JR Ball: An economic development resolution

Surely, we can aside our history of personal resolution incompetence and come together as a united community to make Baton Rouge better at something on the business front.

THE DAWN OF a new year is a time for resolutions. Most of us make them. Or resolve to avoid them.

Setting the cynical among us aside, January is the place to be for the hope springs eternal crowd.

Possibilities too daunting in December today seem easy-peasy. Just add determination, willpower and a dash of grit.

Flush bank accounts, that corner office with a view, a sub-4-hour marathon and a killer beach-worthy body are all there for the taking when the Earth starts its new orbit around the sun.

Hell, we even understand crypto in January.

Humbug to crooner Andy Williams, January is the most wonderful time of the year.

Unfortunately, January’s joy too often gives way to the forlorn of February. It’s the month where—for many of us—dreams go to die.

Twenty-eight demoralizing days of devolution and despair.

February is the month where the bank account will forever rise with the arrival of the next paycheck before the balance gets flushed as the maxed-out credit card bills arrive. It’s the month where we’re still toiling in the soulless green cubicle, the only sub-4-hour running we’re doing is four laps around the track and our body remains that of a beached killer whale.

I’m one of these people and have a drawer full of discarded gym membership cards, a shelf or two crammed with mint condition self-improvement books and wardrobes ranging from semi-fat to extra fat to double fat proving the point.

That’s in the past.

Let’s resolve to be different this year.

If not for you or me, do it for the greater good. Do it for the kids.

We’re Baton Rouge, dammit. The next great American city.

Surely, we can aside our history of personal resolution incompetence and come together as a united community to make Baton Rouge better at something on the business front.

Can’t we?

Try this on for size: Let’s come up with a comprehensive—and realistic—economic development strategy our children and grandchildren can be proud of. You know, the very people fleeing our fair city and parish in alarming numbers.

Seriously, isn’t it time we stopped relying almost exclusively on the spoils of the petrochemical industry and a uniquely powerful public sector for our economic way of life?

To be clear, I’m not knocking the carbon capturing, blue hydrogen producing, chemical compounding ecstasy that is our industrial sector. It’s an economic gorilla that’s powering a lot of jobs—both inside and outside of those heavily-gated, vapor-belching plants—not to mention making quite a few folks pretty darn wealthy.

I get it, somebody’s got to keep all those engineers, industrial contractors, white collar attorneys and financial advisers in business—not to mention gobble up those million-dollar homes and cover those five-figure private school tuition tabs. But show me the rule that says we’ve got to remain an economic one-hit wonder.

Must that be our destiny?

What about festivus for the rest of us?

Not everyone can be a personal injury attorney, work at an Amazon warehouse or win the public sector lottery by scoring one lucrative government contract after another.

Most importantly, how’s what we’ve been doing since the dawn of I-10 congestion working out for us?

Show me where Baton Rouge is the envy of anyone outside of our football-loving banana republic in a single economic ranking of consequence.

While we wait for an answer, consider this: What does Baton Rouge and the Capital Region have to offer on the economic diversity front?

Set aside, for now, those Silicon Bayou dreams we fool ourselves into believing, and, instead, focus on areas ripe for growth in the here and now.

The good news is we already know the opportunities: health care or life sciences, cybersecurity, water management and disaster management.

Baton Rouge has solid foundations in each of those sectors, but what’s the all-encompassing growth strategy? Not within each respective institution, but something holistic that includes every facet of growing the economy and boosting our quality of life?

Who’s responsible for the aspirational vision board to inspires us, connect the intertwining dots and illustrate how what we’ve been fantasizing about for more than a decade can actually come to pass?

Few places like a good study or plan like Baton Rouge. We’ve got a gazillion of them collecting dust in file cabinets scattered across the city.

Diversifying an economy, it seems to me, requires a detailed game plan—complete with bullet points, flow charts and Canva-generated presentations.

Where is ours?

What’s our step-by-step blueprint?

It also wouldn’t hurt if we stopped lamenting the need for a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem and maybe got around to the business of actually building it.

Achieve what’s right in front of us and, if successful, those pie-inthe-sky dreams might have a shot of coming true.

This seems like a resolution worth making—and keeping.

Remember … it’s for the kids.

An economic development resolution

JR Ball is the associate publisher and executive editor of Business Report.