GNO Inc President and CEO Michael Hecht returned today for his weekly segment with Newell to discuss the state of business and industry in the metro area as coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates in Louisiana crater and business and civic leaders look to opportunities for the post-COVID summer.
“We have a lot of good news that broke over the last 10 days, so let's start there!” Newell began.
“It's exciting for a couple of reasons,” Hecht said. “One is that there's this diverse range of good news, and you always like to have diversity in your good news. Green shoots of growth are beginning to poke through the soil and there is even more good stuff happening in the future. One is going to be less sexy to a lot of people, but I think it's incredibly hot - and that is that International-Matex Tank Terminals has decided that they are going to retain and grow their headquarters right here in New Orleans. This is a big deal because this is a company that was a family owned company, 80 years old, kind of a classic Louisiana firm. They were bought by an Australian company and recently bought by a private equity firm. And the question was, are they going to stay? They've committed to not only just staying in their headquarters in downtown New Orleans and keeping hundreds of jobs throughout the state, but they're going to be doubling their payroll, addin close to 50 new jobs at an average salary of $133,000 per person. We're thrilled for this outcome and frankly, if we'd been paying the type of attention that we paid to IMTT going back to the 80’s, Poydras street would look a lot different today. Headquarters are super important.”
“You know, it's so true,” Newell agreed. “We had a couple of fortune 500 headquarters here if my memory serves me. And a number of folks walked out of here with little or no fanfare, just gone.”
“I have talked to CEOs who relocated, typically to Houston,” Hecht said. “I've heard it more than once - if somebody had just picked up the phone and given them the sense that, you know, you're going to be taken care of, that you matter, that you're valued - that has both practical and emotional consequences. But now we've learned our lesson. They're going to be putting in over a million dollars to grow their headquarters. They've got a state payroll of $30 million and I think what's so key to this is that if we want more money for things that we care about, like our roads, police, schools, and healthcare then we need headquarters that have these top six-figure jobs, we need all of the people that they pay, the houses that they bought, the taxes that they pay, the philanthropy that they contribute to. And when we lose these headquarters it really does drain the economic blood, out of a city and a region. So we're really thankful to IMTT and thankful to the Coleman family that started the company decades ago. As you go up and down the river, you can see their tanks that store petrochemicals, crude and refined oils, and renewable fuels. They're very much a part of the trade and logistics infrastructure of the Mississippi river.”
“Absolutely, that's great news. Congratulations to all!”
“Something else really exciting is the space campus that was announced by the governor,” Hecht continued. “This is basically going to be an office park for rocket scientists at Michoud. This is so important because as we continue to push forward with the areas in the SLS program, we move towards putting the first woman on the moon in 2024, and humans on Mars after that, and the Space Force… we're going to be doing a lot of work down there. The facilities that are down there right now are so old that they are used as period pieces in television mini series about the lunar landing in the sixties!”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
