In his 20s, Kevin Couhig worked in political campaigns. But the former state economic development official and founder of Source Capital, now 62, never planned to run for office himself.
This spring, he was chatting with Sam LeBlanc, his half brother and a member of the commission that drafted West Feliciana Parish’s new home rule charter, which did away with the old police jury system. LeBlanc suggested Couhig run for parish president.
“I thought, Are you nuts?” he says. “But it planted a seed.”
And on Nov. 26, he found himself serving his first day as the parish’s first president. Couhig doesn’t really have an office yet, just a cramped conference room full of documents, maps and a laptop. He’s a pro-business guy in a parish widely perceived as anti-growth, which he hopes makes him the right man for the job.
I think West Feliciana is at a crossroads. We’re in the middle of a region that’s growing, and yet I could see West Feliciana being left behind. I was at a point in my career where my business has done pretty well, but I wasn’t looking to be active in the investment business going forward. I was looking for a new challenge. I love West Feliciana. I’m from here, and my family lives here. I want it to remain the special place that it is, but it needs to grow in order to remain special.
Source Capital, which I still own, has been in business since 1987. We’ve invested in dozens of companies, and that kind of investing is really a long cycle. When you do early-stage investing, you have to be ready to stay at it for six to 10 years, and I just didn’t want to do that anymore. I have a couple of companies left that I’m really excited about. I’m the chairman of the board of PreSonus Audio, which is a really dynamic, growing company, but I’m not the day-to-day CEO.
I still have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for building things, which is what I’ve always done. One of the things I want to do here is build a business-loving culture, where people recognize that in order to have things like great schools, you have to have growth, and you have to create an atmosphere where business can flourish. My whole background is investing in change and failing early and often. You can’t fail quite as often as in venture capital when you’re trying to run a community, but you cannot be afraid of failure, because not everything’s going to work.
There was a survey done in 2010 that showed that 70% of the people in this parish want growth. Which I found stunning, because I had the same perception about this parish that I think a lot of people do, which is that it’s sort of moribund and staid and not that interested in growing. Some people want us to pull up the sidewalks and move back to 1950. But the vast majority of people here want prosperity. They want to be able to walk out in their backyard and fish in their own pond.
I just want us to have an honest discussion about economic opportunities, not driven by emotion or fear mongering or political correctness. Let’s talk about what the choices are, and let’s be honest about what the consequences are.
There’s a paper mill here and a nuclear power plant. Those are probably the kinds of things where most people would say, “We don’t want smokestack industries.” But most people that live in the parish have never seen the paper mill. Most people have seen only the entrance to the nuclear power plant. It’s not an eyesore; it’s an economic engine. The southern end of this parish is unbelievably well-suited for industrial development, and the area around the John James Audubon Bridge is going to be commercial.
Houses young people can afford—a fireman and his teacher wife, or a young couple where one works in a plant and the other one works in a hair salon. We need much more inventory that is competitive with what’s available in a community like Zachary. New construction, 1,500 to 2,000 square feet. We have to say to the development community, “We want to work with you here.” We’re going to have some initiatives to bring some land forward, in particular around the town of St. Francisville, because you already have services there.
We have had zoning for a very long time, and we came on top of that with a comprehensive idea about smart growth. I think the planners got a little bit ahead of the community, so it stalled. This is mostly a rural community, and there is a natural feel of “this is my land, don’t tell me what to do”; in particular, the notion of limiting subdivisions to have five or six family members on one site. We need to finish the plan, and we need to be cognizant of those feelings. Smart growth is a process that never ends, not a destination.
I think we’re going to put an amendment to the plan of government to the voters sometime in early 2015 to leave the seven districts for the parish council the same as the seven districts for the school board and the old police jury. There’s some merit to the current plan to have four districts and one at-large district. But I think that if you do that, there’s a perception that it dilutes minority voting strength, and you could end up in litigation. There are people who feel strongly both ways. It’s going to be the parish council’s decision as to whether to go to the voters with that.
I think everybody wants to drive down Highway 61 15 years from now and have it look almost the same, but where you go past an entrance with a little sign and it’s a planned unit development with some commercial in front, or an industrial area but it remains beautiful and scenic and rural. I think it’s going to look a lot like it looks now only more modern and with more choices and opportunities. I think you can do more in a community without destroying it.
Note: Business Report‘s questions and Couhig’s answers were edited for space and clarity.
