Baton Rouge Business Report, July 2023

YOUR COUNSEL

As the largest law firm in the Capital Region, Kean Miller has served as counsel to business and industry for 40 years. From corporate formations to commercial disputes, and from initial ideas to implementation, we are proud to represent many of the Top 100 businesses honored in this edition of Baton Rouge Business Report Congratulations.

KEANMILLER.COM

DOES YOUR LIFE INSURANCE COVER DEATH BY

OVERDOSES ARE A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR AMERICANS UNDER 55

In East Baton Rouge Parish, 88% of all drug overdoses were caused by drugs laced with fentanyl, an opioid that is more than 50x stronger than morphine. While this may sound like a problem that only exists on the streets, it is lethal to even first-time drug users. From counterfeit Xanax pills to illicit drugs like cocaine, it only takes one hit, one bump, or one pill to be laced with a deadly dose. How can you help? Join in allegiance with Baton Rouge business leaders to speak as one voice for change.

IT’S TIME TO SOUND THE ALARM

To learn more, volunteer, donate, or get help for someone struggling with addiction, visit whenyouarereadybr.com.

NEW TO THE CITY KNOWN TO THE NATION

Lee & Associates is the largest broker-owned firm in North America with 75+ offices and 1,500+ professionals. We are local market experts reimagining commercial real estate.

Managing Principal escroggs@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

WILL WATSON Principal wwatson@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

NATHAN MCBRIDE Director

nmcbride@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

RYAN POLITO Associate rpolito@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Lafayette

cshepard@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Lafayette

ALEX

alorando@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

TOM MCGEE Associate

tmcgee@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

ELLIOTT

Associate elliott.scroggs@lee-associates.com

Lee & Associates Baton Rouge

EXCLUSIVE LEASING BROKER FOR RIVERMARK 185 INDUSTRIAL AND LOGISTICS PARK

Phase 1: ± 200,000 SF Near Completion

Phase 2: Construction Beginning Soon

lee-associates.com/batonrouge

EVAN SCROGGS, SIOR, CCIM

CLINTON SHEPARD, CCIM Principal

LORANDO Director

SCROGGS

News

85 A chaotic event

Much of what was accomplished, or not, during the legislative session has been overshadowed by the mayhem of its final hours.

89 Workforce innovations

Contractors are creating new solutions for an old and worsening problem.

92 Hockey takes another shot

It’s been 20 years since the Kingfish left town but Barry Soskin s ays he’s got the formula for making minor league hockey a success in Baton Rouge.

94 Fighting for relevance

Shifting consumer and economic dynamics are forcing the Mall of Louisiana to reinvent its retail mix to keep customers spending. Experts wonder if it will be enough.

97 Special appeal

Five unique or historic homes on the Baton Rouge market.

109 A (re)developing story

Historic downtown Donaldsonville is drawing millions in new investment.

113 Glory days

Whether it’s nostalgia or marketing, bringing back familiar names is an emerging service industry trend.

118 365 thinking on crime

Mo Vij and the award-winning 365Labs is bringing all-in-one technology to law enforcement.

123 ‘Radio is what I’m supposed to be doing’ Radio has always played an important role in the life of Jodi Koontz, one-third of the successful Murphy Sam & Jodi show that’s syndicated in more than 50 markets across the country.

126 Culinary innovator

Foodii’s latest plans include a new retail shop and a focus on product development and bottling.

131 Seeds of success

Louisiana Nursery is not only celebrating its past but also planning for its future.

Celebrating companies big and small

I LOVE THE anticipation and pride that comes every year with the release of our Top 100 Private Companies issue. Honoring the incredible accomplishments of the Capital Region’s most successful enterprises is a powerful reminder of just what makes this a great place to call home.

But in this moment, I also want to celebrate the accomplishments of those who don’t get the spotlight quite as often: the small businesses that fuel our local economy and serve as leading voices for change.

Thee companies—often helmed by passionate and visionary entrepreneurs—have the power to transform our city and create a ripple effct that extends far beyond.

Thy embody the spirit of innovation, adaptability and resilience—essential qualities in today’s rapidly evolving world. Theiragility, adaptability and entrepreneurial spirit enable them to pioneer new ideas, revolutionize industries and disrupt established norms.

Moreover, small businesses are incubators for talent and creativity, providing opportunities for individuals to pursue their passions and contribute to the growth of this community. By supporting and nurturing these enterprises, we foster a culture of entrepreneurship that not only strengthens our economy but also inspires others to dream big and forge their own paths.

Join me in celebrating the remarkable accomplishments of businesses both big and small in this issue. Thy embody the dreams, aspirations and hard work of our people, and are the entrepreneurial spirit that forms the fabric of the Capital Region!

Thebest is yet to come!

Julio Melara, Publisher

Publisher: Julio Melara

EDITORIAL

Chief Content Officer: Penny Font

Associate Publisher, Executive Editor: JR Ball

Managing Editor: Allan Schilling

Online News Editor: Deanna B. Narveson

Staff writers: Holly Duchmann, David Jacobs, Eric L. Taylor

Digital Content Editor: Dillon Lowe

Contributing writers: Sam Barnes, Chelsea Brasted, Tom Cook, Emily Kern Hebert, Maggie Heyn Richardson

Contributing photographers: Don Kadair, Tim Mueller, Collin Richie

ADVERTISING

Sales Director: Kelly Lewis

Account Executives: Emma Dubuc, Meredith LaBorde, Ethan Shipp, Matt Wambles

Digital Operations Manager: Devyn MacDonald

Advertising Coordinator: Brittany Nieto

Customer Success Manager: Paul Huval

STUDIO E

Director: Taylor Gast

Multimedia Strategy Manager: Timothy Coles

Corporate Media Editor: Lisa Tramontana

Content Strategist: Emily Hebert

Account Executive: Judith LaDousa

MARKETING

Marketing & Events Coordinator: Taylor Falgout

Marketing & Events Assistant: Cadon Ardoin

Events: Abby Hamilton

ADMINISTRATION

Business Manager: Tiffany Durocher

Business Associate: Kirsten Milano

Office Coordinator: Sara Hodge

Receptionist: Cathy Varnado Brown

PRODUCTION/DESIGN

Production Manager: Jo Glenny

Art Director: Hoa Vu

Senior Graphic Designers: Melinda Gonzalez Galjour, Emily Witt

Graphic Designer: Ashlee Digel

AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

Audience Development Director and Digital Manager: James Hume

Audience Development Coordinator: Ivana Oubre

Audience Development Associate: Catherine Albano

A publication of Melara Enterprises, LLC

Chairman: Julio Melara

Executive Assistant: Brooke Motto

Vice President-Sales: Elizabeth McCollister Hebert

Chief Content Officer: Penny Font

Chief Digital Officer: Erin Pou

Chief Operating Officer: Guy Barone

Chairman Emeritus: Rolfe H. McCollister Jr.

Circulation/Reprints/Subscriptions/Customer Service

225-928-1700 • email: circulation@businessreport.com

Volume 41 - Number 12

INTRODUCING...

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This combination creates positive impacts for both firms by expanding EisnerAmper's reach into the Gulf Coast region and providing a platform for P&N's continued growth on a larger geographic scale. Clients can look forward to working with familiar faces backed by new and innovative services and the support of a global business advisory firm.

