How the state's economic chief is using the Super Bowl spotlight to sell Louisiana

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Susan Bourgeois, Jeff Landry's economic development chief, was doing dozens of back-to-back media interviews Tuesday morning to kick off a weeklong campaign to promote the state while the world's focus is on New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX.

LED has taken over the "Whale Lot" next to the Hilton Riverside for the week and put up the Louisiana NOW Pavilion, a large tent that will be the focus of a round of cocktail parties, symposiums and other promotional events during the week. Bourgeois, Landry and other regional economic boosters will make their pitch to top executives and investors at that and other venues during the annual NFL spectacle.

Tuesday was "media day," as Bourgeois gave interviews to outlets including, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, Kansas City and Philadelphia TV stations and websites like Cheddar.com.

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That story centers on explaining Landry's "all of the above" energy policy, which seeks to embrace investment in "legacy" oil, gas and petrochemicals businesses, while also backing "future energy" projects.

An example of the state's policy is its backing of the Japanese electric vehicle battery maker planning a $500 million factory in Jefferson Parish, which is slated to be built adjacent to the Cornerstone Chemical Plant, which has been making chemicals like cyanide and sulfuric acid for half a century.

Another Landry administration message is that it plans to be more aggressive in pursuing cutting edge technology companies.

"The department is pivoting into a whole innovation vertical that didn't exist before," Bourgeois said, noting that Thursday in the NOW Pavilion will be "Innovation Day," led by Josh Fleig, who was hired last year as LED's first Chief Innovation Officer.

Among the two dozen top executives being wooed by Landry this week are executives from the top tech companies in the U.S. otherwise known as the "Magnificent Seven": Amazon, Meta (Facebook's parent), Alphabet (Google's parent), chip maker Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft. LED declined to disclose which specific company executives would be there for security reasons.

LED is leaning heavily on the news that Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced plans to build a $10 billion artificial intelligence data center in Richland Parish. The state already has 13 data centers in four markets, with major providers including Lumen and DartPoints. But the Meta news is of a different order of magnitude.

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LED had some Louisiana-based companies on the ground in the NOW Pavilion to help sell the message. Barbee Ponder, Covington-based Globalstar's top lawyer, was there to talk about the satellite mobile services company's experience since it moved from California to the north shore 15 years ago.

"We're a small company but we have a large footprint in space and around the world," Ponder said, noting that the company has doubled its workforce to 395 since it relocated. "I don't think most high tech companies think of Louisiana as a place to move but they should."

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