Every Thursday I speak with someone constantly working to bring more business and money to New Orleans and our region. No matter the industry these experts work, they all recognize that New Orleans is special and that it’s important that the city thrives. Most recently, I spoke with Andy Kopplin, President and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, about his involvement with the BioDistrict, which plays a key role in the success of our city's hospital systems. Kopplin is also a Chairman of BioDistrict and told me more about the huge potential BioDistrict has in making the Crescent City a healthcare hub for the region and our country.
What exactly is the BioDistrict?
The BioDistrict is an economic development district headquartered in downtown New Orleans that branches out towards the hospitals in Mid-City, and was established in the Spring 2005. We have some incredible assets, including Tulane and LSU medical schools, Xavier's College of Pharmacy, Delgado School of Nursing, the VA hospital, the Ochsner Health systems and many others… we hope the parts exceed the sum of all those assets. If we grow them together and work strategically, we would create jobs for folks in the New Orleans region, grow and diversify our economy, and attract more federal research dollars. There's a lot of opportunity and vacant space in the biomedical district - we can turn that into a place bustling with activity. That's the kind of future that we want to create for New Orleans and for our region.
How did the BioDistrict view the pandemic as an opportunity to come together and deal with the challenges of COVID?
I was heartened to see Ochsner and LCMC systems go to Washington DC together to advocate for resources needed in Louisiana. The BioDistrict was involved with a number of our partners in submitting an application for the Biosciences cluster to be funded by the Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration, as part of the Build Back Better grant applications.
What initiatives do you all have going on at the present time in the BioDistrict?
We’re working with the New Orleans City Council to get recurring funding for the BioDistrict so we can make investments. We need a few hundred thousand dollars for the first couple years, and it can raise above a million dollars if the kind of growth projections that we hope to create are successful. The most important thing is that this is not an increase in taxes. There will be no increase on taxes for anybody or any business. Instead, we would take a portion of the growth in the existing tax. If there's growth in the amount of activity in the BioDistrict, a portion of that gets shared and reinvested in the BioDistrict to create more growth.
Will there be any opportunities with the infrastructure dollars that are coming down?
We think that there's both opportunity in the infrastructure bill, as well as the most recent of the COVID response pieces of legislation in the Build Back Better Act application that we submitted. Whether we submit one or two projects separately to the economic development, we're optimistic that we're gonna be able to find access to these federal funds. The federal government is really looking to invest in jobs for the future that pay good wages, and revitalize important economic districts in cities and regions.
