Phoenix Associates Land Syndicate (fka PBLSQ)

[Time To Roll]

"True recovery begins in ’07 with tangible progress"

01/01/2007
The New Orleans metropolitan community continues to recover 16 months post-Katrina at a pace slowed by a leadership vacuum and a failure to recognize the effects of the new demographics.

Since 2002, city business has worked to identify potential business trends extending into the New Year in its initial editorial each year. Here are some of our expectations for 2007.

Challenge: Mayor C. Ray Nagin has repeatedly called on the Louisiana Recovery Authority to release federal funding to speed infrastructure projects necessary to the recovery. The LRA, however, claims it is required by Congress to release those funds only after the work is done.

Prediction: The LRA will finally realize it is slowing the recovery by withholding money rightfully designed to speed it. ICF International, the Fairfax, Va.-based contractor charged with doling out the $7.5-billion Road Home relief fund, will begin to pay as many as 500 people per day at minimum by the end of January at the risk of losing a contract valued at three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Challenge: The Baton Rouge business community is reaching out to the robust North Shore business community in an effort to create a new commercial corridor. The New Orleans economic development community seems unable to form any truly regional partnerships.

Prediction: The North Shore and Jefferson Parish have too many ties to New Orleans to let it languish. While rightly welcoming the Baton Rouge overtures, the North Shore economic developers will foster growth south of Interstate 10, too.

Challenge: Too few homes to house workers of lower- and middle-class means creates pressure to downsize the already devastated service sector.

Prediction: Despite inflationary pressures, New Orleans will benefit from the national housing slowdown and draw needed labor and materials to rebuild. Once the fuse is lit in some now-questionable neighborhoods, residential home building will gain momentum.

Challenge: Leadership issues have dogged this recovery ever since the levees broke. Politicians have used race relations and partisan politics to further their goals at the expense of the recovery.

Prediction: A galvanized citizenry will grow less tolerant of elected officials who foster disunity and fail to display a workable vision for the new New Orleans. A new generation of leadership is being forged at the community level by organizers of the Unified New Orleans Plan and other neighborhood-focused organizations. These grassroots organizations will seed the true recovery.

Challenge: Gubernatorial leadership has been harshly criticized and divisively politicized.

Prediction: The next governor will have to show a proven ability to move monolithic government roadblocks to progress. It won’t be a candidate with an anti-business, anti-Big Oil tax that will drive even more energy work to neighboring states with less punitive tax structures.

Challenge: Keeping talent here.

Prediction: Visible progress, such as is being made in the re-creation of the New Orleans Public School system, are required to rebuild the faith of New Orleanians in their hometown and to attract investors. If Mayor Nagin is able to improve the city bond rating to invest level, it would be an enormous boost.

Challenge: Having a Happy New Year.

Prediction: We will have a far better year in 2007 than in 2005, 2006 or than most expect. The recovery is upon us.• "


http://www.neworleanscitybusiness.com/viewStory.cfm?recID=17773