For the third year in a row, Louisiana picked up a trio of top honors from Southern Business & Development magazine for its economic development wins the year before. Louisiana was named State of the Year, while New Orleans and Lake Charles were named as the top cities in their respective categories. This is the fourth time in five years Louisiana was named State of the Year. New Orleans was tied with Charlotte, N.C., as top large market and Lake Charles was named mid-market of the year. Louisiana earned top honors with a wide variety of project announcements and expansions in 2010, such as Nucor’s new iron and steel production facility in St. James Parish, Globalstar Inc.’s relocation from Silicon Valley to St. Tammany Parish, P&G’s expansion in Rapides Parish, Chase’s processing center expansion in Monroe, the Blade Dynamics project at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, the expansion of Aeroframe Services in Lake Charles, the DG Foods project in Bastrop and others. The Nucor deal was tied with the Austal USA shipbuilding expansion in Mobile, Ala., as heavy manufacturing deal of the year. The Nucor deal also helped St. James Parish get a special designation as the parish or county in a major metro area that generated the most impressive job-creation results. Baton Rouge and Monroe also earned honorable mentions in the large market and small market categories, respectively. See the full Southern Business coverage here.
Today’s question: Have the state’s recent economic development wins had an impact on your business?