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5 THINGS to watch this month

BY DEANNA B. NARVESON

WHAT ARE THE ups and downs of being an entrepreneur? How do you secure sufficient capital in the startup phase? And what’s the secret to business development? NRK Construction founder and owner Norisha Kirts Glover will share her insights and more on the July episode of Strictly Business. The webcast will air at 11 a.m. July 19. Register at strictlybusiness. businessreport.com/ and get more information at Businessreport.com/events

GET TO KNOW new people in the Baton Rouge business community at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s upcoming happy hour at Southern Pearl Oyster House on July 12. The networking event starts at 4:30 p.m. and will feature small bites and cocktails. Tickets are free for BRAC investors and $25 for non-investors. Get more information at BRAC.org/events

4

HOW DO YOU identify top talent? How do you get them on board once you’ve found a great candidate? The Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors’ Career Visioning workshop on July 26 featuring guest presenter Jonathan Dupree aims to help real estate professionals perfect their recruiting and hiring process. The $99 workshop will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Get more information at bit.ly/CareerGBRAR

225 TRADE, a local network of more than 800 small businesses, is hosting its monthly networking event July 13 at 5:30 p.m. The free event will feature food and drinks catered by Rice & Roux and a chance to get to know area business owners. Get more information at 225Trade.org

BATON ROUGE’S LARGEST young professional leadership organization, Forum 225, is holding its monthly social July 11 at Sugarfield Spirits in Gonzales. The event is a good opportunity for young professionals to check out Forum 225 in a casual setting—and try some of Sugarfield’s specialty liqueurs. RSVP at Forum225.org

COLLIN RICHIE ISTOCK

Develop a more connected team

IF YOU WANT a committed team, you must have a connected team. Connection leads to commitment. But connection doesn’t happen by accident. Teams don’t magically form bonds that help them overcome crushing defeats or heartbreaking setbacks. And while connecting members of a team has always been difficult, it might be even more difficult in today’s world of endless virtual connection.

From sports teams to school and business teams, most don’t make the time to invest in relationships and team building. Thy work on their individual responsibilities and growth but too often fail to develop the chemistry and relationships that truly build great teams.

team in a deep and powerful way.

2. Share a defining moment. Stand in a circle or sit at round tables and have each team member share the story of a definig moment in their life, one that helped them become who they are today. When you do this, you’ll learn things you never knew before. Immediately, you’ll know your team members a whole lot better and feel more connected to them.

5. The Hard Hat. As a team, discuss and identify the characteristics of a great team member. What does it mean to be a great team member? Write all the characteristics on a board, or wall. Have each person choose the one that resonates most with them and share with the group how they will be a great team member. Visit HardHat21.com for 21 ways to be a great teammate.

JON GORDON is a top speaker and bestselling author of multiple books including The Energy Bus, The Power of Positive Leadership and The Power of a Positive Team. His clients include Campbell’s Soup, Dell, Publix, Southwest Airlines, Snapchat and Truist Bank as well sports teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Rams. Connect with him at www.JonGordon.com.

Positive, high-performing teams are built and developed through great communication, shared experiences, positive interactions, common challenges, and vulnerable storytelling that connect people at a deeper level.

Below are a few of my favorite team-building exercises to create more connection and commitment. Please know that it’s always a little awkward at fist for any of these exercises. Many people are not used to being vulnerable. But I’ve found that after the fist few people, the energy shifts quickly:

1. If you really knew me. If you really knew me, you would know this about me …. I took a leadership team through this exercise and, at fist, members shared very shallow comments like “you would know that I’m very generous and wonderful.” But after challenging them to go deeper and share something vulnerable about themselves, they started sharing meaningful stories and feelings that connected the

3. The Safe Seat. Dabo Swinney, the Clemson football head coach, told me about a stool his friend brought him from a remote fising village. He said guys would sit on these stools in a circle and talk about life, family, fishig, and so on. It gave Swinney the Safe Seat idea. He placed the stool in the team meeting room and after each practice a diffeent teammate sat on it while the team gathered around in a circle. Thecoach then asked the player questions about his life, family and a definig moment. When done, the rest of the team could ask questions. Whatever was shared would not leave the room. As each teammate took their turn in the Safe Seat, the players began to know each other much better, and Swinney says it was a big factor in his team’s rise to success.

4. The Triple H: hero, highlight, hardship. Each person talks about one of their heroes and shares why they admire them, then shares a positive highlight as well as a hardship from their past. TheRichmond Football Club won the AFL (Australian rules football) championship for the fist time in 36 years and the team credits this exercise for developing the trust, connection and commitment that led to its incredible season.

6. One word. Have each team member choose one word that will help drive them to be their best and bring out the best in others. You may choose a word such as connect, commit, serve, give, help, care, love, tough, relentless, excellence, selfles and so on. Thenhave each team member share their word with the team and explain why they chose it.

7. Ten questions. Make up a list of 10 questions and have each person pair up with a diffeent team member, ask each other the questions and share their answers. Thi will help you get to know your team members and become more connected.

8. Game dynamics. Steve Shenbaum has created an entire business where he helps executives, military members, athletes and teams improve through game dynamics. Shenbaum has teams play games rooted in competition and humor. He says the experience of doing something unfamiliar (like having three people form the shape of an elephant) together while competing and laughing really bonds a team together.

Share these exercises with your team, discuss what you need to do to be a great team and then take action together.

Partner with EBR Schools to o er high school seniors paid internships in their career of interest.

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Feedback is necessary for growth

WHEN WAS THE last time you received feedback? What did you do?

I recommend asking those questions of yourself, of people you may be developing, and of those you want to hire.

When I ask myself (or others) these questions, the answers I’m looking for are a) recently, preferably today or yesterday, b) I course-corrected; I implemented at least a part of what I heard.

With encouragement, most people can give some specificsabout the nature of the feedback they recently received and the action they took in response. But some people can’t remember when they last received feedback or how they responded to it. Thisis a red flag. It suggests they don’t listen to others who give them input, don’t respect the input, don’t respect the ideas or feelings of other people, or some combination of these. Thy are closed to their own improvement, and perhaps respond to feedback with defensiveness, counterattacks, or retribution. Unless an idea for improvement originates within themselves, they will never change.

If, however, someone has received feedback in the recent past and took notice to remember it, it probably means they receive feedback regularly. Thisindicates they are open to feedback. Thoe who care about them know they will listen. Theircolleagues don’t fear getting a negative, defensive reaction to their input and know there won’t be any retaliation.

Feedback is hard for all of us. It’s always uncomfortable to have my colleagues tell me that something I do is being misperceived, that I have offendd, or that something I do could be improved. Everyone has an ego, an identity which, when

challenged, can leave us feeling like we are in free fall. Who am I if I’m not who I think I am? And feedback is, at its most fundamental, an invitation not to be who I am today. Theprice of a new, better self is my old self. Paying it is personal disruption.

I encourage my team members to give me feedback, and you, no matter what level of an organization you are at, should as well. But because feedback makes us uncomfortable when we receive it, it is difficult for other people to give it to us. Most people don’t want to stir the pot with their team members or their boss. In fact, we are only moderately comfortable giving feedback to people we consider our subordinates. Thee natural inhibitions can create power struggles and dysfunction in the workplace. We counteract this when we encourage others all around us in the real or perceived hierarchy to give feedback.

I’m not just talking about negative feedback—what we could start or should stop doing.

We can be equally impervious to, or reluctant to receive, positive feedback. We can be very awkward at receiving compliments. We are embarrassed or anxious to be humble or at least appear to be humble. Thee complicated emotions often lead us to discount or ignore positive feedback. But we improve and grow more rapidly if we play to our strengths. Being receptive to positive feedback increases our awareness of what we do well and helps us play to our strengths deliberately, with consciousness of our own power.

To grow into our potential, we need feedback. We need to be reminded regularly of what we are

doing well—and acknowledge what we do well—so we can consciously do more of it. We need to know what we aren’t doing well, so we can adjust and course-correct. Thefastest way to get the information we need to grow is for people around us to tell us. If no one shares their observations or responses to us or our work, or we ignore them when they do, our growth will be stunted.

