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Old Universal Furniture store morphs into the Healing Center

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on April 11, 2011

The Times-Picayune, April 11, 2011

What a long, strange trip it’s been for the former home of the Universal Furniture store in Faubourg Marigny.

The run-down building, which flooded after the levee failures in 2005, had a brief but head-scratching post-Hurricane Katrina life as a temporary home for both the New Orleans Police Department’s 5th District station and the avant-garde Prospect.1 art exhibit.

Now, the one-time retail space is morphing into the New Orleans Healing Center, an eclectic, new-age development.

Spearheaded by Voodoo priestess, artist and writer Sallie Ann Glassman and her high-profile longtime companion, developer Pres Kabacoff, the site is about to become a community center where neighborhood residents can buy food from a cooperative grocery, get a micro-loan, find worship space or take a yoga class.

The $13.2 million project grew out of a series of meetings organized by Glassman and her friends after the storm. The group identified a need for a center where wellness services and amenities would be offered to those struggling to rebuild both physically and spiritually.

“We didn’t want it to be a spa or a resort in the country,”  Glassman said. “We wanted it to be integrated into the community.”

‘It just felt right’

The group chose a complex of two-story buildings that formerly housed Universal Furniture. The complex included an 1840s cornerstore and residence, a large 1926 commercial structure and a smaller commercial building, all united behind a 1960s-era metal screen that obscured the buildings’ architectural features. Situated at the corner of St. Claude and St. Roch avenues, the complex sits across from the iconic St. Roch market building.

“When we first visited the Universal building, it was dark and labyrinthine,” Glassman said. “Three buildings had been joined together and divided up. But when we went up onto the roof, all of a sudden there was this beautiful view of the city and the skyline. It just felt right.”

Kabacoff undertook the rehabilitation of the 55,000-square-foot complex independently of HRI Properties, where he is chief executive officer.

Renovation work began last May, financed by a blend of state and federal New Markets Tax Credits and historic tax credits, as well as allocations from city and state redevelopment agencies.

The exterior, where metal screens once hung, is painted in a Caribbean-inspired color palette, with bright purples, oranges and teals. Infrastructure work, including new Sheetrock, has been installed and primed, and tenants are in the process of customizing their stores.

Free barbecue, open house

To celebrate this milestone and further acquaint the public with the project, the Healing Center plans a free community barbecue and open house on Sunday, April 17, from 2 to 6 p.m.

“The Building Block should be open by then,” said Glassman, referring to a consortium of green and sustainable businesses. “Others will still be in the process of their build-outs when we have the barbecue, but will be fully open by May 1. A few others will take a little longer. So May is our soft opening and we’ll have a grand opening in July.”

In addition to Glassman’s business, Island of Salvation Botanica, which specializes in Voodoo religious supplies, medicinal herbs and Haitian artwork, the complex will house up to 20 more enterprises.

They include Fatoush Restaurant and Juice Bar; ASI Federal Credit Union; Crossroads Arts Bazaar, a place where local artists can sell their work; Wild Lotus Yoga Studio; Café Istanbul Performance Hall, a combination meeting space and performance venue; and the New Orleans Food Co-op, a 4,000-square-foot full-service grocery store. Currently, about 85 percent of the center is leased.

A long-needed grocery

Lori Burge, general manager the food co-op, said the grocery is one of the businesses that requires a longer build-out period than others because of the need to install refrigeration equipment and shelving. The store will sell fresh food to the Marigny and St. Roch neighborhoods, areas that have been without a grocery since the Robert’s market on St. Claude Avenue closed. To secure the final piece of its financing, the co-op is trying to recruit an additional 200 member-owners.

Crossroads Arts Bazaar director Lorien Bales said her gallery is timing its opening to coincide with that of the co-op.

“Foot traffic will be key,” Bales said.

Glassman believes that the Healing Center will bridge the Marigny and St. Roch neighborhoods, catalyze revitalization of the St. Claude Main Street corridor and help encourage other projects, like the resurrection of the St. Roch Market and the installation of a streetcar line.

