Here are New Orleans mayoral candidates' plans to address economic development

For the last three decades, Noah Lewis has run his property and casualty firm from offices in New Orleans East.

The insurance business, he said, is like a canary in the coal mine for the broader local economy: When you're writing policies for car repair shops, beauty salons, and a host of other small enterprises, you get a street-level sense of how the numbers are stacking up, and his sense is things are on the wrong track.

Over the years, Lewis has watched his part of the city steadily deteriorate. The population has been roughly halved since the mid-1990s, to around 75,000. The median household income level is less than half that in Orleans Parish, which itself is about 30% below the national average, and trails. And home values there have trailed the city average.

"We are kind of that forgotten place on the other side of the High Rise," Lewis said.

Though the challenges in the East have been more striking, they mirror New Orleans' broader struggles to revitalize its economy, and Lewis is one of many residents who want the next mayor to do more to support local businesses and attract new ones: to create jobs, build wealth and spur investment.

There's broad consensus among the three leading mayoral hopefuls that New Orleans needs swift action and that the East and other struggling areas will be a litmus test of whether economic progress reaches those who need it most.

State Sen. Royce Duplessis, District E City Council member Oliver Thomas, and City Council Vice President Helena Moreno also agreed in recent interviews that the next mayor can help the city achieve broader economic wins by ensuring that basic city services — storm drainage, street lights and street repairs — are functioning. A fourth candidate, Arthur Hunter, on Thursday bowed out of the contest to endorse Duplessis.

All will face off on an Oct. 14 ballot for the city's top political office.

The basics

Economic development in any major city is a delicate partnership between the public and private sector. Behind the broad ambition to create jobs and foster long-term prosperity lies a complex, often politically charged ecosystem of strategy, negotiation and collaboration.

But if lights don't work and streets aren't safe, a city can kiss any real economic prospects goodbye, Michael Hecht, the longtime head of Greater New Orleans Inc., the economic development agency for the 10-parish metro area, has told each candidate. (Hecht contemplated a run for mayor himself but stayed out of the race for family reasons, he said.)

Duplessis, Moreno and Thomas said they each agree with Hecht's "topline" priorities: crime and public safety; the city's chronic infrastructure problems; and removing roadblocks for local businesses, especially City Hall's bureaucracy.

"I've been listening to business people and asking them, 'What can City Hall do?'" Thomas said. "They said, 'Stop getting in the way.' Whether it's zoning or permitting, whatever, that's what we've been doing — getting in the way."

Moreno said she's heard the same from business owners.

"If you're a restaurant and dealing with constant power outages and other infrastructure issues, it's a tough, tough environment here," she said. "If I go into office, my main laser focus is to really get the basic services right."

Fixing the basics extends to wholesale reform of City Hall's Safety and Permits department, a chokepoint that for years has stymied everything from big construction projects to taxi drivers seeking a license, the three candidates said.

A new model

Hecht and Cantrell's economic development czar, Jeff Schwartz, and other critics also agree that City Hall's approach to economic development has been dysfunctional.

While New Orleans' latest budget set aside $500 million for police, jails and the criminal courts — about 28% of a total $1.8 billion — the city's Office of Economic Development, run by Schwartz, gets just $1.4 million, or less than a percentage point of that.

Other than Schwartz, the office has a deputy director, a secretary and four specialists to handle issues like tax incentives.

"We've tried to be strategic with limited resources, but the idea that we should be spending a lot more on economic development should not be controversial," Schwartz said in an interview.

While Jefferson has the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission, an independent entity that focuses on business recruitment and retention, no similar organization has existed in New Orleans since the New Orleans Business Alliance, a brainchild of former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, closed its doors last year due to lack of money and support.

Cities that have had the most success have set up well-funded, semi-independent bodies with clear missions. Take the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is widely cited as the "gold standard" of such agencies in the U.S. It has attracted billions of dollars of investment for high-profile projects like Manhattan's High Line and Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island.

Other similar partnerships in North Carolina and Nashville have boosted jobs in those areas. But those plans required long-term vision over multiple administrations, said Rob Lalka, a professor at Tulane University's Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

If a similar entity returns to New Orleans, the mayor must kickstart it, the city must partner with the private sector and they all need to focus on key industries, such as health care, aerospace, energy and technology, Hecht said in his briefing to the candidates. Any plans have to prioritize the $650 million redevelopment of Charity Hospital, a linchpin in the proposal for BioDistrict New Orleans, a years-in-the-making hub for university research and entrepreneurship along a swath of downtown New Orleans neighborhoods.

The City Council, including Moreno and Thomas, in July overturned Mayor LaToya Cantrell's veto of a $20 million city payment to Tulane that would help fund Charity's redo.

Duplessis also backs the BioDistrict and said the city's universities are an underutilized resource. "The amount of intellectual capacity that we have in the city of New Orleans, we should not have the number of young people who graduate from these universities and then don't see New Orleans as a place where they can remain," he said.

Thomas and Duplessis said they plan to lean heavily on the private sector for direction.

Thomas said it is all about "getting people in a room," and pointed to progress on developments in New Orleans East since he was elected to represent it and the 9th Ward in 2021. Long-stalled projects, such as the demolition of the old Six Flags site and the revitalization of Lincoln Beach, have moved forward, he said.

Duplessis said he wants to beef up the Office of Economic Development but also rely on an external advisory council of business leaders and academics.

The group would allow him as mayor to be "surrounded by the people who understand business and who know what it takes to get businesses to invest in the city," he said.

Moreno has floated expanding the New Orleans Building Corporation, one of the city's public benefit corporations that manages Union Passenger Terminal and the Saenger Theatre among other sites, and could add undeveloped land in New Orleans East and elsewhere.

Last year, the City Council approved a high-profile land exchange brokered by the corporation that consolidated stewardship of Duncan Plaza back to the city, paving the way to replace the aging City Hall on Perdido Street with a new headquarters on the property that backs onto Poydras Street.

The corporation would be a "not-quite-in-government entity that is working and negotiating on different deals, which is very similar to what the New Orleans Building Corporation already does," Moreno said.

Some progress

To be sure, New Orleans has had some development wins in recent years. They include the $530 million transformation of the old World Trade Center into the Four Seasons, and the first work, after decades of talk, on the $1 billion new River District neighborhood.

In New Orleans East, the Six Flags and Lincoln Beach redevelopments are moving ahead, as is the Port of New Orleans' planned $1.8 billion Louisiana International Terminal — which all three major mayoral candidates back.

The transportation corridor being built to funnel 1,000 or more trucks a day from the container port at Violet, in St. Bernard Parish, to the interstate system in the East could spur a wave of investment in light manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, boosters say.

The city already has commissioned a Philadelphia-based consultancy, U3, to lay the groundwork for creating an innovation district in part of the East, which has the working title of the Higgins Innovation District, after Higgins Industries, which designed boats in New Orleans used in World War II operations.

Lewis, a board member of the Greater New Orleans East Business Alliance, said the group and the 12,000-member Franklin Avenue Baptist Church are brainstorming development opportunities with the new terminal in mind.

The church sits on 23 acres of land that it plans to develop for mixed residential and commercial use, he said.

"I honestly think we are, we are at an inflection point to really change things, turn things around," Lewis said.

Editor's note: the story has been updated to clarify the assets managed by the New Orleans Building Corporation.