When we do not receive feedback directly from others, we often must learn from trial and error, from failing. Thugh failure is painful to us, it is a very direct form of feedback. What we are doing doesn’t work and we must change.

I love these insights from Napoleon Hill.

1. Every adversity brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage.

2. Failure is a man-made circumstance; it is never real until it is accepted by us as permanent.

3. Failure is a climax in which one has the privilege of clearing the mind of fear and making a new start in a diffeent direction.

Like feedback given to us by other people, we can embrace the learning experience of failure, or we can avoid attempting things we fear might result in failure. But avoidance means also rejecting important opportunities for personal growth.

When was the last time you received feedback? And what did you do? What might you do differently next time? Don’t sit back, passively hoping you will receive the feedback that you need to grow. Embrace the discomfort. Take the risk and ask for feedback. And then adjust accordingly and grow faster than ever before.

WHITNEY JOHNSON is CEO of leadership development company Disruption Advisors and has 1.8 million followers on LinkedIn. You can reach her at whitney@ thedisruptionavisors.com.

FROM humble beginnings around a ping-pong table in 1973

TO being recognized as a Top Ten Company in the Business Report’s Top 100 Private Companies ranking 50 years later.

“LONG-TERM, COMMITTED EMPLOYEES ARE THE KEY TO OUR SUCCESS”

We’re celebrating 50 years of excellence in construction and giving back to the communities we serve. Our success will endure as long as we continue

to live by our Core Values and Beliefs.

NEWTON THOMAS FOUNDER & OWNER, THE NEWTRON GROUP

ONE GREAT COMPANY. TWO GREAT BRANDS.

How LSU contributes to economic prosperity

WHEN ROBERT TWILLEY was appointed to lead LSU’s Officof Research and Economic Development in April, President William Tate called the position “critical” to the university’s $6.1 billion annual economic impact on Louisiana. Although his role as LSU’s chief research officemay sound like a purely academic gig, it is every bit as critical to the state and the region as Tate describes it.

Twilley sees himself fist and foremost as a coastal scientist. He joined LSU in 2004, when he was hired as director of the university’s Wetland Biochemistry Institute. He jokes that back then he “built wetlands for the sake of building wetlands.” However, his

career changed dramatically one year later, when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. While working on the team that wrote Louisiana’s fist Coastal Master Plan, he says that he spent a lot of his time thinking strategically about wetlands as a protection system for the community. That experience gave him a greater appreciation for the magnitude of the impact that research can have on the community—a lesson that has shaped his career ever since.

His task now is to use his rare perspective to boost LSU’s impact on the state and region, and there are three key areas where he intends to do that.

1Training a skilled workforce. Universities train students to become skilled workers, which Twilley says is probably the most recognizable way universities directly contribute to economic development. As Louisiana’s flagship, LSU educates the next generation of teachers, doctors, lawyers, scientists and engineers. And because most graduates go on to join industry, he says his office invests heavily in preparing students to become successful in the commercial sector, which will continue to be a priority under his watch.

2Universities take risks businesses can’t afford. The kinds of fundamental research that universities are able to support would be considered far too risky to receive funding in the private sector. Without the fear of organizational failure—the university won’t collapse or be forced into bankruptcy if a research project doesn’t yield results—researchers are able to be more creative in their problem-solving. Twilley says it’s impossible to know which research proposals will work out and which ones will not, but the ones that succeed make the juice worth the squeeze.

3Being an honest broker of the truth. Academic research is fundamentally geared toward solving problems, Twilley says. As a public institution, he believes the university needs to be outward facing and available so the fruits of its research can go toward solving the biggest problems affecting the community.

Robert Twilley is vice president for research and economic development for LSU.

DON KADAIR

What is mindfulness, and how can you incorporate practices that benefit you & your employees?

In the hustle and bustle of today’s world, it can be nearly impossible to clear your mind completely and focus on the tasks at hand. Mindfulness can look different for everyone, but at its core, it’s the simple concept of completely focusing on the present moment without dwelling on or reacting to your wandering thoughts.

Incorporating mindfulness practices can lead to a healthier, more productive workforce and a better office culture, according to East Baton Rouge Parish Library Assistant Director Mary Stein. “Let’s all agree that it’s been a rough couple of years,” Stein says. “There are tools that the Library has, either micro-courses or full-length courses, that can help a manager create a more agreeable workforce and a more mindful place to work.”

East Baton Rouge Parish Library patrons have access to free courses through the Library’s subscriptions to LinkedIn Learning, Gale Presents: Udemy and Accel 5. The Library’s staff has selected several of them as a starting point for your mindfulness practice. Find these in the Digital Library at EBRPL.com.

ONLINE COURSES TO TRY

LINKEDIN

THE HEADSPACE GUIDE TO MINDFUL WORKDAYS

This course offers a mix of video and audio exercises designed to help you stay connected as you prep for the day, switch into “work mode,” and stay in the zone through closing time. Unplug at the end of the day and turn your commute into valuable me-time.

DRIVING WORKPLACE HAPPINESS

Part of building engagement is creating opportunities for employees to feel happy— because happy employees are more productive employees. Learn what makes people happy at work and how investing a small amount in workplace happiness can make a big impact on your company culture and your bottom line.

HOW MANAGERS CREATE A CULTURE OF BELONGING

Research shows that when individuals feel a sense of belonging at work, there is a 56 percent increase in job performance. This course helps you define

what belonging means to you and how you can create belonging for yourself and others at your organization.

BE THE MANAGER PEOPLE WON’T LEAVE

With the “Great Reshuffle,” employees are quitting their jobs at the highest rates in over 20 years, and 41 percent of the global workforce is considering leaving their jobs. Manager relationships are becoming the make-or-break point for whether employees stay or go.

GALE PRESENTS: UDEMY

MINDFULNESS FOR BUSINESS

Are you a leader who is struggling to conquer your critical inner voice? Is it becoming increasingly difficult to manage intrusive thoughts and stay focused on obligations? Mindful Business Leadership is a sciencebased program that combines elements of self-awareness, neuroscientific advances and positive psychology.

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP: BRING YOUR WHOLE SELF TO WORK

In today’s work environment, the lines between our professional and personal lives are blurred

more than ever before. Whatever is happening to us outside of our workplace – whether stressful, painful or joyful – follows us into work as well. We may think we have to keep these realities under wraps. However, we can work better, lead successfully and be more engaged and inspiring if we show up fully and authentically.

WORKPLACE MENTAL HEALTH: A MANAGER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE

There’s lots of management training out there, but so little of it focuses on the one thing that would really make a difference to you and your team - and that’s mental health. It’s in the media every day. But you don’t need to read the news to know that mental health at work isn’t as good as it could be.

ACCEL5

Accel5 helps you develop critical skills in minutes. Book summaries and expert videos on topics such as leadership, problem solving, effective presentations and hundreds of others will help accelerate your career and be more successful at work and in life.

How can companies better protect themselves from cyber threats

Last month’s cyberattack on MOVEit, a third-party tool used to transfer large files, compromised some 6 million records at the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, highlighting the importance for businesses and consumers to vet their third-party service providers for cybersecurity and protection. RUDY HIRSCHHEIM, the Ourso Family distinguished professor of information systems in the E.J. Ourso College of Business at LSU, says the attack on the OMV spotlights how variant and common cyberattacks are becoming.

Here are a few tips from Hirschheim on how to protect your business:

KEEP SOFTWARE UP TO DATE. Most operating systems offer regular updates, which Hirschheim says are usually security patches. Update your software and operating systems as soon as security patches become available to keep your systems protected.

