he state that popularized riverboat gambling and Dixieland jazz is about to enter a new high-stakes game that officials hope will be music to their ears.
        No longer content to compete on the margins for big-ticket manufacturing plants, Louisiana lawmakers took matters into their own hands this spring to pass a bill aimed at luring industrial-strength factories to the state.
        Backed by the administration of Gov. Mike Foster, The Louisiana Major Projects Development Authority Act does more than create a nine-member board to fast-track large plants. It rewrites economic development policy for the entire state.
        "We have spent the last two years reinventing economic development in Louisiana," says Adam Knapp, the governor's policy analyst for economic and community development in Baton Rouge. "We rewrote a lot of our economic development incentives programs. But we needed to show companies how they would succeed by moving here. We recognized a need to move quickly when large companies are looking at us."
        This bill gives Louisiana that speed.
        The new, nine-member board will ensure that needed incentives are in place and that a number of "super sites" of several hundred acres each are made available to would-be employers who bring at least 500 jobs and a capital investment of at least $300 million.
        The authority will pre-approve these super-sites and make sure they have all the necessary utilities, transportation infrastructure and easements ready and in place for the desired mega-project to proceed. The board, which will include the governor, treasurer and secretary of economic development, could even buy or expropriate land with the approval of the Legislature.
        Louisiana officials know what expedited super-sites can do for competing states. They've seen it happen most recently in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, which secured huge factories from Hyundai, DaimlerChrysler and Nissan, respectively.
        Officials in Cajun country now figure it's their turn.
        "This will be a tremendous marketing tool for us," Department of Economic Development Secretary Don Hutchinson told The Times-Picayune on May 7. "It gives us a mechanism to move quickly."
        How quickly remains to be seen, but every indication is that Louisiana officials won't wait long. With new industrial projects already in the pipeline, the state may seek to flex its muscle right away by approving generous incentive packages to big-time employers.
        No official word has been given on which projects will qualify for the new aid, but the state enters the latter half of 2003 on a roll. In the past 12 months, Louisiana has experienced more than its fair share of mega-projects:
        Citgo Petroleum Corp. announced in 2002 that it would invest US$550 million in a gasoline production expansion at its Lake Charles plant in Calcasieu Parish.
        Exxon Mobil is expanding its low-sulfur gas refinery in East Baton Rouge – a $278-million project that's committed to using local suppliers. Already one of the largest and cleanest gas factories in the world, the Exxon Mobil plant "takes a proactive stance" in making the fuel industry in Louisiana even cleaner and safer, says Mike Taylor, the state's resident expert on the petrochemical and environmental technology cluster.
        Pinnacle Entertainment is investing $220 million into a new hotel and casino in Lake Charles, one of America's fastest-growing communities for the entertainment industry.
        BASF Corp. is expanding its chemical plant in Ascension Parish by $101 million as part of its "verbund" movement toward more integrated manufacturing facilities. Bill Pearson, director of real estate for BASF, tells Site Selection that the Louisiana project is part of a worldwide $5-billion capital program for the German-based conglomerate. "We have a total of 50 manufacturing locations in the NAFTA region, and we are tending to focus our assets on integrated sites," said Pearson. These include major plants in Texas, Mexico and Louisiana. The next step, he says, will be to expand this flow of capital to China.
        Dow Chemical Co. is investing $93 million into its brine mining and pipeline expansion project in Napoleonville in Assumption Parish. Taylor added that Dow is heavily investing into research and development in Plaquemine.
        Chalmette Refining LLC is spending $92 million on a low-sulfur motor-gas facility expansion in Chalmette in the New Orleans metro area.
        Other projects either announced or completed in the past year in Louisiana include a $48-million expansion by Enterprise Gas Processing LLC in Garden City; a $45-million expansion of a Folger Coffee Co. plant in New Orleans; and a $20-million expansion of a liquid detergent factory for Procter & Gamble in Pineville in the Alexandria metro area.

"I have become convinced you're going to have to have capital if you're going to have capitalism." – the late U.S. Sen. Russell Long, D-La.

