BATON ROUGE, La. -- On a recent October afternoon, the chairman of a Chinese medical technology company announced plans to build a manufacturing plant in Baton Rouge that could employ 300 people. He gave credit to Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden.
"The reason he came to Baton Rouge is because the mayor personally went to China and visited his company,” said Hui Xiaobing, the medical chairman of Huiheng Medical
"We competed with San Francisco, Houston and four other cities, and Baton Rouge was chosen,” explained Holden.
It is an example of the economic development efforts in Baton Rouge that have blossomed since Hurricane Katrina.
"We watched more hotels come in, more restaurants, a number of people who opted to stay in Baton Rouge instead of going back to New Orleans. We watched a more robust economy,” Holden said.
"Baton Rouge sort of shook off its sleepy, small-town image, and really decided to move on,” explained Jim Brandt, president of the Baton Rouge-based Public Affairs Research Council.
Baton Rouge leaders have formed a coordinated economic development team that includes the mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Baton Rouge Foundation.
"We have in Baton Rouge this partnership that we talked about between the city, the business community, and the philanthropic community,” said John Spain, of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
"What's unusual about what's happening in Baton Rouge, I think, is that you have the economic and business leaders on the same page with the political leaders, and they have worked seamlessly together,” said Brandt.
Since 2006, their efforts have produced 5,600 jobs at 41 companies that are investing over $1 billion in the Baton Rouge metro area.
"So far at the end of the third quarter, we actually had about 840 jobs that had been announced through this year so far,” said Adam Knapp, president of the Baton Rouge Chamber. “We think there's another perhaps 200 jobs or so that could be announced before the conclusion of this year."
"We cannot be status quo any more. We have to move forward, and the best way to move forward is to have a vision in all aspects, from infrastructure, to housing, to job creation, to education, to state government,” said Holden.
The city and business leaders developed the five-year Campaign for a Greater Baton Rouge in 2004, and the first key strategy is to keep local businesses in the area, and encourage them to expand. They stressed the region's strengths.
"You're talking about a state capitol where state government is a major employer,” Spain said. “You're talking about a top 10 deep-water port. We're talking about a petrochemical industry."
“That availability of a highly educated workforce, as well as a very strong blue collar workforce for manufacturing," added Knapp.
They are currently working with 50 more businesses interested in Baton Rouge, and targeting financial companies, corporate headquarters, construction and biomedical firms. They put together a strategy to become a digital media center that has brought six companies to Baton Rouge so far.
"The foundation put up money, the chamber and the mayor put a fund together that said ‘We're going to put up money behind this concept, and we're going to go after it.’ Those early dollars paid for the ability to get on airplanes to go meet with those companies, to pay for the expenses when they came here,” said Spain.
The economic development efforts coincided with the mayor's vision of revitalizing downtown Baton Rouge.
"I've lived in Baton Rouge now for 10 years, and when I came here, if you saw someone downtown after 5 p.m., it was a happening, a sighting. Now of course, it is totally different. You have a very active nightlife,” explained Jim Brandt.
Though Baton Rouge was flooded with refugees after Katrina, the region's population now stands about 50,000 people more than in 2004, at 774,000. But a number of New Orleans companies, like Acme Oyster House, found that expanding to the capitol city was good business.
"The sales have been incredible. We're enjoying a 20 percent increase over and beyond what we had projected,” said Lucien Gunter of Acme.
But challenges remain, including the city's legendary traffic woes.
"It's really a monster trying to get through Baton Rouge in the morning, during the drive hours, in the afternoon during the drive hours, and we still hear the frustration back and forth," said the mayor.
Baton Rouge is well into a $500 million road improvement plan with 37 projects underway or on the drawing boards. But the mayor already knows that work occurring now to expand Interstate 10 won't be enough to meet future traffic demands.
A $900 million capital improvement program quickly became controversial because one part included the plan to build a combination theme park and research facility, involving the Audubon Nature Institute. The project, called Alive, would have been located on the Mississippi River bank. It ran into heavy opposition, and voters defeated it for a second time this month.
While the leaders of the foundation and the chamber are pleased with the progress made so far, they know that much more remains to be done. Among the concerns they are hearing are about crime, and the need to improve the education system to provide the workforce businesses need.
“Number one is the availability of a trained workforce. It is the state's biggest crisis, it is our region's biggest crisis,” said Knapp.
"We have a task force now that is looking at new concepts for high school that will identify opportunities for work force training as early as ninth grade,” said Spain.
But their eyes, and plans, are firmly fixed on the future.
"I think short term I see it as a place that will eventually become the financial capitol to the extent that there is one in Louisiana,” Spain said.
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