Real estate report: Three key factors are behind Louisiana’s surge in investment

Since January 2024, Louisiana Economic Development has announced over 40 projects across the state, totaling more than $60 million in capital expenditures and nearly 5,000 new jobs.

This information was shared by Paige Carter and Ileana Ledet of LED, the keynote speakers at Thursday’s annual Trends seminar, sponsored by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors.

Louisiana ranks No. 10 nationally in projects per capita, with New Orleans (No. 2) and Baton Rouge (No. 7) both placing in the Top 10 among metro areas with populations between 200,000 and 1 million.

Carter and Ledet highlighted Meta’s $10 billion AI data center project announced in December and Hyundai Steel’s $5.8 billion plant in Ascension Parish, announced in March. This week, Australia-based Woodside Energy Group made a $17.5 billion final investment decision on a liquefied natural gas production and export facility in Lake Charles.

Meta’s facility will be the largest in its global data center network, creating more than 500 direct jobs with salaries exceeding 150% of the parish average.

“When our team on business development is working with the company, typically, there are three main characteristics that we’re evaluating: risk, cost and time,” Carter says. “All three of those are codependent upon one another. This is a site in Richland Parish that the state acquired 20 years ago and we were finally able to put it in commerce. The reason Louisiana won (the project) is that we mitigated the cost, the time and the risk and we secured that as the largest data center in the world by being able to focus on those categories.”

Hyundai’s first North American steel facility, planned for Donaldsonville, is expected to create more than 1,300 direct jobs with an average annual salary of $95,000.

As of Thursday, there are 118 certified shovel-ready sites totaling roughly 25,000 acres. However, not all are development ready. Ledet notes that certified sites may or may not have things such as flood mitigation or tree clearing.

Consequently, LED is advocating for a new Site Investment and Infrastructure Fund during the current legislative session.

The LED-backed House Bill 433, authored by Rep. Daryl Deshotel, would establish the fund with an initial investment of $150 million and up to $50 million in recurring annual funding.

Louisiana invested $8 million in site development in 2022, compared to Mississippi’s $46 million and Alabama’s $53 million.