“It’s interesting to me that the physical work on the buildings turned out to be a healing process in a way,” she said. “We took these totally neglected and sad buildings and restored the facades and opened them up and healed what had been done to them. Now everyone who visits … just feels uplifted by the open spaces and all the light.”

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St. Thomas Community Health Center

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on March 30, 2011

1936-38 Magazine Street; New Orleans, LA

Having earned plaudits for its work on behalf of Daughters of Charity to fund two new health clinics, Crescent Growth Capital was approached to assist St. Thomas Community Health Center realize its dream of a new facility.

Founded by two Sisters of Charity and the resident council of the former St. Thomas Housing Project, St. Thomas Community Health Center was established in 1987 to minister to the highly disadvantaged and impoverished residents of the Irish Channel. St. Thomas’ commitment to providing “culturally competent” care to a largely minority population grew to encompass adult primary care and pediatrics, as well as specialites in cardiology, EEN&T, breast and cervical cancer and mental health.

With its staff scattered across the country, St. Thomas was shuttered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The clinic was ultimately reestablished – thanks in large measure to volunteer support and the generosity of numerous charitable foundations. Soon thereafter it was apparent that the post-Katrina environment actually provided real opportunity for community health clinics like St. Thomas. Metropolitan New Orleans’ former healthcare delivery model for the poor, which had centered on providing care to the uninsured at Charity Hospital, was scrapped in favor of promoting a network of primary care clinics located in the patients’ neighborhoods. The inclusion in healthcare reform of a universal coverage component added impetus to this policy shift, as the eventual emergence of a fully-insured population promises to generate significant additional demand for care.

Crescent Growth Capital was able to help St. Thomas capitalize on this opportunity by structuring and closing a $7.5 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment to fund the acquisition and adaptive re-use of a long-blighted mid-19th century commercial row. The transaction was extremely complicated. To generate the additional subsidy needed to realize St. Thomas’ new facility, anticipated historic tax credit proceeds and Louisiana State Office of Community Development CDBG dollars were bridged, grants from two charitable foundations were combined with another CDBG allocation from the City of New Orleans, and a loan was secured from the Louisiana Primary Care Association. These disparate funding sources were aggregated, then leveraged through a New Markets Tax Credit structure.

CGC also authored the historic preservation certification applications necessary to generate both state and federal historic tax credit equity for the benefit of the project.

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Louisiana CDEs predominate in latest NMTC allocation round

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on February 25, 2011

The Times-Picayune, February 25, 2011

Eight Louisiana community development entities — seven headquartered in New Orleans — won nearly 10 percent of all the New Markets Tax Credits allocations announced Thursday by the Treasury Department.

The awards are intended to stimulate economic and community development and job creation in low-income communities by permitting the selected financial institutions to make loans and investment they might not otherwise be able to make.

The $310 million awarded to the eight Louisiana institutions just about equals the $316 million allocated to nine CDEs in New York City, the other biggest beneficiary.

“The New Markets Tax Credit continues to be a tool for job-creation and economic revitalization in areas that struggle to attract investment because of poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity,” said Donna Gambrell, director of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, noting that the 2nd Congressional District’s total of $257 million was more than that being directed to any other district in the nation.

“These organizations have and will continue to demonstrate why this tool has been so effective in making literally thousands of projects possible across Louisiana and the country and give Americans a chance to make a living, to start a business and to build a better future in areas that need it most,” Gambrell said.

The allocations for the seven recipients headquartered in New Orleans are $56 million for Advantage Capital Community Development Fund; $53 million for Whitney New Markets Fund; $42 million for AMCREF Community Capital; $35 million for Liberty Financial Services; $28 million for National Cities Fund; $28 million for First NBC Community Development Fund; and $15 million for Enhanced Community Development. The eighth recipient, of $53 million, is Stonehenge Community Development, based in Baton Rouge.

“The fact that our community has the highest amount of awards in the entire nation illustrates that we’re getting it right,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans. “The 2nd Congressional District of Louisiana has the right formula for venture capitalist investment in low-income communities. We’re making great investments to rebuild our city and get our neighbors back on the jobs, and it’s working.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said the “tax credits will have a significant impact in several Louisiana neighborhoods in desperate need of investment.”

