With public opposition mounting to a Texas company’s proposed barge cleaning facility on the Mississippi River near BREC’s Farr Park Equestrian Center and Riverbend subdivision, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber has reached out to Tubal-Cain Marine Services to suggest alternate sites for its project.
“We’ve been advising the company to find new locations and trying to consider what options they might have,” says BRAC President and CEO Adam Knapp. “It’s a project that is not right for where it is and we want to see what we can do to proactively help them find other locations.”
But a Tubal-Cain executive says his company has had limited communications with BRAC on the subject and isn’t interested in talking about other sites.
“I guess one phone call and one email could be construed as ‘advising the company to find new locations,’” says Randy Cooper, operations manager for Tubal-Cain. “However we are not working with them on this.”
As early as October 2013, Tubal-Cain began negotiating for its proposed site with the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, which owns the land, and the company spent much of 2014 working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the project. However, it did not come to public attention until February, when Tubal-Cain applied for a permit with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. That’s also about the time BRAC first learned of the project, Knapp says.
Still, it wasn’t until environmentalists and nearby residents began to mount public opposition to the project—and officials like LSU President F. King Alexander and Mayor Kip Holden publicly blasted the project—that BRAC got involved.
In the meantime, two Metro Council members have introduced a measure to change the zoning on the site from heavy industrial to heavy commercial, which, if approved, would effectively kill the project.
“Since we became aware of the concerns of the community we’ve been trying to focus on what alternative sites could be out there,” Knapp says.
As to whether BRAC has concerns about any chilling effect the Tubal-Cain controversy might have on deals with future industrial prospects, Knapp says it does not.
“In this case, it’s really all about that particular site,” he says. “That project is just not a fit for that site.”
—Stephanie Riegel