INSTALL ANTIVIRAL, ANTIMALWARE AND FIREWALL SOFTWARE. “Most large companies have this in place, but I’m not sure if small businesses recognize their importance. Even small businesses need to have good quality antiviral, antimalware and firewall software installed to protect the company.”

EDUCATION IS KEY. “A lot of people find cybersecurity a pain in the neck because they don’t understand how dangerous these attacks are. We need to spend time training people to better understand phishing attempts, malware and other threats that come in via email and web searching.

1 2 3 4

BE PREPARED IN CASE YOU ARE HACKED.

Expert Cancer Care Close to Home

Ochsner Health and MD Anderson Cancer Center have clinically integrated to provide advanced cancer care, right here in Louisiana. That means access to life-saving clinical trials for innovative therapies, more specialists and more resources for our patients. Through this collaboration, Ochsner is the first and only provider in Louisiana with a fully integrated cancer program based on MD Anderson Cancer Center’s standards and treatment plans. Learn more at ochsner.org/EndCancer.

Lindsey Fauveau, MD Surgical Oncology

Ochsner MD Anderson Cancer Center at Ochsner Cancer Center – Baton Rouge Ochsner MD Anderson Cancer Center at Ochsner Medical Complex – The Grove

AMERICANA ROUZAN MATERRA

CANCER CARE SHAKE-UP

THE NEWS: In the latest seismic health care shift, Ochsner announced a partnership with MD Anderson that will first roll out in Baton Rouge.

WHY IT MATTERS: The MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, recognized as a national leader in care, sees more patients from Louisiana than from any other state besides Texas and the partnership gives Ochsner a boost in what’s developing into something of a cancer care battle in Baton Rouge.

BIG CHANGES: This development comes on the heels of 1) a split between Our Lady of the Lake and

Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, 2) OLOL’s investment in a $100 million cancer center and a partnership with New Orleans-based LCMC and LSU in a quest to establish the state’s first National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, and 3) Mary Bird teaming with Baton Rouge General and affiliating with OneOncology, a Nashville-based network of independent oncology

practices. Also: the Ochsner Cancer Center–Baton Rouge is currently in the last phase of its $10 million expansion.

BOTTOM LINE: The maneuvering will undoubtedly lead to improved quality of treatment, along with research opportunities, as Baton Rouge is fast becoming the state’s cancer care leader.

$1.5 MILLION

Grant awarded to LSU from the National Security Agency to build the LSU Cybersecurity Clinic, an initiative aimed at protecting small businesses from cyberattacks. The LCC will provide technical support through applied solutions and will also give engineering and business students at the university exposure to reallife cybersecurity problems

A rewritten and updated version of the business classic from 15 years Getting Things Done, by bestselling author David Allen, teaches us how to transform the way we work—and live—through de-stressing and organization. His key: a relaxed mind. This new version has fresh perspectives but holds true to the core “GTD” principles of approaching professional and personal tasks.

DIGIT

DON KADAIR

“The key to being a successful entrepreneur is relentless resourcefulness.”

JENNI PETERS, owner of Varsity Sports Running

COLLIN RICHIE

SURVEY SAYS…

Released annually by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at LSUs Manship School of Mass Communication, the Louisiana Survey gauges public opinion in the state and sets benchmarks in residents’ assessments of state government services. Here are highlights from the 2023 report:

53.5

The consumer sentiment index in Louisiana— which measures changes in the economic outlook—a slight improvement over 50.3 in 2022.

63.5

Consumer sentiment index for the U.S. as a whole.

28%

Named as the No. 1 concern by 19% of respondents, topping all other issues.

17%

Percentage who reported their homeowners insurance provider canceled their policy last year

19%

Percentage who tried to get a new homeowners insurance policy last year, of which 55% had difficulty obtaining one.

Percentage of respondents who say they are either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” in state government to address pressing problems.

70%

Percentage of respondents who support legally allowing people to possess small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, up from the 42% in 2013.

LIFE ISsweet

For life’s moments, big and small. We’re here with the strength of the cross, the protection of the shield. The Right Card. The Right Care.

Affordable, quality office furniture & unmatched service.

COMMUNITY COFFEE is partnering with Yellowstone actor and Texas ranch owner Taylor Sheridan to launch the Bosque Ranch Craft Coffee brand. Named after Sheridan’s ranch and equine facility, the collection of whole-bean, ground and single-serve coffees is designed for those looking to get their “cowboy way of life” on.

It’s been a minute, but work finally began in late June on the $32 million first phase of the UNIVERSITY LAKES PROJECT. The heavy lifting of removing debris and tree stumps from City Park Lake and the smaller Lake Erie begins this month. The project includes dredging and deepening the lakes to amend their flow and water quality, and adding pedestrian paths and other enhancements to improve the user experience. Phase one will also see the connecting of the systems two biggest lakes: City Park and University lakes

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has launched the GIVING STORE, a tool enabling civic-minded people to more easily connect with nonprofits and causes they care about. Donors can browse a list of active fundraising campaigns submitted by nonprofits to ensure they are supporting specific, real-time needs of nonprofits with donations processed through the platform. Learn more at braf.org/ nonprofits or visit braf.org/givingstore

NEWS FLASH

FLASH

LOUISIANA’S LARGEST CANCER CARE ORGANIZATION

ROCKNE HYMEL, M.D.

CHAMPIONS

Lucky No. 7

AT A COLLEGE WORLD SERIES

that had a little bit of everything— including a record number of Jell-O shots by Tiger fans—Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews and the rest of the LSU baseball team won a seventh national title, second behind only USC’s 12. The Tigers knocked off the tournament’s top two seeds (Wake Forest and Florida), earning the championship with clutch pitching, an incredible defensive play by first baseman Tré Morgan in a do-or-die nail-biter against Wake and some timely gorilla ball at the plate. Jay Johnson led the team to the title in his second season as head coach. Ironically, LSU women’s basketball won the natty earlier this year in Kim Mulkey‘s second season. For those keeping score, Brian Kelly starts his second campaign with Tiger football team later this fall.

Dustin Butler and Jonathan Walker

DUSTIN BUTLER AND Jonathan Walker see themselves as problem-solvers. Whenever a demolition company or a contractor comes across a problem—such as concrete piles in the foundation— during construction, they can be called upon to develop a solution and help execute it. The pair were roommates when Butler got the idea to start his own specialty construction services company. Butler was working in civil engineering when he discovered a need for a company that could provide pile driving services, a niche service that many construction companies don’t offer. The pair launched DarkHorse Industries in 2014 when Butler developed the company’s first patent to help efficiently cut pilings. A job at the New Orleans airport in 2016 led Butler to update their first machine, which boosted the company’s capabilities to cut more than 100 pilings per day.

1 toKeySuccess

Butler and Walker diversified DarkHorse’s offerings in 2019 to include general concrete cutting as well as other specialized services, which they credit for stabilizing the workload as well as expanding their client base. The changes paid off—DarkHorse saw its revenues jump 250% from 2018 to 2019, and 343% from 2019 to 2020. In 2021, DarkHorse topped the LSU100 list with its growth. “What we learned is that you just can’t do one thing or you’ll be vulnerable to cyclical ups and downs of the market,” Butler says. While 90% of the company’s business is conducted between Galveston, Texas, and Biloxi, Mississippi, the pair say they bid on projects across the country and have worked jobs in Philadelphia and Virginia. This year, DarkHorse expanded into offshore work and looks to keep growing its brand and name recognition in the South.

—By Holly Duchmann • Photography by Collin Richie

“When you start a business, be cognizant of the person you are—but also of the person you are going to be in 10 years Build a business that will fit into the life you’ll be living in the future.”

—Jonathan

Walker (left)

Meet Dani Cobb, MD

After an appointment with Dani Cobb, MD FACS, you’re likely to leave with a recipe for a nutritious protein shake or recommendations for which multivitamins to try — not just an understanding of your treatment plan.

