Louisiana Speaks and Observations on Alexandria

Last week in Baton Rouge, the Center for Planning Excellence, along with Louisiana Speaks and the Louisiana Recovery Authority, held a “smart growth summit” entitled “New Directions for Louisiana.” More than four hundred people from all corners of Louisiana attended the summit, which included speeches by Senator Mary Landrieu and Congressman Richard Baker and panels concerning community health, smart growth, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority’s plan for rebuilding the hurricane-affected regions.

Fortunately, Alexandria was represented by a strong delegation of both public officials and private citizens. It was a tremendous opportunity to learn about the benefits of smart growth and the current plans for disaster recovery.

Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan

During a panel on Louisiana’s recovery plan, Sean Reilly, President and CEO of Lamar Advertising and a Board Member of Blueprint Louisiana, revealed three critical components of their “Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan: Visions and Strategies for Recovery and Growth.” They were:

1. The creation of a rail transit line that links New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Reilly claims this project can be completed using State dollars; however, if New Orleans opts to create a series of “stops” in the New Orleans metro-plex area, this may call for additional financing.

Dambala at “American Zombie” has a dream about a monorail system throughout the entire state. In April, he wrote:

Can you imagine an elevated monorail that runs over the wetlands from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette? People would ride it just for the view. It would go a long way to exposing the beauty of our wetlands and help promote our need to restore them. It could possibly remedy our airport localization issues as well….if you could hop on the monorail at Louis Armstrong National and be in Baton Rouge in 15 to 20 minutes…why build another airport closer to Baton Rouge? Think about how much of a tourism boost it would provide to B.R. and especially Lafayette. We could build a second stadium in Shreveport for the Saints to play a couple times a year…hop on the maglev monorail and be there in a couple of hours (traveling at speeds of 100 mph +). Think about what it would do to bring our state together…I would bet within 20 years, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida may even build their own systems and link with ours….but we would be the leaders…something we’ve never been. We could develop the mag-lev factories in Alexandria and/or Lake Charles and build an entirely new industry…as the system grows, we would become the hub for repairs and new vehicles. Who needs a Boeing factory when we’ve built “The Bayou Bullet” with plans to expand across the nation and perhaps North America?

Dambala knows this is just a dream, but at least we are willing to take the first step and build an all-important commuter rail system between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. (And Dambala, I appreciate you including Alexandria in your dream. We actually have experience here in building tank cars.)

Dambala found this artistic rendering of what he saw as a future mag-line over Lake Ponchartrain:

I lived in Houston when they decided to build a light rail metro-line connecting Downtown Houston to the Medical Center. (Future plans call for the light rail to be expanded all the way to George H.W. Bush International Airport). Local officials expected to reach their goal of 40,000 daily commuters by the year 2020; they are already meeting and even exceeding this expectation. As an added benefit, the light rail has also dramatically facilitated the redevelopment and reuse of some of Houston’s most important downtown properties, raising property values in the city’s inner-core and causing a surge in residential real estate along this corridor.

Dambala may be thinking big and long-term, but this is always a healthy exercise; a light rail line that connects the entire State would not only be a practical solution for evacuation, it would also allow Louisianans to easily and quickly travel throughout the State, without ever having to jump in their car and hop onto the Interstate. For now, I will gladly settle for a line connecting New Orleans to Baton Rouge. This is a tremendous project with tremendous opportunities for the entire State.

2. The enhancement of Louisiana Highway 1 to “provide evacuation routes from much of coastal Southeast Louisiana.”

Although Sean Reilly spoke specifically of LA-1, the plan also calls for the enhancement of LA-27 (and the construction of a new “Calcasieu Pass bridgeworks”), the enhancement of US-165, which, like LA-1, also directly cuts through Alexandria, and the enhancement of LA-23 and LA-20/24.

The improvement of rural infrastructure and roads should be a major issue in the upcoming gubernatorial election. These projects are not merely about improving evacuation routes; they are also about improving rural economies and ensuring that many of Louisiana’s most cherished towns and cities are not choked off or forgotten as we build toward our State’s future.

