CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • Suddenlink Commercial is Misleading (And My High Speed Internet Connection Is Not High Speed)

    A couple of years ago, Cebridge Communications d.b.a. Suddenlink Communications purchased the Alexandria and Lake Charles markets from Cox Communications. Despite the fact that Suddenlink paints itself as a “local” company with “local” service, they are actually one of the ten largest telecommunications companies in the nation. Suddenlink appears to specialize in the maintenance of small to mid-sized markets, and while Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Shreveport experiment with fiber optics roll-out, it doesn’t look like Alexandria or Lake Charles will enjoy the same timely upgrades. I could probably write about this issue forever, but for the purposes of this post,…

  • Alexandria Left Out of Film Consortium

    Notice that yet again Alexandria seems somewhere outside of the loop… I doubt this is any fault of our local development team, but more likely an effort organized by Shreveport, NOLA, and Lafayette. Lafayette has never really enjoyed the idea that Alexandria as a metro area is very close to the same size as it is. But mainly this is probably a case of cities with much higher development budgets working together to ensure they get as many pieces of this film pie as possible. If you get a chance visit these guys’ website facebook, etc and flood them with…

  • Government Work

    The Role of Government in Development We often find ourselves in an interesting quandary when debating economic and community development issues. We acknowledge the important role of government in promoting trade and ensuring a positive environment exists for attracting business. But at which point do we draw the line? Should governments actually be in the development business? It’s an interesting question and one that deserves more than a passing discussion. Mostly it comes down to deciding when and where we expect government to step in when it comes to markets in general. We are after all, the universal proponents of…