The Louisiana community development entities — a legal term describing an institution whose prime mission, and accountability, is to low-income communities — have been helped in their efforts in past years by a companion state version of the credit, the enactment of which was a top achievement of Richmond’s service in the state Legislature.

That state allocation has now been exhausted.

The New Orleans entities, most of which received awards in past rounds, also benefited in the past from the expansion of the program under the Hurricane Katrina Gulf Opportunity Zone Act, which targeted recovery efforts after the storm.

Advantage Capital, which seeks to bring venture capital where it seldom goes, has won awards in seven of the eight rounds. While the use of the tax credits by Advantage, like the others, is not limited to Louisiana, managing director Michael Johnson said that “in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 percent of our allocations have been in Louisiana, focused primarily on south Louisiana.”

Alden McDonald, Liberty’s president and CEO, said that it had received $130 million in previous allocations, which had been used almost exclusively in the New Orleans metro area post-Katrina to help rebuild Holy Cross High School as well as bring back a hotel, a funeral home, an animal hospital and other small businesses. He said the new allocation may also go to spur projects in Kansas City, Mo.; Jackson, Miss.; Baton Rouge; and Detroit, as well as New Orleans, where he said one likely project is the renovation of the Saenger Theater on Canal Street.

AMCREF Community Capital, which has been receiving the credits since 2006, will focus its new allocation on renewable energy and green manufacturing, according to its president, Cliff Kenwood.

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St. Margaret’s pushes for 2012 opening of nursing home within former Mercy Hospital

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on February 9, 2011

The Times-Picayune, February 8, 2011

In the next 60 days, contractors for St. Margaret’s Daughters, a Catholic church-affiliated nonprofit health-care provider, are scheduled to begin limited demolition work as part of the redevelopment of the old Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Mid-City.

The first phase of the redevelopment is a nursing facility projected to open in the summer of 2012, several months later than the target announced in April 2010 when St. Margaret’s bought the property on the corner of Bienville Street and North Jefferson Davis Parkway.

Jason Hemel, St. Margaret’s vice president for development, confirmed that his organization is in talks with a hospital operator about the yet-undetailed second phase: a small hospital. Addressing the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization this week, Hemel did not disclose the potential operator or the specifics of what kind of hospital or surgical center St. Margaret’s has in mind. He referred mostly to a “specialty hospital” and mentioned “30 to 50 beds,” but he did not explicitly rule out the possibility of a full-service hospital.

It is questionable how a full-service hospital in Mid-City would fit into a hospital market where existing hospitals like Tulane Medical Center and Touro Infirmary, to say nothing of the hundreds of additional beds that would come online with the completion of the planned University Medical Center and an eastern New Orleans hospital on the old Methodist Hospital campus.

Specialty hospitals that target customers for specific, often out-patient procedures – orthopedics, heart catheterizations – are increasingly commonplace in the U.S. health care system.

“In about six to eight months, we should have some more things to announce,” Hemel said.

St. Margaret’s executives have said that the end product would include physician offices, clinic spaces, rehabilitation services and a small surgical hospital, a complex modeled after the organization’s St. Luke’s Medical Center and St. Luke’s Living Center that opened last year in Algiers.

Hemel said St. Margaret’s also is considering a wellness center and is in discussions with a day-care provider for a facility that could serve employees and surrounding community members. “We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like,” he said.

The demolition work will take about 45 to 60 days as architects finish the final plans for the new nursing home facilities will occupy about 100,000 square feet of what had been medical office buildings at Lindy Boggs. The entire complex is about 300,000 square feet.

Though plans are not final, Hemel said the concept envisions apartment-style rooms clustered in “neighborhoods,” rather than traditional long hallways with single and double rooms on each side. Plans call for 12 neighborhoods each with nine rooms. Each room will have its own kitchen, laundry and dining area.

“We’re trying to make it much more like being in your own home,” Hemel said, adding that St. Margaret’s executives have traveled extensively to see the same model in other cities.