3. The “completion of the I-49 corridor between Lafayette and metro New Orleans, to aid in the economic recovery of metro New Orleans and provide evacuation routes for much of coastal Southeast Louisiana.”

Every time I drive into Lafayette, I wonder what the sign “Future Corridor of 1-49” actually means. This year, the State has been rightly focusing on expanding I-49 to connect Shreveport to Arkansas (and eventually to Little Rock). If the project is completed as currently planned, Little Rock would be linked by an Interstate to New Orleans.

These are only three of several key recommendations for action, and the summit (thankfully and no offense to my friends in NOLA or Lake Charles) was not entirely about the recovery of South and Southeast Louisiana.

At one point during this panel, an older gentleman from Lecompte raised his hand to ask a question. He wanted to know when and if this plan would include Central and North Louisiana.

The answer was a resounding “yes.” The LRA recognizes that the importance of including all parts of the State in their plan, and though the project has been initially focused on those regions most devastated by the hurricanes, Louisiana Speaks has been and will continue to hold planning meetings in Central and North Louisiana. Obviously, Alexandria, in particular, will play a role in many of their marquis transportation projects– LA-1, US 165, and I-49.

The plan also calls for the enhancement and funding of a number of workforce development and training programs in order to “strengthen existing sector-based workforce training programs, and expand existing programs or create new programs to fill identified needs.” Louisiana Speaks and the Louisiana Recovery Authority envision our State as having a “robust building and construction industry” and becoming a “worldwide leader in coastal science and technology.”

Vision Goal Two of the “Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan” calls for Louisiana to begin to implement smart growth strategies– not only as a solution for the rebuilding process but also as a planning model for the entire State. According to a poll conducted by the LRA, “Nearly 90% of the 23,000 Regional Poll responses indicated a preference for land-use regulations and incentives that would shift development away from unprotected high-risk areas and wetlands.”

What does this mean?

Put simply, it means that 90% of those Louisianans believe in the importance of responsibly planning our State’s development by avoiding “high-risk areas and wetlands.” Although we in Alexandria are a hundred miles or so away from Louisiana’s Gulf coast, we are still home to numerous wetlands, and there are a handful of developments built in areas that are prone to flooding.

Smart growth is not only about urban or in-fill development; it is also about making smart choices about where we plan for future development. In order to “comprehensively manage future risk,” the Louisiana Speaks plan calls for a number of important “actions.” This is a truncated list, highlighting what I find to be the most pertinent issues for those of us in Central Louisiana.

1. Focus Infrastructure Investment and Development in Lower-Risk Areas: “Public funding should not flow to higher-risk, unprotected areas unless such improvements serve a vital and demonstrable economic-development need.”

2. Implement Building Protection Techniques: Again, even though Alexandria is in the so-called “Safe Zone,” we are not immune to significant infrastructural damage in the event of a natural disaster. These building protection techniques may not be necessary to universally implement, but regardless, there are still things we can do to ensure that new construction meets new safety requirements.

3. Purchase High-Risk and Environmentally Sensitive Land: This calls for the establishment of a state “Conservation and Mitigation Trust Fund.”

Some of the priorities for developing and growing include:

1. Establish Criteria for Land Classification to Manage Risk.

2. Create a “Louisiana Location Index” to Guide the Location of Land Development and State Investments.

3. Develop Model Codes for Community Development: One of the biggest challenges facing proponents of smart growth is that our land-development codes are antiquated. Many of these codes were first written in the 1950s, during the Interstate highway boom, and they reflect a fundamentally different notion about the way communities should grow. The Interstate highway boom made many planners and government officials believe that communities could grow expansively, and as a result, the land development codes they implemented cannot adequately address the needs of smart or form-based codes.

In other words, cities began relying almost exclusively on the practice of zoning large areas of land toward one particular type of development. Zoning was first popularized as a way of protecting the value of the single-family home. After all, no one wants to live next door to a power plant. But currently, we are witnessing the collateral damage inflicted by this model: people are living farther away from important services, and for a city like Alexandria, the expansion of the Interstate highway system, namely I-49 and its ancillaries, has not created a massive population growth. People are not simply living farther away because they choose to; they are living farther away because existing land-use development codes actually facilitate sprawl.

