LED is working with five industrial prospects that are looking to build projects in Louisiana that are bigger than the Nucor Steel project in St. James Parish, which could be worth as much as $3.4 billion when all is said and done, according to LED Secretary Stephen Moret. Of the five, Moret says, “one, maybe two” could be built in the Capital Region. Those projects could be part of a sustained industrial building boom that might lead to 40,000 new industrial construction jobs in three to five years, he says. While those jobs won’t all be permanent, the peak might last for five to seven years. “I think we could very possibly have roughly $50 billion of new industrial construction under way by the end of 2015,” Moret says. Lake Charles and the Houma/Thibodeaux area in particular are expected to be boomtowns. The biggest hurdle will be meeting the workforce needs. A shortage of development-ready sites is also an issue, although LED now has five certified sites and a total of 123 available sites and buildings in its site selection database in the Capital Region. —David Jacobs
Editor’s note: This story has been changed since its original publication.