The Lindy Boggs Medical Center, run by for-profit Tenet Healthcare Corp., suffered extensive flood damage from Hurricane Katrina and its levee breaches. The hospital never reopened after the flood.

Tenet sold the property to Victory Real Estate Investments, a Georgia firm that amassed several Mid-City properties with the intention of developing a Bienville retail corridor. That idea never materialized. Public records show that St. Margaret’s acquired the Lindy Boggs complex for $4.2 million.

St. Margaret’s Daughters, constituted in 1889, has been providing institutional health care since it opened a facility in the Holy Cross neighborhood in 1931. The agency’s Lower 9th Ward nursing home flooded during Katrina and has since reopened at 3419 St. Claude Avenue.

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University of the Incarnate Word School of Optometry

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on December 7, 2010

9725 Datapoint Drive; San Antonio, TX

Operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, whose central Texas ministry dates to 1869, the University of the Incarnate Word currently offers 75 programs to over 6,500 students in the San Antonio area. UIW is the largest Catholic university in Texas and its fourth-largest private institution of higher learning. Consistent with their order’s mission, the sisters have long encouraged achievement on the part of ethnic minorities; at present, the UIW student body is 75% minority. Ethnic minorities have lower rates of participation in healthcare and poorer health outcomes than White Americans, in part because most caregivers are themselves white. Minority patients often find this intimidating, especially when a language barrier is present. UIW is determined to encourage diversity in the ranks of healthcare providers. Through the School of Nursing and Health Professions, the Feik School of Pharmacy, a new physical therapy program, and the School of Optometry, the University of the Incarnate Word is committed to “changing the face” of healthcare delivery in Texas.

Funded by a $31 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment structured by Crescent Growth Capital, the UIW School of Optometry will be only the second of its kind in Texas and is the first new school of optometry to open in the United States since 1989. When completed, the 60,000 square foot school will include lecture halls, laboratories, a library, and administrative offices, among other facilities. By 2012 the School of Optometry is expected to have over 260 students enrolled. Importantly, to address the shortage of bilingual optometrists and attack the communication barrier between doctors and underserved populations, this program will be the first in the nation to offer a Spanish Language Certification.

The NMTC transaction will also fund a vision and eye care clinic, to assist the large numbers of uninsured and poor residents of San Antonio and Bexar County.  It is expected that over 50% of the clinic’s patients will be Medicare or Medicaid enrollees. Students of the school will work as interns at the clinic, under the tutelage of the optometry faculty.

Construction is now underway.

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Lakeview Grocery opening caps Harrison Avenue’s post-Katrina renaissance

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on November 22, 2010

The Times-Picayune, November 22, 2010

The recently opened Lakeview Grocery on Harrison Ave. has cemented that street as Lakeview’s commercial center, marking a huge milestone in the neighborhood’s post-Hurricane Katrina development. 

A venture of Robért Resources LLC, the entity that also operates Robért Fresh Markets, the store opened in October and occupies the former site of Lakeview Fine Foods, which had been vacant for five years.

Father Mike O’Rourke sat at a window table at NOLA Beans on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview, having just celebrated Mass across the street at St. Dominic. He sipped coffee and enjoyed muffins even as parishioners were departing the 8 a.m. service and others were arriving for the next.

O’Rourke said there is no doubt in his mind that Harrison Avenue is back as the neighborhood commercial center.

“We have almost everything we need here now,” he said. “But having the grocery store open, that’s big.”

According to Lakeview Civic Improvement Association President Glenn Stoudt, the new grocery store is an essential building block for neighborhood recovery.

“Having a grocery store open again on Harrison Avenue is of course practical and convenient,” Stoudt said.  “But it’s also an emotional touchstone, part of a community that defines and clarifies it, where you see your neighbors and friends and it’s all OK, once again.”

It wasn’t clear after Hurricane Katrina that things would ever be OK again.  But the Harrison Avenue commercial stretch between Canal Boulevard and Orleans Avenue has been steadily rising from the devastation of Katrina-related flooding, anchored by St. Dominic Catholic church and St. Paul’s Episcopal at the corner of Canal.  Since then, a string of commercial enterprises reopened, led by banks and followed by restaurants including Reginelli’s, Lakeview Deli, the Steak Knife, Lakeview Harbor and Mondo, Susan Spicer’s new restaurant that opened a few months ago.