4. Coordinate Planning for Large Economic Development Projects: “Think regionally.”

5. Make Full Use of Existing Transportation Funding Options, and Pursue New and Innovative Options.

What Smart Growth Can Mean for Alexandria:

Don Chen, the Executive Director and Founder of Smart Growth America, believes that one of the best ways to understand development is by analyzing demographic trends. The “age” of a community’s workforce is perhaps the single most important factor in understanding, analyzing, and preparing for a community’s growth. In Alexandria, the age distribution is:

Age Distribution (2006)
5-9	4,119	6.9%
20-29	8,703	14.6%
40-49	8,208	13.8%
60-64	2,710	4.5%

For more demographic information, visit http://www.cenlaprospector.com. (For some reason, WordPress will not allow me to paste the entire graph). As this illustrates, approximately 31.3% of Alexandria’s population is over the age of 50, and and 45.1% of the population is over the age of 40. Most significantly, the single largest “age bracket” is people ages 65 and older, representing 15.3% of the population. (The illustration does not show that 14.2% are between 10-19, 11.7% are between 30-39, and 11.5% are between 50-59).

What does this mean?

First, no, I am not being an ageist. For many people, Alexandria is a great place to retire, and we should continue to develop our “Retirement Community.” But unfortunately, retirement, by definition, represents a loss in our workforce. (George Robertson of CAP gave an excellent presentation to the City Council a few months ago about this very issue).

The problem facing Alexandria is spelled out very plainly in our demographics. The net loss in our workforce due to an aging population is not counter-balanced by a net increase in young people who are just entering the workforce. We’re all getting older, and we are having a hard time retaining our young, skilled workforce. And this is not simply a problem for Alexandria. Baby-boom retirement is causing the same problem in cities all across the nation. But fear not, there are ways to correct this problem.

I have previously written about my generation’s tendency to be transient. Today, young professionals do not feel the same pressure or obligation to remain in their hometowns. The ubiquity of air travel allows people to get to almost anywhere they want to be in the nation in less than four hours, and as a result of this and the emerging digital economy, people are choosing to live in the cities that appeal to their own personal interests.

No, there is no magic formula. We can redevelop our downtown, improve our parks and green spaces, and enhance public transportation opportunities, and we may still be caught in the same predicament. Although those projects are still important, they are not nearly as critical as workforce and economic development. And when I write about workforce and economic development, I am not referring to some abstraction or a series of grand visions or plans. I am referring to clear, precise, and implementable projects that generate jobs and increase our quality of life. Ultimately, that should be our goal.

Throughout the past year and a half, we have been having a discussion on this blog and in many other places about the need to find Alexandria’s identity. In many ways, we are city experiencing an existential crisis. In Alexandria, there is a dialectical relationship between the rural and the urban, and this dialectic has, at times, served as the background for our overall discussion. It is also readily apparent that, like many other cities in the American South, Alexandria continues to struggle with the vestiges of both institutionalized and subtle racism. Unfortunately, there is no easy cure or panacea, but this does not mean we are without a solution.

The solution calls for Alexandrians to work together; it calls for us to sacrifice our own personal and (too often) financial agendas in order to collectively envision and plan for our future. It requires that we accept the inevitability of our aging workforce and begin working pro-actively to prevent a looming (and very real) problem. Like I said, the “cure” is not easy.

When I began writing about downtown revitalization, many people criticized me for being too focused on a single issue, and in hindsight, they were absolutely right. If we allow ourselves to be overly consumed with one piece of the puzzle, then we are likely to lose focus on what we were attempting to solve in the first place.

Even if every single building in Downtown Alexandria was rehabilitated and reopened, without aggressive workforce and economic development, the major problems will still exist.

But there is no reason Alexandria cannot have a vibrant downtown and a thriving workforce.

On a side note, I support downtown revitalization for a very basic reason. (No, I do not and have never owned property in downtown). I support downtown revitalization because, as others have stated before me, downtown is Alexandria’s “front door.” Its health is inextricably tied to the way people perceive Alexandria, and if people begin having more positive perceptions of Alexandria, we are in a better position to recruit jobs, expand our workforce, and solve that looming problem of an aging workforce.