She’s interested in caring for the whole patient along with the hernias or other surgery needs she specializes in. And that includes ways to improve your nutrition, help you quit smoking and other suggestions that will boost your overall health.

“A lot of my patients are very active individuals who have active jobs and hobbies,” Dr. Cobb says. “It’s important for them to get back to that faster and have less down time.”

Dr. Cobb joined the Surgeons Group of Baton Rouge at Our Lady of the Lake Health in December 2022 as a general surgeon.

Originally from Houma, Dr. Cobb received her bachelor of science in biology from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and a medical degree at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. She is Board Certified by the American Board of Surgery and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

She also spent much of her residency at Our Lady of the Lake, making Baton Rouge familiar ground for Dr. Cobb.

Her main specialties are abdominal and hernia surgeries, and she has a special interest in treating women who develop hernias after pregnancy.

Excellence in Hernia Care

Dr. Cobb joins a team of specialized surgeons who can provide treatment for the toughest hernia cases, even for patients who have had hernia surgery before.

The team is trained in robotic surgery as well as laparoscopic, minimally invasive and incisionless surgery, providing a full scope of services to hernia patients.

Through her practice, Dr. Cobb developed an interest in research around hernias in women after pregnancy. In other countries, she says, it’s mandatory to provide a physical therapy referral to new moms to help them deal with the bulging and stretching of muscles that can happen during pregnancy.

As a new mom, Dr. Cobb experienced this herself. She developed a condition called diastasis recti, where the ab muscles separate during pregnancy from being stretched. It can make the belly stick out for months or even years after giving birth. Diastasis can be repaired

through physical therapy and targeted exercises, which Dr. Cobb sought out on her own.

She says the experience was “eye-opening” to her about the need to educate women and provide them with the necessary resources for physical therapy postpartum.

When it comes to the more serious treatment of hernias and other abdominal conditions through surgery, Dr. Cobb aims to talk the patient through the process and understand the outcomes they want to see with treatment.

“I always ask patients what they do for a living and what they like to do for fun — if it’s working out or swimming or things like that. I want to get them back to the lifestyle they are accustomed to,” she says.

A Runner at Heart

When she’s not busy with patients, educating future surgeons through the LSU Health Baton Rouge Surgical Center, or spending time with her radiologist husband and their toddler, you might just find Dr. Cobb running the LSU Lakes.

She was an avid runner in high school and college, participating in crosscountry and track. And she continues to run today, including recently participating in the Our Lady of the Lake Tiger 10K.

She’s also an avid golfer. Dr. Cobb clearly practices what she preaches when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and it’s a practice she hopes to instill in her patients, as well.

Caring for the whole patient is also part of what attracted her to returning to Our Lady of the Lake.

“I think having that mission statement of being a Catholic hospital — it’s about treating them like family. We truly involve the whole patient,” she says. “Our patient satisfaction always really impressed me and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come back.”

Learn more about our surgeons and Our Lady of the Lake Robotic Surgery Institute at ololrmc.com/robotics.

Blue Plate Mayonnaise Logo Redesign

A LOUISIANA KITCHEN staple, Blue Plate Mayonnaise was founded in Gretna in 1927 as one of the nation’s fist packaged mayonnaise brands. Theoriginal logo was inspired by the iconic blue-and-white Willow Ware plates, designed in England with Chinese symbolism. In 1941, Blue Plate moved its production to the Mid City neighborhood in New Orleans and

the brand grew to be carried across the nation. Reily Foods Company—which also owns Luzianne coffe and tea brands and French Market Coffe—bought the mayonnaise brand in 1974 and now produces it in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Over the years, the logo was changed to feature a more simple bearing of the Blue Plate

name, with the Willow Ware plate minimized in the logo. Now over 100 years old, Blue Plate’s owners reached out to Baton Rougebased design fim Tilt last year for a makeover of its logo, which was recently unveiled.  Here’s a few highlights of the redesign from Scott Hodgin, partner of TILT and head designer on the project:

WHY REBRAND?

KEY ELEMENTS

• Pelican

• Mississippi River

• Steamboat

• Magnolia tree

SPREADING THE NUMBERS

6 Months it took to redesign the logo

8

Number of logos that made it through the first round of consideration

20

Number of mock designs created

INSPIRATION

The original blue-and-white porcelain Willow Ware plates were produced in England in the late 1700s and displayed scenery associated with a forbidden love story. The original design features pagodas, a man in a boat, a weeping willow tree and a pair of birds.

FINE PRINT

The font chosen for the new logo matches the font on the Blue Plate Building in New Orleans. Built in 1941 as a mayonnaise factory, the building was redeveloped in 2012 as an apartment community for local artists.

“Blue Plate felt the history of the brand … was important and they sort of got out of touch with those roots over the years—the brand impression didn’t match the high quality on the inside. They felt that a realignment with those roots and attention to detail would help boost the brand.”

—SCOTT HODGIN

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF THE IRENE W. PENNINGTON PLANETARIUM

Introducing Our 2023 “Stars of BR” Honorees

In recognition of the Irene W. Pennington Planetarium's 20th Anniversary, LASM will celebrate twenty inspiring "Stars of BR” from the capital region who are shining brightly in our community through their work, which represents the interface where STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) seamlessly converge with Philanthropy, Healthcare, Sports, Entrepreneurship, & Education to enhance our community & drive innovation.

ENHANCING OUR COMMUNITY & DRIVING INNOVATION, LASM'S 2023 "STARS OF BR" HONOREES ARE:

SCIENCE

Cynthia Peterson, PhD

Nathan Lord, PhD

TECHNOLOGY

Astronaut Dr. Serena Auñón-Chancellor

Ross Reilly

ENGINEERING

Jaime Glas

Stokka Brown

ART

Ann Connelly

Leonard Augustus

MATHEMATICS

Kim Hunter-Reed, PhD

Gary Phillips

SPORTS

Kim Mulkey

Joe Kirk

PHILANTHROPY

Cary Saurage

HEALTHCARE

Kathy Fletcher Victorian

Dr. Henry Barham

EDUCATION

First Lady Donna Edwards

Rhoman Hardy

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Norisha Kirts Glover

Brandon Landry

And celebrating our "Astronomical Star of BR" for her philanthropic contributions to STEAM: Paula Pennington de la Bretonne

Thank You to Our Sponsors

LASM's 38th Annual Gala is Generously Sponsored By:

The Dudley W. Coates Family

Honoring Paula Pennington de la Bretonne, Claude Pennington, and Daryl Pennington. All funds raised in 2023 directly support renovations to transform the museum's hands-on galleries into interactive STEAM-based spaces.

JCW Creative

BY HOLLY DUCHMANN

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM MUELLER

Owner: John Christian Williams

Architect: Jeffrey LaRosa

Contractor: Centurion Construction

Management

Cost: $1.4 million

Date completed: March 2022

Use: Headquarters

“We bought the building, originally designed by A. Hays Town, wanting to move and be a part of Mid City. We wanted to bring the outside—Mid City—into the space and bring the inside—our team—out into Mid City. Our whole team is in a large central space that’s surrounded by smaller collaboration spaces and private offices. We wanted to give people an outlet to collaborate privately or as a team.”

—John Christian Williams, CEO and strategist, JCW Creative

To see more photos, please go to BusinessReport.com

BERNHARD NORMAND CONSTRUCTION

Bernhard Normand Construction builds exceptional homes in Baton Rouge and surrounding parishes. We are dedicated to creating a streamlined construction processs for our clients. From budgeting and planning to installation and delivery, our custom homes ensure 100% satisfaction. Call us today to make your dream home a reality.

