, Bowser said.
Over the years, three other, smaller neighborhoods grew up, all considered part of Riverbend and each with its own neighborhood association: Riverbend Lakes, Laurel Estates and Laurel Lakes Estates, a gated community.
“There are about 600 to 700 rooftops” overall, said Robert Schneckenburger, president of the Riverbend Homeowners Association.
Schneckenburger, who is also president of the Baton Rouge market of JP Morgan Chase Bank, and his wife, Whitney Vann, anchor on WBRZ-TV’s “2une-In” show, built their home in Riverbend in 1993.
Schneckenburger, who runs to stay fit, has found a unique advantage to living in the subdivision, which is adjacent to the BREC Farr Park Equestrian Center.
“If you run, you can run through Farr Park and run on the levee. A lot of people do,” he said.
In Riverbend, voluntary annual subdivision fees of $70 go to the upkeep of the boulevard’s median and other grassy areas, street lighting and security patrols conducted by off-duty policemen.
There’s also an annual $50 social fee, primarily for a big crawfish boil and home-owners’ meeting held every spring.
It’s expensive to maintain a subdivision — it costs $20,000 a year just for the mowing, Bowser said. But it’s important to keep up the property values, she said.
Home prices in the subdivision might range from $200,000 to $450,000 or above, she said.
Resident Miyagi is the president of the Laurel Estates homeowners association, and he and his wife, Barrye Miyagi, are both lawyers who work downtown.
They first lived in the original Riverbend subdivision, before moving to a larger home in Laurel Estates, for their two sons, Hiko Miyagi said.
“The good thing about Riverbend is that there’s a pretty broad range of (house) sizes,” Miyagi said.
Houses can range from 1,800 square feet to huge homes in Laurel Lakes Estates, he said.
“It’s pretty easy for people to start out in a smaller home and relocate,” Miyagi said.
People tend to stay, residents said.
“We don’t have a big, big turnover. People that live in Riverbend move within Riverbend,” Bowser said.
Traffic outside the subdivision may pose the most noticeable challenge for residents.
Riverbend has only one entrance and exit, with no traffic light, on Brightside.
The upside about that is that there’s no “through” traffic; the downside is that the neighborhood can be blocked in by traffic on LSU game days.
And traffic, in general, has gotten busier in the area, residents said.
“As development has appeared on Brightside Lane, it has become very challenging, especially when school’s in session,” Schneckenburger said.
The city-parish added a third lane on Brightside for turning, and that helps, he said, but residents still prepare themselves for bottlenecks at the Nicholson and Brightside intersection.
He believes it’s a traffic situation the city-parish will be addressing in the near future.
Then again, Schneckenburger said he often rides his bike to LSU sports events.
“On the levee it takes about 15 minutes,” he said.