Shreveport’s new economic development director, Drew Mouton, knows he has a tough challenge.
Bringing jobs and businesses to the city is a tall order for just one man, so Mouton’s first order of business is to build a team.
To that end, he has already established a coalition consisting of local leaders whose jobs are similar to his, to promote Shreveport and to make it more attractive for business.
“We’re going to develop a plan collectively, then execute it as a team,” Mouton said.
To that end, the first meeting of the group on May 20 included Angie White (North Louisiana Economic Partnership), Dr. Tim Magner (Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce), Billy Anderson and Brittney Dunn (African-American Chamber of Commerce), Liz Swaine (Downtown Development Association), Leon Wheeler (Shreveport Fair Share), Bonnie Moore (Shreveport Community Development), Taylor Jamison (Minority Supplier Institute) and David Smith (BRF and EAP).
In referring to the 2030 Shreveport Master Plan, developed from 2009 to 2011, Mouton noted, “I think most readers would see that plan as 90-plus percent relevant a decade later, but only a few of its recommendations have been accomplished. I think that supports the fact that we don’t have a lack of really good ideas here in town. What we need to focus on is the execution.
“I have a different background than most people who might fill this role, with a fairly broad base of education and extensive experience as a job creator, but little of the typical corporate recruitment background seen in these roles. But the one common theme across three decades of work is: I get things done. So in joining city government, my objective was to first try to understand the problem we face, then figure out how to get the right pieces in place and … get some stuff done.” He said, “We need to learn from the successes of others. In
He said, “We need to learn from the successes of others. In particular, there are a dozen or so notable communities over the last several decades that have had a notable turnaround in their economic fortunes. “Pittsburgh is a great example: by all accounts in the ’70s and
“Pittsburgh is a great example: by all accounts in the ’70s and ’80s, it was a dying city. For as important a city as it once was, the city was built almost entirely on steel and iron-age industry. Yet it has now, over the last three decades, turned itself into a vibrant center for technology, health care and environmental design, with a highly diversified economy, and is even now ranked as one of the world’s most livable cities.
“Nashville has seen a similar expansion, after languishing for years with a largely unheralded regional footprint. Over the last 40 years, its population has roughly doubled. By all accounts that growth largely came as a result of community leaders working together, merging city and county infrastructure, placing a heavy emphasis on health care, leveraging its universities, making smart local investments, raising the community up through workforce development and job training, and the result a couple of decades later is that it is among the most vibrant, diversified economies in the mid-South. I don’t see why Shreveport can’t follow that same basic trajectory. “From a macro perspective, although we’ve had brief moments
“From a macro perspective, although we’ve had brief moments of success, the thing that I think we haven’t done a great job of in the last 50 years is building new industry and regional expertise within our workforce. That makes us overly dependent on just a few employers and prone to ‘savior-itis.’ So a General Motors comes in, and it’s great for a minute, and then something happens and it leaves, and we’re left with not much.
Mouton said he saw a counter-version of that when he lived for a time outside Detroit. “Having a Ford, GM or Chrysler is great, but they alone don’t drive the economy of the Great Lakes region or employ the majority of its citizens. It’s really the thousands of businesses built around them that make that economy work. And even when the automotive industry fell apart and has been radically changing, there is still that base of expertise — engineering, manufacturing, etc., that’s really valuable. “I would argue that the 10- to 20-year plan here is to build indus
“I would argue that the 10- to 20-year plan here is to build industry. The nearer-term plan is to get everybody that we have here in the same boat with their oars in the water pulling in the same direction, because we don’t have the resources to compete well with larger economies near us or to be as competitive as some of the smaller cities that are a little further ahead of us. And so we need to maximize what we have in order to get over that hump.”
He said his first challenge is more about process than targets.
“We’re going to build an environment that makes it very attractive to do business in or with the city. We’re going to engage our partners so that all of those really, really good sales and marketing people in places like BRF and NLEP and others, that they have an easier time doing their job, which means that our opportunities at bat are going to increase, and our hit rate is going to go up. We’re aiming to make it as easy as possible for business to happen in the city.”