Issue Date: July 2023 Ad2 proof #6

• Please respond by e-mail or phone with your approval or minor revisions.

• AD WILL RUN AS IS unless approval or final revisions are received within 24 hrs from receipt of this proof. A shorter timeframe will apply for tight deadlines.

• Additional revisions must be requested and may be subject to production fees.

We are excited to celebrate the accomplishments of our team within the Greater Baton Rouge Community and the Gulf South Region. Without the hard work of our employees and the valued clients that put their trust in us every day, this would not be achievable.

HOW WE DO IT

Announcements and emails are sent out in the spring to all companies on our recent Top 100 lists, as well as to those identified as possible qualifiers and those suggested by readers. We also placed notices on our websites, asking companies to post their information or submit it to us. We followed up with emails, phone calls and research to confirm the data. In some cases we looked at related industry performance reports and other business compilations to estimate revenue.

Some companies declined to reveal their numbers, so we relied on public information and sources to make reasonable estimates. Those companies are denoted in the list’s footnotes. Companies were ranked according to their reported or estimated revenue for the most recently completed fiscal year, which in most cases was the calendar year 2022. If your company wants to submit for next year’s list, email research@businessreport.com for more information.

Top 100 private companies

9 17

W. El Cajon Drive, Baton Rouge 70815

| thenewtrongroup.com

Welding and Turnarounds LLC 40492 Cannon Road, Gonzales 70737 225-644-1200 | swatservice.com

10 13

Finance LLC 7031 Commerce Circle, Baton Rouge 70809 225-927-0005 | republicfinance.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023. Researched by Alaine

TELL YOUR TRUTH

We empower brands to connect people to what they need, want and love.

TM

MEDIA PLANNING + BUYING

DIGITAL MARKETING + CONTENT

SOCIAL MEDIA + INFLUENCER

RESEARCH + STRATEGY

BRANDING + DESIGN

CREATIVE + PRODUCTION

PUBLIC RELATIONS + ACTIVATIONS

WEBSITE DESIGN + DEVELOPMENT

ANALYTICS + REPORTING

SO LONG, FAREWELL…

The acquisition of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana by Indianapolis-based Elevance Health—in a deal expected to finalize later this year—means there will be a new No. 1 on next year’s Top 100 Private Companies list. The health insurance giant has held the top spot every year except one (1997) since first entering the rankings in 1994. Though Blue Cross will remain the state’s dominant health insurance provider, the fact that the company will soon be headquartered in Indiana makes it ineligible for the Top 100. It was, however, quite a run. Another longtime Top 100 company making its final appearance is Postlethwaite & Netterville APAC, acquired in April by New York-based EisnerAmber.

Top 100 private companies

20 28

Blvd., Baton Rouge 70806 225-926-4600 | gerrylane.com

DEMCO 16262 Wax Road, Greenwell Springs 70739 844-693-3626 | 844-693-3626 | demco.org

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) D&B Hoovers (2) Estimate

Researched by Alaine Keisling

192.97%

BUILDING SOMETHING BIG

Genesis 360 LLC, the fast-growing maintenance and construction company owned by Craig Stevens, is the biggest gainer on this year’s list, increasing year-over revenue 192.97% to $25.85 million in 2022. Stevens, an Air Force veteran and former Circle K employee, started Genesis 360 as a side hustle parking lot striping company in 2011. It’s been a story of rapid growth since focusing full-time on the business in 2014, being named Company of the Year by Business Report in 2022 and earning a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies, posting 351% revenue growth from 2018 to 2021.

Top 100 private companies

Baton Rouge 70817 2257541200 | brianharrisautogroup.com

33 The Spine Hospital of Louisiana 10105 Park Rowe Circle, Baton Rouge 70810 225-763-9900 | spinehola.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) D&B Hoovers (2) Estimate

and complex spinal surgery; comprehensive pain management

Researched by Alaine Keisling

COLLIN RICHIE

Top 100 private companies

S. Sherwood Forest Blvd., Bldg. 1, Baton Rouge 70816

| 877-752-2359 | celticgroup.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1)

Hoovers (2) Arkel Constructors LLC and Arkel International LLC

Parish

GAINING GROUND

Top 100 companies posting a revenue gain this year grew to 72, up from 60 in 2021, while those showing a decline dropped to 25, from 30 a year ago (three companies posted flat revenues). The average percentage gain among winners was 28.25%, up almost 8 percentage points from 2021’s class, while retreaters saw an average percentage decline of 10.03%, down slightly from a year ago.

Top 100 private companies

to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

1

Proactive Steps for Choosing the Right Accounting Firm

Whether you are hiring an accounting and business consulting firm for the first time or have decided it’s time to change firms, the proactive

Preparing for the Proposal Process

ESTABLISH SELECTION PROCESS OBJECTIVES

The selection process is time-consuming, so begin by gaining agreement across leadership on your company’s goals in seeking a new firm.

DETERMINE SELECTION TEAM, TIMELINE, AND WRITTEN REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) 2

TEAM: Clarify the responsibilities of your selection team, including: development of the RFP and evaluation criteria, identification of potential firms, participation in due diligence interviews, review of proposals and any summary reporting or scoring, and identification of the successful firm.

TIMELINE: Establish a timeline that provides adequate time for each step of the process.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP):

Typical areas to include are:

• Your company background and professional service needs

• Instructions on format and content

• Calendar of important dates, including: available time for onsite meetings, written proposal submission deadline, oral presentations to management and the Board (if applicable), announcement of decision

• Contact information for questions

• Preferred method for delivery of proposals

• Evaluation criteria, including any applicable weighting you have assigned to criteria

steps presented below and in LaPorte CPAs & Business Advisors’ e-book, Make the Switch, can help by providing proven guidelines for working your way through the selection process.

These steps will help you make a wellconsidered and successful decision. For greater detail on the below guidance and advice on easing the transition of your newly selected firm, visit laporte.com/switchbr.

Implementing the Proposal Process

Steps for learning about accounting firms include research, face-to-face interviews, and written proposals.

USE RESEARCH TO NARROW THE FIELD

Conduct due diligence research on appropriate firms. Word-of-mouth recommendations from business associates and reputation within the financial community can also be helpful.

INVITE YOUR A-LIST TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS

By the time you are ready to invite proposals, the field of candidates should be small. If possible, allow firms three to four weeks to provide a thoughtful response. When you review the proposals, pay particular attention to responses related to fee structure, level of partner attention, and other key areas of concern. Compare the proposals to your RFP to be sure that all areas are covered. Finally, consider quality, completeness, and level of detail when you rank the proposals.

IF YOU ARE STILL UNDECIDED, CONSIDER ORAL PRESENTATIONS OR FINAL INTERVIEWS

Some companies value having final candidates make an oral presentation to address any remaining questions. Be sure to give finalists adequate preparation time, outline objectives for the presentation, and provide any specific questions to be addressed.

To avoid making a final decision on fee alone, check references or revisit other important qualifications including industry experience, rapport, and

TOP 100 COMPANIES WITH REVENUE GROWTH OF 25% OR HIGHER IN 2022

34 up from 20 last year

Top 100 private companies

8 Newcomers to this year’s Top 100 list

55

58 50

International LLC dba

Airline Highway, Baton Rouge 70817 225-753-8400 | acurabr.com

59 47

Audio Electronics 18011 Grand Bay Court, Baton Rouge 70809 225-216-7887 |

84

Field Services LLC 35240 Carson Drive, Geismar 70734 225-402-0060 | optimalsvcs.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) Estimate (2) Entered partnership with Chicago-based Kanbrick as of Feb. 28, 2023.