Taking the place of Magic Laundry and Cleaners is NOLA Beans, a locally owned and operated cafe and restaurant that complements the Seattle-based Starbucks franchise a block away.  Lakeview Veterinary Hospital occupies a facility just off Harrison on Memphis, Little Miss Muffin offers retail opportunities and Rite Aid provides a pharmacy and serves additional shopping needs.  Need a neighborhood cleaners?  There’s Young’s.

With a new public library under construction at Harrison and Canal and the Edward Hynes Charter School under construction at Harrison and Argonne, the only missing puzzle piece was a neighborhood grocery.  Now, according to Municipal Court Judge Paul Sens, Lakeview Grocery fills that niche.

“Harrison Avenue really is the heart of Lakeview, and my wife and I prefer to spend our money here in Orleans Parish, so this is where we shop,” Sens said as he loaded grocery bags into his vehicle.

His wife, Ann, said she no longer needs to drive to Robert E. Lee for groceries and that “LG,” as the store refers to itself, offers amenities she can’t find elsewhere.

“The fresh produce is a big draw, but there are a lot of prepared foods that make it easy on people if they don’t want to cook,” she said.  “And I think they’re trying hard with that little cafe to make the store a neighborhood meeting place, where people can relax and visit with each other.”

The “cafe” is Harrison Cove, a small restaurant with outdoor tables at the Memphis Street end of the store.  It has a separate entry from the main store, in case a shopper just wants a sandwich and drinks instead of rotisserie chickens, bakery goods, wines and food staples.

O’Rourke said the neighborhood has waited a long time for the grocery store, but that growth continued nonetheless even as plans developed.

“Our parish has grown 40 percent in the past two years, if you can believe that,” he said.  “Some people live outside of the neighborhood since Katrina and come back here to go to church, but mainly the people we see are the ones who returned to the neighborhood to live or are new to the neighborhood.  Now we have everything we need right here on Harrison.  The only thing missing is a gas station.”

According to Stoudt, O’Rourke won’t have to wait for long, for a gas station is on the way.

“We never doubted, from even that grim period in the fall of 2005, that we would have what we have today, thanks to all who have who have believed and invested,” Stoudt said.

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Four Oaks Business Park

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on October 27, 2010

1219 Hockaday Road; Four Oaks, NC

Four Oaks, a tiny hamlet (2007 Population Estimate: 1,818) within Johnston County, NC, sits on the boundary between that state’s disadvantaged coastal plain and more prosperous Piedmont midsection.  Located within the long-challenged I-95 corridor, Four Oaks has struggled for years with a declining agricultural sector and minimal economic opportunity.  Most recently, a collapse in residential and commercial construction activity in the adjacent Raleigh-Durham/Chapel Hill region eliminated the jobs to which many Four Oaks residents had commuted, dramatically worsening the town’s already high rates of unemployment and underemployment.

Realizing the need to sponsor something catalytic to reverse Four Oaks’ fortunes, the town’s government decided to establish the 365-acre Four Oaks Business Park, securing $2.4 million in public funding to install basic infrastructure and hiring the respected Keith Corporation of Charlotte, NC as master developer for the park.  Keith secured a preliminary commitment from leading medical technologist BD, a Fortune 500 firm based in Franklin Lakes, NJ, to construct a state-of-the-art, LEED Gold-certified 720,000 square-foot medical supply distribution center as a high-profile anchor tenant.

Crescent Growth Capital enabled the financing for this crucial economic development project by structuring and closing a $15 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment.  The BD distribution facility, now under construction, will be only the third of its kind in the nation, bringing 200 new jobs to the region and likely spurring, it is estimated, the creation of another 3,000 jobs to be employed by additional tenants attracted to a business park anchored by so reputable a tenant.