How?
“For me, this is a systemic problem, so need a system design solution.”
Mouton likened the process to washing clothes. Take away any step in the process — adding soap, adding water, turning on the power — and the clothes will not get clean.
“I name four main ingredients that we’ve got to address. First are the conditions for business, to include permitting, licensing, zoning and broadly that process of regulatory oversight. Included in that bucket more loosely is our local quality of life.
“Number two is workforce. Third is what I refer to as our economic engines — these are the companies that are producing jobs and employing our citizens. And then number four is our pool of resources, whether that’s new federal money we’re able to bring to town, use of our current tax revenues or existing local assets like transportation resources.
“So within this coalition we just convened, we’re talking in those terms. Those are our four lanes. What are we going to do in each of those four areas to improve?”
For example, in the resources category, Mouton counts assets like the airports and The Port as toolsets, “great things that we can do great things with.”
But what exactly does he mean by “workforce development”? Mouton said, “We take a broad and encompassing view of workforce development. I include programs in K-12 through to our post-secondary colleges and universities, to community and employer-based job training initiatives. These help us develop the skills we have in our community.”
Referring to Amazon’s entry into the business sector locally, he said, “As excited as I am about this announcement, it’s also too easy to get into the mode of ‘savior-itis,’ believing that Amazon is going to be the magical event that changes our fortunes, and we shouldn’t do that. The Amazon center is a great opportunity for us, a huge win for our city, but we’ve seen this before with GE, AT&T and GM. It’s important that we continue to build and grow.”
As for the coalition he is forming with other leaders in the community, he said, “I get to chair a group of folks that all have the same goal. For now, you can call it the Shreveport Regional Economic Development Coalition.
“We’ll be convening separate groups around the four lanes we’ve laid out. Each of these people here today are full-time, everyday economic or workforce development professionals, which lets us have a complete view of the landscape in order to identify or develop programs that will be additive to what we’re trying to achieve.” Mouton also took the position that workforce development can
Mouton also took the position that workforce development cannot be effectively addressed without talking about race. “I know it’s a sensitive topic across the board, but certainly in Shreveport, the majority of our citizens are persons of color. We need to find ways to build a diversified economy across the entire spectrum of our population. Achieving that will be a great thing.
“As a first step, it was important to me to make sure that not only do we have the professional economic developers in the room, but to also bring in the job training and small business support entities for our lesser-served communities because of what an important part of our workforce they represent.”
So basically, how does one go about bringing in more jobs? “Most of the time, it boils down to just a few approaches,” he said. “You bring companies in from the outside, you grow companies up from scratch locally, or you help your existing businesses add jobs and grow.”
And how does Shreveport fare in these areas? “Amazon is an example of something that just came in recently. It’s a great win. But there’s been a bit of a new business drought in Shreveport the last couple of years, so I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t had a great hit rate in terms of the opportunities that look to Shreveport and choose to locate here. So that’s one of the things we need to work on — always working to be more competitive as a location for an outside business.
“And then we do have some really strong businesses here … to the extent that the city and our region can help them find new opportunities to grow even further, we will do that. So there’s room to grow in all three areas.”
Mouton said that most Shreveport citizens know we have a good quality of life, great transportation infrastructure, a skilled workforce and quality schools and universities. “The ability to do business here is good,” he said. “The fundamental challenge is that there are roughly 200 cities
“The fundamental challenge is that there are roughly 200 cities in the country that have a relatively similar footprint to what we have. They have ports and rail yards, universities, big businesses and small businesses, population around our size or larger, and similar capabilities to ours. So when you compare what you do well against potentially 200 other cities, it’s hard to float up to the top unless you are really, really good at what you do. Our challenge as a city then is to figure out how to be great at things that matter and then be sure that companies and industry know it, and that’s a complicated challenge to solve.”
THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE June 4 ISSUE OF FOCUS SB - THE INQUISITOR.