Top 100 private companies

79

There’s only one company that’s earned a spot in the top five of Turner Industries and now , had a run between 1995 and 2021

Baton Rouge 70810

| 800-349-9200 | cmaontheweb.com

Brothers Contracting Co.

Dougherty Drive, Baton Rouge 70805

| barber-brothers.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) Estimate

Roland

FILEPHOTO COLLINRICHIE

(STILL) NOT MANY WOMEN

Among 120 top local executives on the year’s Top 100 list, only nine—or 7.5%—are women. Hardly a number to celebrate, but it is one higher than a year ago even with the departure of Leah Salsbury Duval, who sold her Dodge dealership.

At least the Capital Region could once say it was on par with the rest of the nation … but no more. This year, for the first time, the number of female CEOs on both the Fortune 500 (public companies) and Forbes 500 (private companies) lists surpassed 10%, at 10.4% and 10.6%, respectively. Not great, but at least it’s something.

Top 100 private companies

Here are the women top local executives on this year’s Top 100 list:

• Laurie Lipsey Aronson, chair and CEO, Lipsey’s LLC, #7

• Kristin Wall, president and CEO, Louisiana Workers Compensation Corp. (LWCC), #25

• Polly R. Lemoine, partner, Hollingsworth Richards Automotive Group, #27

• Gaye R. Hollingsworth, partner, Hollingsworth Richards Automotive Group, #27

• Terri L. Hicks, president and CEO, The Spine Hospital of Louisiana, #30

• Jill Savard, CEO, Savard Labor & Marine Inc., #70

• Ann Lightfoot Heine, CEO, Surgical Specialty Center of Baton Rouge, #73

• Sue Anne K. Cox, owner, Kleinpeter Farms Dairy LLC, #85

• Lela Mae Wilkes, owner and CEO, Brown Eagle, #95

70816

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) Estimate (2) Data Axle

Researched by Alaine Keisling

BECAUSE WE ASKED FOR YOURS…

Melara Enterprises LLC publishes Business Report, 225, inRegister and 10/12 Industry Report, the Daily Report AM and Daily Report PM e-newsletters, as well as a variety of other online and contract publications. It also operates Studio E and multiple leadership academies. In 2022, Melara Enterprises' total revenue was $9,842,419, up 16.05% from $8,481,132 in 2021. The company has 57 full-time employees, all working in Baton Rouge at the corporate headquarters on Jefferson Highway. The company is chaired by Julio Melara.

Top 100 private companies

Beaulieu Lane, Port Allen 70767

| 800-749-2636 | westgatellc.com

DBA-doing business asDNR-did not respondNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, Top 100 private companies must have significant presence in the nine-parish Capital Region. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 209 firms will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July 2023.

(1) Estimate

Researched by Alaine Keisling

A Look Back

Top 3 by industry

Hess Crockett General Sales Manager

Nick Pentas General

The Capital Region’s biggest employers

ASCENSION PARISH

EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH

EAST FELICIANA PARISH

IBERVILLE PARISH

LIVINGSTON PARISH

POINTE COUPEE PARISH

ST. HELENA PARISH

WEST BATON ROUGE PARISH

WEST FELICIANA PARISH

Nonprofit organizations

Ranked by total revenue

1 1 Our Lady of the Lake Health 5000 Hennessy Blvd., Baton Rouge 70808 225-765-6565 | ololrmc.com

2 2 Woman's Hospital Foundation 100 Woman's Way, Baton Rouge 70817 225-927-1300 | www.womans.org

3 3 Baton Rouge General 3600 Florida Blvd., Baton Rouge 70806 225-387-7000 | brgeneral.org

4 4 Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System Inc. 4200 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge 70809 225-923-2701 | fmolhs.org

5 5 Provident Resources Group Inc. 5565 Bankers Ave., Baton Rouge 70808 225-766-3977 | provident.org

6 6 General Health System 3600 Florida Blvd., Baton Rouge 70806 225-381-6464 | brgeneral.org

7 8 LSU Foundation 3796 Nicholson Drive, Baton Rouge 70802 225-578-3811 | lsufoundation.org

8 13 Tiger Athletic Foundation LSU-PMAC, North Stadium Drive, Baton Rouge 70803 225-578-4823 | lsutaf.org

9 14 Baton Rouge Area Foundation 402 N. Fourth St., Suite 900, Baton Rouge 70802 225-387-6126 | braf.org

10 9 HIV-AIDS Alliance for Region Two 4550 North Blvd., Suite 250, Baton Rouge 70806 225-927-1269 | haartinc.org

11 11 Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center 4950 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge 70809 225-767-0847 | marybird.org

12 10 Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank 10600 S. Choctaw Drive, Baton Rouge 70815 225-359-9940 | brfoodbank.org

13 15

14 12

15 16

Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University 5414 Brittany Drive, Baton Rouge 70808 225-768-1700 | franu.edu

Foundation for Louisiana Students 3113 Valley Creek Drive, Baton Rouge 70808 225-421-2900 | www.universityview.academy

Community School for Apprenticeship Learning 1555 Madison Ave., Baton Rouge 70802 225-336-1410 | csalcharterschools.org

16 NR Capitol City Family Health Center Inc. dba

Care South 3140 Florida St., P.O. Box 66156, Baton Rouge 70896 225-650-2000

17 17 St. James Place of Baton Rouge 333 Lee Drive, Baton Rouge 70808 225-215-4500 | stjamesplace.org

18 19

Foundation Health Services Inc. P.O. Box 40213, Baton Rouge 70835 225-753-0864 | fhsinc.org

19 NR Alliance Safety Council 10099 N. Reiger Road, Baton Rouge 70809 877-345-1253 | alliancesafetycouncil.org

Charles L. Spicer Jr. President $1.75 billion$1.53 billion13.89%1923

General medical and surgical facility, Level I adult trauma center and Level II pediatric trauma center

Rene Ragas President and CEO $745.05 million$558.14 million33.49%1957Supports Woman's Hospital

Edgardo Tenreiro CEO $567.22 million$467.99 million21.2%1900Hospital

Richard R. Vath President and CEO $303.83 million$591.35 million-48.62%1984Hospital

Steve E. Hicks Chair and CEO $208.28 million$186.72 million11.54%1999

Affordable and workforce housing, senior living, collegiate, capital, health care and governmental facilities

Edgardo Tenreiro CEO $106.14 million$121.91 million-12.93%1945Hospital

Robert M. Stuart President and CEO $72.73 million$64.81 million12.21%1960Provides philanthropic support to LSU

Matthew Borman President and CEO $67.96 million$37.35 million81.94%1983Supports LSU student-athletes

Chris Meyer President and CEO $55.7 million$35.03 million59.01%1964

Timothy Young President and CEO $46.39 million$49.69 million-6.64%1995

Serves fund donors, undertakes projects for civic good and consults local nonprofits

Offers free HIV/STD testing, PrEP/PEP, wellness services and HIV prevention education

Jonas Fontenot President and CEO $42.69 million$38.41 million11.13%1968Cancer care organization

Mike Manning President and CEO $36.8 million$39.28 million-6.32%1998

Tina S. Holland President $34.32 million$24.6 million39.51%1990

Solicits, procures, inventories and warehouses donated food and other products

Small, Catholic, nonprofit institution with a health care emphasis

Quentina Timoll Superintendent $33.2 million$38.27 million-13.24%2009Free, public K-12 online charter school

Dujan Johnson CEO $32.79 million$30.98 million5.84%1997Public charter school

Matthew T. Valliere CEO $29.46 million$25.52 million15.44%1997Health care provider

Dick Wager President and CEO $25.82 million$28.48 million-9.35%1983Continuing care retirement community

Richard T. Daspit President and CEO $22.66 million$24.9 million-8.98%1987

Administrative, consulting, management, financial, IT, and HR services

Kathy Trahan President and CEO $21.86 million$19.95 million9.58%1958Provides occupational safety training programs

*Top local executives are as listed in the most recently available 990 filings with the Internal Revenue Service.DBA-doing business asNA-not availableNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, nonprofits have to have be based in the nine-parish Capital Region and have financial information available. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 21 nonprofits for which we have information will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published in the July issue.

