New Orleans Strategic Plan Editorial from The Advocate

from The Advo­cate
By Danny Mon­teverde
Jan­u­ary 14, 2013

New Orleans — Major national com­pa­nies set­ting up shop in the metro New Orleans area is hardly news. Major national com­pa­nies set­ting up shop in New Orleans proper? That’s a dif­fer­ent story. It’s also what hap­pened sev­eral times in 2012.

With the city lur­ing orga­ni­za­tions such as GE Cap­i­tal and Costco and the expan­sion of sev­eral exist­ing busi­nesses in the past year, local busi­ness lead­ers believe New Orleans is lay­ing the ground­work for a new wave of eco­nomic devel­op­ment — some­thing they hope will diver­sify the econ­omy and pro­vide a brighter future for the cash-strapped city.

Aimee Quirk, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s eco­nomic adviser, said the city has sev­eral things going for it now that it hasn’t pre­vi­ously: a young, entre­pre­neur­ial work­force that came here after Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion between the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and a more aggres­sive atti­tude toward attract­ing and retain­ing business.

“We are on a path. We’ve got great align­ment with the public-private sec­tor,” Quirk said. “We are all on a course with a shared vision that makes us very powerful.”

Rod Miller, pres­i­dent and CEO of the New Orleans Busi­ness Alliance, the city’s offi­cial eco­nomic devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion, said a shift in the city’s busi­ness cli­mate came in after Katrina.

“Kat­rina was an eye opener,” he said. “It put us in a spot­light and high­lighted our flaws.”

A desire among busi­ness lead­ers to rein­vig­o­rate a some­what stag­nant econ­omy based largely on the tourism indus­try helped spur change, Miller said. Mean­while, young peo­ple who came to town after the August 2005 storm brought with them an entre­pre­neur­ial spirit.

That, Miller said, cre­ated a pool of poten­tial tal­ent for com­pa­nies that began to look more seri­ously at the city as new eco­nomic incen­tives were launched in an effort to attract them.

But is New Orleans just rid­ing a post-Katrina wave of out­siders inter­ested in the rebuild­ing, which in many cases is com­ing to an end?

Quirk doesn’t think so. Not­ing that the city is nearly 10 years out from the storm, the trend seems to be that busi­ness here has changed, she said.

Know­ing that recent com­pa­nies mov­ing to the city pro­vide a sense of momen­tum, the city and busi­ness alliance are now in the midst of prepar­ing to launch a strate­gic plan that will focus on five spe­cific areas that mix high-paying jobs with more plen­ti­ful mod­est jobs:

Advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing.

BioIn­no­va­tion and health services.

Cre­ative dig­i­tal media.

Sus­tain­able, or envi­ron­men­tal, industries.

Show cap­tion
Trans­porta­tion, trade and logistics.

Michael Hecht, pres­i­dent and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., an eco­nomic devel­op­ment alliance that serves a 10-parish area in south­east Louisiana, said that the strate­gic plan sends a mes­sage to the coun­try that New Orleans has got­ten seri­ous about its economy.

“The new New Orleans is dif­fer­ent in real and pos­i­tive ways from the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion,” Hecht said. “Given that the No. 1 enemy of busi­ness is uncer­tainty, these mea­sures cre­ate a struc­ture and plan and frame­work … for the com­mu­nity,” Hecht said.

While there has been much work done behind the scenes to fos­ter a new atti­tude toward busi­ness in New Orleans, a stigma of a cor­rupt city with a high crime rate, fail­ing schools and lit­tle to offer as a return on invest­ment might be a bit of a hin­drance, accord­ing to one economist.

“We still have a per­cep­tion prob­lem,” said Janet Speyrer, asso­ciate dean of research and pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ics at UNO.

The real­ity is sim­ple, Speyrer said: to truly turn the cor­ner, New Orleans will need to ensure that mul­ti­ple new high-wage busi­nesses con­tinue to relo­cate here, show­ing that it is a new city.

While New Orleans land­ing some­thing such as Costco can cre­ate new jobs, they are lower wage, and the store isn’t an auto­matic boon to the local econ­omy since, she said, it can often just make con­sumer shift spend­ing from one busi­ness to another, rather than spend­ing more money. And while com­pa­nies such as GE are also great addi­tions, its work­force of about 300 peo­ple can’t quite boost a city’s entire economy.

Quirk said the city real­izes that it needs to keep court­ing those types of enter­prises to make a real dif­fer­ence, which is why it has devel­oped the five-point strate­gic plan. She also pointed out that efforts to grow retail in the city and improve qual­ity of life have been suc­cess­ful in 2012 with the con­struc­tion of the Mid-City Mar­ket and Algiers Plaza, two shop­ping cen­ters with var­i­ous out­lets in their respec­tive name­sake neighborhoods.

In 2013, a pro­posed new shop­ping cen­ter in South Clai­borne Avenue Cen­tral City will go before the City Coun­cil in hopes of allow­ing ground break­ing in the not-too-distant future. Offi­cials also hope to see some action taken on a pro­posed out­let mall at the site of the for­mer Six Flags theme park in east­ern New Orleans.

In the mean­time, Quirk said, growth often “begets more growth and wealth cre­ation through­out the city.”

Hecht said that ongo­ing dis­cus­sions with busi­nesses inter­ested in the city could prove to be yet another nail in the cof­fin of the city’s past pro­file if new deals are final­ized this year.

“What I believe is we are two or three major com­pa­nies away from New Orleans hit­ting crit­i­cal mass in terms of being a tech hub,” Hecht said. “We have com­pa­nies now like Gameloft and GE. Two or three more and I think we’ll turn the cor­ner and be men­tioned in the same sen­tences as Austin and Seattle.”

While there have been recent vic­to­ries in on the busi­ness front, Quirk admits it will take some time for res­i­dents to expe­ri­ence effects of the recent efforts to revive the economy.

“It’s all incre­men­tal,” Miller said.

Read the arti­cle on The Advo­cate here.