The state is positioning itself to compete for even larger projects, says Knapp.
        "The biggest change we made was with the Quality Jobs Act," he says. "Companies qualify for a six-percent payroll rebate if they meet certain requirements for wage levels and health insurance. That helped us last year land a big contract with Northrop Grumman in the shipbuilding sector. It helped us win the Procter & Gamble project in Alexandria, and it helped us save a Libbey Glass plant that we otherwise would have lost."
        The bigger prizes on the horizon, noted Knapp, are the large automotive assembly plants that keep proliferating throughout the Southeastern U.S. "With this new piece of legislation, we believe that we can actually compete with other Southeastern states for large automotive plants," he said. "This new authority created by the bill is responsible for understanding the costs the state must absorb in order to win those mega-projects. This prepares our lawmakers to make those decisions."
        Does this mean that smaller manufacturers and other traditional industries – such as those in the logistics and transportation business – need not apply? Far from it. The state is actually reaching out even more to help those companies.
        A case in point is Stuller Inc., the world's largest privately owned manufacturer and wholesaler of jewelry. Headquartered in Lafayette, the 30-year-old company carved out its niche in the ultra-competitive jewelry manufacturing and supply business by delivering on an ambitious promise: next-day delivery of virtually every order.
        Can a company in Lafayette, La., do that? Yes, says Chuck Lein, president and chief operating officer of Stuller. "We have built our business over three decades by being a just-in-time supplier to jewelry professionals throughout North America," Lein says. "We have close to 60,000 accounts to which we sell more than 300,000 products, and our suppliers are located all over the world."
        The company has grown so fast that on April 20, 2002, it officially opened a 403,000-sq.-ft. (37,439-sq.-m.) manufacturing and administrative facilities expansion. Including this project, Stuller will spend nearly $42 million by 2010 on land, new construction, expansion and remodeling.
        Matthew G. Stuller, chairman and CEO of Stuller, says that the deal was consummated after 12 months of "extensive conversations and negotiations with state and local governmental agencies and officials."
        Stuller projects its local employment to swell from 1,600 to almost 1,750 and expects total annual payroll to reach $58 million by 2007.
        Stuller operates overseas buying offices in Bangkok, Thailand and Ramat Gan, Israel in order to be near the best sources when purchasing its diamond and gemstone requirements. In Lafayette, the company produces a variety of gold and platinum products including jewelry components as well as finished jewelry for quality-oriented customers around the globe.
        The payback for Stuller comes from two sources: a highly experienced work force in Lafayette and an order delivery system that's second to none. "Our entire process of picking, packing and getting the product out the door is highly automated," says Lein. "We ship jewelry products by the planeload every day. It is not unusual for us to fill five small FedEx planes in a day. At Christmastime, we will ship 12,000 to 15,000 orders every day."
        Lein's company can do that because it's located in the heart of one of the most advanced logistics networks in the world.

In the logistics business, it's called the ability "to get from cash to cash" as quickly as possible or, as the late Sen. Russell Long said, the ability to get access to capital so that you can have capitalism.
        Whatever you call it, Louisiana has it in spades in the transportation sector. Consider its resources: the largest collection of river ports found anywhere on earth; rail hubs for every major North American railway; an Interstate system that connects with every major port and rail hub in Louisiana; and a network of high-quality airports in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lake Charles, Lafayette and many other cities and towns.
        "Logistics and transportation are the historic foundation of our state's economy," says David Kane, Louisiana's chief cluster expert on logistics and transportation industries. "It's why Louisiana exists. It's an efficient outlet to the world."
        It is also positioned for some tremendous growth. With 240,000 people already employed in logistics, transportation and supply-chain management throughout the state, Louisiana is embarking on an ambitious program of infrastructure improvement.
        Plans call for a major intermodal port (the Louisiana Intermodal Transportation Center) that will tie all six Class 1 railroads in New Orleans into a sea terminal. New port projects include the Napoleon Container Terminal at the Port of New Orleans; development of a new port complex further south on the Mississippi River capable of accommodating Post-Panamex vessels; and the innovative Seapoint project.
        Kane notes that 12.5 percent of Louisiana's work force is involved in logistics, transportation or distribution activities. The state's work force is rated the fourth most productive in the nation according to GSP per dollar of wage earned (Bureau of Census 2002 figures).
        One metro area that benefits from this sector substantially is the Greater Shreveport-Bossier City market. General Motors, General Electric, BASF and Libbey Glass are all expanding their operations in this market.
        David Berzina, senior vice president of economic development for the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, said the recent $900 million GM expansion project has attracted an additional 1,300 jobs from new suppliers coming into the market. These suppliers are taking up 1.3 million sq. ft. (120,770 sq. m.) of shop space and adding more than $80 million in new capital investment to Shreveport.
        "GM was also recruited heavily by Texas and Arkansas," said Berzina. "But in the end GM chose Louisiana because we have the labor force. Only 20 percent of our graduates go on to college, so we have a large pool of workers who choose to go into the manufacturing trades. We also have the largest worker training program per capita in the country."

See the SITES Vision 2020 document www.vision2020.louisiana.gov Louisiana Department of Economic Development www.lded.state.la.us Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce www.shreveportchamber.org Entergy Louisiana www.entergy-louisiana.com

        Shreveport is also flying high thanks to a recent commitment from Continental Airlines to take over a building left vacant by Boeing. Continental moved 250 workers into the facility with the 100-foot ceiling and will eventually employ 600 people on site.
        "We know that our trade with Latin America is expected to increase at an average annual rate of 8.8 percent through the year 2020," adds Kane. "That means we must continue to invest in our transportation infrastructure and utilize more of our river capacity."
        The state spells out a lot of these goals in great detail in its strategic document called Vision 2020. The purpose of Vision 2020, said Knapp, is to "create policies that will be implemented in annual action plans." Among other things, the document lays out lofty goals for raising venture capital and improving public education.
        The first order of business this year was to pass the high-stakes Louisiana Major Projects Development Authority Act.
        Step No. 2 will be to act upon it, and cash in those chips.