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Ursuline Early Childhood Learning Center debuts with cutting-edge curriculum, facility

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on October 5, 2010

The Times-Picayune, October 4, 2010

In an effort to modernize the way it teaches its very youngest students, Ursuline Academy has recently revamped its early childhood program, investing $3 million in a new classroom building and adopting a student-inspired curriculum, a significant change for a Catholic school steeped in almost three centuries of tradition.

The new center, named after former elementary school principal Sister Teresita Rivet, is housed in what was once a laundry used by Ursuline nuns who lived on the State Street campus.

The 4,500-square-foot building has largely retained its historic facade, but inside, it has been renovated into a large studio space with a trendy warehouse feel, equipped with learning centers, smart boards and lots of colorful toys that help children learn motor skills.

School staff began working to restore the flood-damaged building about three years ago. Before then, the two-story building, built in 1911 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, had mainly been used for storage.

With the facility now nearly complete, 66 students — ages 2 to 5 — cycle between learning centers for art, music, reading and math, and more traditional classroom setups for religion and library time. Nine teachers work in the center. Tuition and fees are about $8,000 a year.

In every part of the center, technology plays an important role. Touch-sensitive tables — which work like huge iPads — teach the girls the alphabet and let them “paint.” Smart boards replace black boards.

The facility was designed by Concordia Architects, a local firm that has designed school facilities across the country and provided the master plan for the Louisiana Children’s Museum.

In addition to providing a first-rate facility, teachers fanned out across the country looking for the right educational model to adopt.

They decided on the Reggio Emilia approach, an Italian style of teaching developed in the 1940s that focuses on a student-inspired curriculum rather than a teacher-driven agenda.

“Previously, teachers taught as if children were little vessels to be filled up with knowledge,” said Kim Harper, Ursuline’s elementary school principal. “Now, teachers view children as capable of constructing their own learning, and lessons are developed from the children’s need to know and their own natural curiosity.”

The Reggio approach has a handful of basic hallmarks that set it apart from more traditional learning methods. Children should have a say in what and how they learn; they should interact with the subject matter being taught; relationships with other children are promoted; and each child should be free to express his or her individuality.

For example, some of the students recently wanted to play store — so the teachers helped them set up a market and began teaching about commerce. They plan to take the students to the Uptown Crescent City Farmer’s Market, and to eventually help them sell items they’ve grown in the school’s garden.

Becky McLellan enrolled her 4-year-old, Cecilia, at Ursuline because of the new Reggio-inspired program. She said it has already had a positive effect on her daughter.

“Every day she learns in some different, wonderful way,” she said. “This has boosted her confidence.”

Judith Kieff, acting chairwoman of department of curriculum and instruction at the University of New Orleans, said a Reggio program, like the one Ursuline is using, can produce a more inspired student. The girls’ market is a good example.

“They’re not looking to the teacher to tell them what they should know,” Kieff said. “The world becomes their teacher.”

Kieff plans to send UNO education students to Ursuline to use the center as a laboratory for their own training.

For Ursuline’s early childhood coordinator Belinda Baker, the building and program represent a philosophy she’s held during nearly 30 years in education.

“I’ve always believed children should be free to express themselves,” she said.

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Urban League Head Start Center

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on September 28, 2010

2800 Desire Parkway; New Orleans, LA

Research indicates that early intervention in the lives of disadvantaged children provides the best way to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness.  New Orleans’ historically meager social safety net was further eroded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and a key goal for post-Katrina recovery involves providing access to childcare and early enrichment for the city’s poor.

Since 1998, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans had operated an Early Head Start program to provide both low-income families with young children and pregnant women the opportunity to benefit from quality pre-natal care and child development assistance. Parents as well as children were served by the program.

The construction of a new Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans required that the Urban League move its program elsewhere.  A new location was found in the impoverished 9th Ward of New Orleans, adjacent to the HOPE VI Abundance Square development.

Crescent Growth Capital assisted the Urban League in integrating a complex array of financial sources, including City of New Orleans CDBG funding, a federal Health and Human Services Grant, and a traditional bank loan.  This money was leveraged to generate a New Markets Tax Credit subsidy sufficient to plug the funding gap and ensure the construction of a state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible $7 million facility.  The Urban League Head Start Center will be completed and placed into service by the end of 2011.

