State has spent roughly $68M on Louisiana Tech Park over past two decades

When the Louisiana Legislature formed the nonprofit Research Park Corporation in 1992, its primary mission, as the name suggests, was to build university research parks. Such parks create partnerships between universities and the private sector, commercializing academic research to grow new companies and drive economic development. At the time, lawmakers feared Louisiana’s oil- and chemicals-fueled economy was getting left behind, so they charged the RPC with helping us catch up. The public has spent about $68 million on the project. From 2001 through 2007, the state put nearly $30 million into the venture, and East Baton Rouge Parish has kicked in more than $14 million in hotel tax revenue, audits show. The direction of the RPC has shifted several times, often for reasons out of the control of the people who were running the corporation. They got into, and out of, a contentious land deal tied to an over-hyped, $25 million pork-barrel project. They helped convert a dilapidated mall on Florida Boulevard into a functioning real estate development, and they’re working on a project meant to help promising young companies through their awkward adolescence. But mainly, they built the Louisiana Technology Park, which incubates early-stage tech companies at the Bon Carré Business Center on Florida Boulevard. How much value the Tech Park brings to the Baton Rouge economy is, even supporters admit, hard to quantify. Read David Jacobs’ complete cover story from the new issue Business Report here.