A Metairie swim and tennis club that closed amid declining membership last summer has been sold, another sign of Jefferson Parish’s aging population and changing tastes.

Two local tennis professionals, Lee MacAlester and Hossam Meligy, formed Pontchartrain Racquet Club LLC to buy the Bissonet Maned Downs Country Club property for $425,000, according to public records.

Meligy said Wednesday they were not ready to discuss their plans for the property, at 5400 Irving St. adjacent to Girard Playground. But a Bissonet member and former general manager, Nikki Falgoust, said they told members they planned to focus on tennis while also reopening the swimming pool.

Bissonet was one of a dozen or so nonprofit clubs that thrived in Jefferson neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s, during a population boom in a parish with but one publicly owned swimming pool.

It’s the third to close in the past eight years, after the Beach Club in Metairie and Driftwood Park Country Club in Kenner. Two others have been bought by for-profit owners.

Neighborhood clubs such as these were established largely by suburban homeowners with children at a time when Jefferson Parish’s younger-than-18 population far exceeded the number of residents 60 and older. Bissonet opened in 1963.

“They started it by walking the neighborhood and knocking on doors,” Falgoust said of Bissonet’s founders. Buying into the club then cost $350, an amount that never changed, she said. In addition to that were monthly dues, which she said in recent years cost $90 per family.

These clubs typically offered a pool for kids, tennis courts for all ages, a clubhouse, a bar and a grill, but not a golf course. Some had a party room that could be rented for weddings, receptions, showers and other events; Bissonet’s encompassed 2,000 square feet, more than some houses.

Place to socialize

In the summer, parents could drop off the kids at the Bissonet pool in the morning, knowing they would eat lunch there then walk next door to Girard to play baseball or softball in the afternoon until a parent picked them up after work, Falgoust said. Children competed on Bissonet’s tennis, swimming and diving teams against other neighborhood clubs, and adults found the four tennis courts, pool and clubhouse bar a place to socialize.    

“It was a huge part of that neighborhood,” Falgoust said. “It was a lot of fun.”  

Although Jefferson’s population plateaued in the mid-1980s, Bissonet still had a waiting list for membership as late as 2004. And in the months after Hurricane Katrina crippled the New Orleans area, in 2005, membership hit an all-time high of 400 families, Falgoust said.

“People were looking for community,” she said.

It didn’t last, however. Summer camps with all-day sessions took some kids, some members installed pools at their own houses, and travel ball teams siphoned young athletes from Girard’s leagues, Falgoust said. 

More fundamental is that Jefferson’s 60-and-older population now equals the younger-than-18 set, and the parish’s median age has risen to 40, higher than Louisiana’s or the United States’. The state and the country are both aging, a result of Baby Boomers not producing as many children as their parents, but Jefferson is aging faster.

As a result, the Jefferson School Board last year closed six public schools and the parish government is reimagining some playgrounds that are no longer chockablock with kids.

At Bissonet, membership dwindled as expenses rose. The end came in mid-summer when the club closed, still owing $16,806 to a roofing company for work dating from 2021, according to court records. Kelly Marcus, the club’s final president, did not return calls for comment.

“The clubhouse was very old, and it was not being maintained,” Falgoust said. “In the past few years, tennis was what was driving the club.”

Falgoust said members heard presentations from four potential buyers, and that MacAlester and Meligy, while not offering the most money, shared plans that members thought would change Bissonet the least. The owners decided Oct. 11 to sell, and the deal closed Dec. 13.