Region Plays a Winning Economic Hand
Published May 18, 2009
Jim Dean describes himself as a walking billboard for the virtues of Northwest Louisiana.
An East Texas native, he spent 21 years with the Bell system, its spin-offs and affiliates, including serving as manager of the Shreveport Avaya plant that he had to shutter. He passed on the option to relocate to Denver with Avaya.
From quality of life to a cooperative business climate, Northwest Louisiana has what Dean wants.
“It is a big enough place to have everything, but a small enough place that if you need to pick up the phone you can,” says Dean, manager of the CellXion plant in Shreveport, a division of Sabre Industries that builds shelters for telecommunications equipment.
“There is a pro-business environment here. We take a regional approach. Rather than fussing with the neighborhood across the street, we work together,” he says.
The 10-parish region is diverse, with major industry sectors in life sciences and health care, manufacturing, film production, education, and gaming and hospitality. Interstates, rail and the Red River provide transport options to 32 million people within a 5-hour drive.
A 2008 KPMG study found Shreveport to be No. 1 in cost effectiveness among 14 comparably sized metro areas and the least-expensive location among 56 U.S. cities of all sizes in the study.
A major force in the economy is Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, home to some 16,000 active-duty personnel and civilian workers.
The base generates a direct annual payroll of $400 million. The 22,000-acre base was named in April 2009 as headquarters for the new Air Force Global Strike Command.
The base’s work in cyber security helped spawn the Cyber Innovation Center in Bossier City, a $107 million development designed as a super-secure and storm-proof home for the country’s military and intelligence communities, the contractors who serve them and international allies.
Frymaster Corp. has called the region home for nearly 75 years, making Frymaster and Dean commercial cookers for shipment across the United States and beyond. The math has favored staying put, says Todd Phillips, the company’s chief financial officer.
He cites state grants for worker training and reasonable energy costs – the region’s rates are about 30 percent below the state average – as factors that help the company stay competitive.
“Louisiana has been the easiest state to work with that I have ever experienced,” he says.
Michael Douglas is vice president of Haynes International in Arcadia, which produces titanium tubing and other high-performance components for Boeing aircraft and NASA’s space shuttle program.
When Douglas arrived in May 2005, local officials immediately helped him hook up with state officials to tap existing programs, and later federal programs, that help businesses that target renewal communities such as Arcadia.
Since then, Haynes has spent $7 million to expand its plant and more than doubled sales volume. The company has a workforce of about 150 people, and Douglas says the quality of his employees is unmatched.
“This is the best workforce I have ever had the honor of working with,” he says.
Like Dean, Douglas has worked across the country.
“What happened with Haynes is not a fluke,” he says. “I am not that lucky. It seems like these people care at a different level than I’ve been used to.”
Story by Pamela Coyle
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