Daily Report

Beginning Monday, the downtown Hilton will be under the new management of a Dallas-based company that will consider over the next 60 days whether to buy the historic hotel on Lafayette Street, which originally opened as the Heidelberg Hotel in 1927. Prism Hotels & Resorts confirmed today it's taking over management of the Hilton Baton Rouge Capitol Center from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation's Commercial Properties Realty Trust, which owns the hotel. "From the day we started on it, we kind of fell in love with it," says Kevin Gallagher, senior vice president of Prism Hotels & Resorts, which was involved in the hotel's renovations until its reopening in 2007. Gallagher says his company will use a due diligence period in deciding whether to purchase the hotel, but would not estimate its worth. "Hotel values are a moving target," he says. Prism will remain manager of the hotel regardless of its purchase decision, Gallagher says. Mukul Verma, a spokesman for the Commercial Properties Realty Trust, says the foundation had no intention of being in the hotel business for long. "We are selling the hotel to return to our core business, which is real estate," Verma says.—Adam Pearson Read full story here.

Former Gov. Buddy Roemer's bid to run for president as an independent candidate has taken another significant hit. Roemer had hoped to get the nomination of Americans Elect, a nonpartisan group pushing for a third-party candidate. But Americans Elect shut down its efforts Thursday, saying no candidate met the benchmarks for its nomination process. The former governor and former congressman previously had sought to become a GOP nominee, but never polled above single digits and wasn't allowed to participate in debates. This afternoon, Roemer issued a statement saying he is disappointed by American Elect's decision to end its nomination process, adding it was "rife with difficulty related to access, validation and security issues." Roemer goes on to say, "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here. A political system corrupted by special interest money and a Party duopoly addicted to that same money demands reform. We aim to figure out the best way to deliver the message and highlight examples which best prove this point. … I am not willing to let the issue of reform die with Americans Elect. Our Republic needs it now more than ever."

It's 6:52 in the morning. Sunrise. Baton Rouge Beach. With a whir, Mike Bitton glides across the lot and aligns his white bike with my blue one. He sports a boyish grin. "Morning," he says. The lilt of his native Canada rings out over the traffic. We've met, reporter and source, for a morning bike ride, not an interview. I leave my notebook in the car. It's February, one of those gilded winter days: elixirs that balance out the choking humidity that fills much of our year in the Deep South. We chat about the weather. The miracle that Bitton is here at all—let alone on his bike—sits unspoken between us like a childhood secret. Two years ago this month, Bitton was nearly killed during a hit-and-run accident while cycling on River Road. Since the accident, Bitton has wowed doctors, first by surviving, then by riding his bike again. Last November, Bitton completed the Florida Ironman Triathlon: That's a 2.4-mile ocean swim and a 112-mile bike ride topped off by a 26.2-mile run. Bitton jokes that he's become the "poster boy of bicycling safety" around Baton Rouge. He's been active in several bike safety campaigns in the past year. He has organized blood drives and races to raise awareness for first responders. Read the full story by Amy Alexander in the current issue of 225 here.

As the state's budget woes pile up and tax break bills continue to sail through the Legislature, lawmakers are setting the stage for a wholesale review of the billions of dollars in tax exemptions, rebates and credits on the books. The effort is being pushed by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike, with both groups starting to wonder if they've been too generous with the state's coffers over the years. The Republican chairman of the Senate's budget-writing committee is pushing to create a commission that would review all the tax breaks on the books after the current legislative session ends. The idea of a wholesale tax break review is backed by GOP Treasurer John Kennedy and the left-leaning Louisiana Budget Project, which looks at how government spending affects low- to moderate-income families.

Development and changing weather patterns will mean more intense storms that will deliver increasingly more economic harm to Louisiana and the entire Gulf Coast area, says economist Loren Scott, who was one of more than a dozen experts and local leaders participating in panel discussions at Thursday's Louisiana Coastal Resilience Forum. Sponsored by LSU and Entergy Louisiana, the forum brought leaders together to present the results of several studies pertaining to how major storms, such as hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike, are expected to increasingly impact the Gulf Coast economically through recovery costs and job losses. Experts also discussed how to make south Louisiana more resilient and recover from storms faster. Loren C. Scott & Associates measured the economic effects of storms in 2010, as well as the impact of those expected at the 2030 level of activity. In addition to property damage, the study shows average annual business losses from wind, flooding and storm surge at $1.1 billion in the Terrebonne and Lafourche parish areas alone in 2010, and $290 million in lost wages. By 2030, these average annual losses are expected to grow to $1.3 billion in lost business sales and $360 million in lost wages. Scott says there are cost-effective investments that can be made to reduce some losses. Specifically, investments in hardening electric sector transmission and distribution assets against storms provide more than $1 returned for each $1 invested, he says.

Facebook is trading up about 1% as of this afternoon as investors seek to put a dollar value on the company that turned online social networking into a global cultural phenomenon. Earlier today, the company's 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Surrounded by cheering Facebook employees and wearing his signature hoodie, Zuckerberg pushed the button that signals the opening of the stock market in New York. The morning's events followed an all-night "hackathon" at the company, where engineers stayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebook and its 900 million users. On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers arranging the IPO settled on a price of $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16 billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion. That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company ever to go public. Now the stock market will assign a dollar value to Facebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. Though the stock rose as much as 8% in early trading today, as of 3 p.m. it had dropped back to an even $38.

Successful sounds: For the third year in a row, Baton Rouge-based Acadian Home Theater and Automation has been ranked among the top 100 companies in the United States in home electronics installation by CE Pro magazine, which is devoted to professionals in the custom electronics field. The company—which is ranked No. 92 on the list—does installations from Lake Charles to Orange Beach, Ala. "We even have a client whose vacation home and yacht are in the Carolinas, and we've done installations for both of those there," says company president Bryan Naquin in a news release. "We stay quite busy." Acadian designs and installs custom electronics, including indoor and outdoor entertainment systems, home theaters, security and more.

Thin margins: International Paper says it will permanently close its Minden Container Plant by July 17, resulting in the loss of approximately 60 jobs. Region General Manager Doug Strickel says following a merger with Temple-Inland, IP has more capacity than customers. He says other area facilities are better positioned to handle the production requirements. The company will discuss plans for severance and other benefits with the local union, United Steelworkers Local 677. The plant opened in 1948 and produces 690 million square feet of corrugated packaging each year for customers in the consumer packaging products industries.

The name game: According to a new government report, the top five boys names in Louisiana in 2011 were Mason, Jayden, Aiden, William and Landon. For girls, the top five were Ava, Emma, Isabella, Sophia and Olivia. For boys, the top 10 was rounded out by Ethan, Noah, Michael, John and Elijah; and for girls, the top included Chloe, Madison, Ella, Addison and Aubrey. See the complete list of the top 100 names for boys and girls in the state here.