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Transportation Consultants Inc. will expand at Port of New Orleans

By Crescent Growth Capital, LLC on July 22, 2010

The Times-Picayune, July 22, 2010

Transportation Consultants, Inc. said Thursday that it will move its headquarters to New Orleans and establish a $13.5 million warehouse and distribution facility at the port.

The facility will bring with it a total of 80 jobs, but economic development officials say the real value of the plant will be its ability to keep shipping activity in New Orleans that is now going to Houston, while introducing a new approach to manufacturing in New Orleans.

The facility planned by TCI will package the plastic pellets that are used in a wide range of manufacturing processes and deliver them directly to the plants.

Currently, the pellets, which are melted down to make any number of plastic goods, are made in the many plants between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. No Louisiana shipper has the capability to package and ship the pellets in specific sizes, so the goods leave the state in bulk, where they are packaged elsewhere.

Gary LaGrange, president and CEO of the Port of New Orleans, said the new plant gives Louisiana the opportunity to capitalize on that lost business, which he thinks will cause more growth than the expected 60 direct and 20 indirect jobs the facility itself will bring.

“I think it’s going to add work to jobs elsewhere,” he said.

He also said the “investment gives the local transportation sector the tools to handle chemical products more efficiently.”

Michael Hecht, president and CEO of the economic development group Greater New Orleans Inc., says the packaging capability, called value-adding, increases profits for New Orleans companies.

“This gives us the ability to do value-added manufacturing, which we haven’t had in the past,” he said.

Hecht says Louisiana ships most of its raw goods in bulk form, with the exception of coffee, leading to lower profits. “I think this begins to take us in a new direction,” he said.

Hecht also says the plant is a step in the right direction in terms of replacing the massive job loss caused by the shutdown of the Michoud Assembly Facility and the Avondale Shipyard. Northrop Grumman announced plans last week to close the Avondale shipyard in 2013. The Michoud plant is winding down after completing work on the last external fuel tank for the space shuttle.

“We all recognize that it’s unlikely we’ll find a 5,000-job company that will replace Avondale one for one,” Hecht said. That’s why companies like TCI are important. Hecht sees a future where several businesses like TCI make up a “more diverse business portfolio” that’s less risky. “It’s going to take a while to get there, but I’m confident we will,” he said.

The announcement, coming on the heels of the Avondale announcement and the rollout of the last external fuel tank at Michoud, was attended by Gov. Bobby Jindal and other local officials.

“I know our city and our state have faced some challenges, but today is a day to celebrate,” Jindal said. “This is a great day for New Orleans, a great day for Louisiana.”

TCI is a private logistics and warehousing provider that was founded in 1983 in New Orleans but moved to Harahan in 1990.

Jack Jenson, TCI’s CEO, said he jumped at the opportunity to return to New Orleans.

“As Drew Brees said, ‘We begin to understand the importance of making it home and making it successful,’” he said.

Jenson said the project could not have been done without help from state officials from the Port Authority, Louisiana Economic Development, and Entergy Corp.

The project is progressing in two stages. The first stage includes construction on the warehouse and container facilities. TCI obtained Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds and New Markets Tax Credit equity to help finance this construction.

For the second stage, Louisiana Economic Development delivered a total of $900,000 in incentives, money TCI will use to build a rail spur that will allow shipments of plastic pellets to be delivered directly to the plants.

Jindal said that although attracting outside business is important, locally owned companies such as TCI are the driving force behind job recovery.

“The majority of jobs created will come from existing companies,” he said. “We’ve got another Louisiana-based company not just making jobs, but keeping jobs that are already here.”

Jindal pointed to numerous surveys, studies, and rankings he says indicate Louisiana and New Orleans are bucking grim national employment trends. “Every single month during the economic recession, we’ve had lower unemployment than the national average,” he boasted.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu also spoke at the event, commending the company for showing confidence in the city and the port.

“TCI’s relocation and expansion will bring new jobs, new tax revenue and a growing, diversifying business to New Orleans,” he said.

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