The Digital Economy:

As we prepare for our future and plan for our growth, it is also critical we understand the changing landscape of industry and the workforce. We now live in a “digital age” with a “digital economy,” which means more and more people are able to productively work from anywhere in the nation. The digital age will not suddenly disappear one day. If anything, advances in technology will continue to enhance and augment the digital economy.

Alexandria has long been known as a manufacturing city, but if you ask anyone who is in charge of these manufacturing facilities about the average age of their employees, their answer is likely to startle you. Ask George Robertson of CAP about this problem. He will probably tell you that this is one of the reasons his organization launched the Bring ‘Em Home (to Cenla) campaign. Many, if not most, of the people employed in manufacturing here in Central Louisiana are between 5-15 years away from “retirement age,” and their employers are struggling to recruit younger skilled workers.

Some argue that Alexandria has an adequate population of young people; the problem is that many of our young people lack the necessary skills. The logical solution is to increase and enhance vocational and “skills-based” education programs and certifications. Beef up our technical college. Provide training programs in community centers. Partner with high schools. In other words, increase the access of our young unskilled population to the resources they need to become educated, skilled, and trained.

And there is no doubt we must do this.

At the same time, however, we must be mindful of the emerging digital economy and the types and quality of the jobs offered in this sector. Indeed, all sectors of industry will be directly affected by the digital economy. Hospitals already use advances in fiber optics technology for medical imaging and medical monitoring. Communication technology promises to dramatically change our disaster response methods and our police and fire protection. Advances in Internet technology will enable seamless, instantaneous voice and video communication with anyone in the world. (The convention business is experiencing pain because VOIP technology can enable seamless conversations between groups of people in multiple locations). Lafayette, by the way, will have the infrastructure to accommodate these advances (as well as provide cable, telephone, and super-high speed internet services to every single home at a reduced cost) in only two years. For more on this particular issue, read Daniel T. Smith’s “Cenla Fiber Optics:”Light It Up,” which was published right here on CenLamar.

Because these advances affect practically every industry, it is important Alexandria prepare its workforce to negotiate the digital age. A job in the manufacturing industry may involve some physical labor and industry-specific skills, but that same job, ten years from now, may also require an expertise in computers. Put simply, in the future, an expertise in computer or Internet technology may be a requirement for almost any job in every sector.

And, okay, I guess I will say it, even at the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna: Considering Alexandria has a great port on the Red River, a brand-new airport terminal that can easily accommodate large aircraft, our railroad, I-49, and highways that lead to all corners of the State, there is no reason we cannot position ourselves as a hub for the digital economy.

There is a reason Alexandria suffers from what is commonly referred to “brain drain.” There is a reason many of our young and college-educated natives decide not to return to Alexandria.

Why?

Because there aren’t any jobs for them. And even when there is a job, its pay typically cannot compete against the same job in another market.

Here are the top ten college majors and their average starting salary:

 

Starting Salaries for 10 Popular Majors*

Major	Average annual salary
Electrical engineering	$51,372
Accounting	$41,110
Economics/Finance	$40,906
Business administration/Management	$38,188
Marketing	$35,321
Political science	$32,999
English	$31,169
Biology	$28,750
Psychology	$27,791
Journalism	$27,646

*NACE Summer 2004 Salary Survey

It is not surprising that people with degrees in Electrical Engineering typically have the highest starting salaries. My freshman year roommate was a Louisianan who majored in E.E.; today he is working for a Fortune 100 company in California. What kind of education does one receive if they major in Electrical Engineering? Essentially, it is a degree in the foundation of the digital economy, and today’s EE majors are enrolled in significantly different programs than those who earned their EE degree only ten years ago. While there may be a handful of companies in Alexandria willing to hire a fresh-out-of-college EE major, it is nearly impossible for an Alexandria company to match the $51,000 national average.

And we have not even discussed Accounting, Business, and Economics majors. They too are increasingly becoming a part of the digital economy.