Researched by Alaine Keisling

HIRING EVENTS AND EMPLOYER SERVICES

EmployBR is an integral part of the Workforce Development System designed to provide an effective workforce delivery environment for employers and job seekers.

EMPLOYER BASED TRAINING (EBT)

Designe d to help individuals gain work-related skill s

RECRUITING EVENTS

On and off-site customized events to assist individual employers with current job vacancies. These events can be held in our centers at no cost to you

INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC CAREER FAIRS

EmployBR will host smaller Industry-Specific Career fairs throughout the year focusing on high growth, high demand job opportunities

O

U R T E A M

CANDIDATE SCREENING

Applicant screening and document collection as well as pre-employment assessments and potential applicants

CANDIDATE SEARCH

Online database allows companies to search for qualified candidates based on skill sets needed

JOB OPENINGS

Announcements of current opportunities posted on online job board

Contact us for more information at  business.services@brla.gov

Top Louisiana public companies

9 9

10

11

| 985-892-5521

Wallis Road S., Lafayette 70508 lhcgroup.com | 337-233-1307

| 225-292-2031

S. Service Road E., Ruston 71270 origin.bank | 318-255-2222

Inc.

U.S. 190 W., DeRidder 70634

| 337-463-9052

| 225-248-7600

| 985-384-3060

Holiday Square Blvd., Covington 70433

| 985-335-1500

13 15

400 E. Thomas St., Hammond 70401

| 985-345-7685

14 14

15 16

Kaliste Saloom Road, Lafayette 70508

| 337-237-1960

10500 Coursey Blvd., Baton Rouge 70816

| 225-227-2222

16 12 WAITR Holdings Inc. 214 Jefferson St., Suite 200, Lafayette 70501 investors.waitrapp.com | 337-534-6881

17 17

18 18

19 19

River Bank 5063 Essen Lane, Baton Rouge 70809 redriverbank.net | 225-215-4400

Crafts Inc. 916 S. Burnside Ave., Gonzales 70737 crowncrafts.com | 225-647-9100

Eureka Homestead Bancorp Inc.

1922 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie 70005 eurekahomestead.com | 504-834-0242

NA-not availableNR-not rankedTo be featured in Business Report's Listmakers, public companies must be based in Louisiana and have information available through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Business Report presumes the provided information is accurate. Information about 20 companies will be available to subscribers on our website. To be considered for next year's list, please contact Alaine Keisling at research@businessreport.com. Published July, 2023.

(1) Became CEO on Nov. 1, 2022, and chair on Feb. 1, 2023; previously was executive VP and CFO

(2) Became CEO in May 2022; was president and COO in 2021

Researched by Alaine Keisling

Louisiana public company CEOs

NA-not availableNR-not ranked.To

A chaotic event

Much of what was accomplished, or not, during the legislative session has been overshadowed by the mayhem of its final hours.

BY DAVID JACOBS

BUSTING THE CAP

Lawmakers had about $2.2 billion in extra money, including surplus dollars from last fiscal year and higher-than-expected collections this year, but spending it required lifting state government’s constitutional spending cap. A group of House conservatives resisted doing so and lost, but in the chaotic final moments amid a flurry of last-minute changes, Senate members found themselves voting on a budget they didn’t understand. Days later, longtime budget watchers and even Gov. John Bel Edwards professed that they still didn’t quite know what was in all the big money bills.

CARBON CAPTURE

Edwards and industry leaders want Louisiana to be a leader in the transition to a lowercarbon energy future, and right now those projects often feature a carbon capture element in which greenhouse gases are stored underground rather than being released into the atmosphere. Billions of dollars worth of transitional energy projects are in various stages of planning for the Capital Region. But many critics question the effectiveness and safety of the technology, and several bills were filed seeking to limit carbon capture in some way. Those bills were shot down, while Schexnayder’s House Bill 571 survived. That bill sets up a legal framework for projects, shares revenue with local governments, and keeps Louisiana on the carbon capture train.

THIS YEAR’S REGULAR session likely will be remembered more for its chaotic ending than for anything lawmakers approved. A few key business-backed measures won passage, the business lobby helped beat back attempts to rein in carbon capture and raise the minimum wage, and the Capital Region received some fresh investment. And it’s looking increasingly likely that lawmakers will have to come back to Baton Rouge again this year.

REPUBLICAN INFIGHTING

When one party dominates in a democratically elected government, factions tend to develop within that party. Republicans may not have mattered much in Huey Long’s day, but he still had to worry about the anti-Longs. In today’s Louisiana GOP supermajority, the most conservative members have often found themselves at odds with leadership including House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, who was elected in part with Democrat votes and has been more accommodating to the opposition party than some in his caucus would prefer. After this year’s election, one issue to watch in the next Legislature is whether members go back to their old tradition of letting the (most likely Republican) governor pick their leaders, or retain the newfound independence they established under the Democrat Edwards.

TAX REFORM…SORT OF

Lawmakers approved House Bill 558, another attempt to make it easier for businesses to remit local sales taxes following a failed 2021 ballot initiative. The Louisiana Uniform Local Sales Tax Board is charged with establishing a new system that allows taxpayers to pay state and local sales and use taxes for all of Louisiana’s taxing jurisdictions through a single location. Otherwise, there wasn’t much appetite for a major overhaul in an election year, though lawmakers did try winding down the franchise tax, widely seen as a bad tax that corporations pay for the privilege of being able to do business in the state. Edwards, however, vetoed the bill.

INCENTIVE RENEWALS

Lawmakers took advantage of the fiscal session to extend economic development tools supported by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and others. That includes tax credit programs supporting angel investment, research and development, and film and television.

LIVE EVENTS

BRAC, Visit Baton Rouge and local government officials backed a successful bill calling for a local sales tax rebate on admission to major live music and entertainment events that meet minimum paid attendance requirements in East Baton Rouge Parish, in hopes of attracting more large shows and festivals.

LOCAL PROJECTS

The Raising Cane’s River Center, Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, the allied health facility at the Baton Rouge Community Center, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and Southern University’s STEM complex are among the local entities receiving new state allocations.

MINIMUM WAGE

Gov. Edwards and his allies once again failed to push through a state minimum wage above the federal wage floor of $7.25 an hour. While supporters say the change would increase workforce participation and support the working poor, business advocates argue that making it more expensive to hire entry-level workers would hurt the people the change is supposed to help.

INSURANCE

Lawmakers held a special session this year to approve an incentive fund for attracting more property insurers, in hopes of addressing what many describe as a crisis in the state’s property insurance market. They passed additional measures during the regular session, including multiple bills aimed at fortifying homeowners’ roofs.

EDUCATION

Lawmakers gave teachers a $2,000 temporary pay hike and boosted funding for higher education. They also dedicated $44 million to early childhood education, which advocates say will not come close to meeting the need or even offsetting a federal funding reduction of almost $200 million.

Two measures the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry backed to create education savings accounts—which allow families to spend taxpayer dollars on private education—were shelved.

CULTURE WARS

Though this year’s regular session, like all regular sessions held in oddnumbered years, was nominally focused on fiscal matters, lawmakers also found time to pass a ban on what advocates call gender-affirming care for minors, a Louisiana version of the “don’t say gay” bills approved in other states, and a measure that would require children to get permission to open social media accounts. Measures to add exceptions to Louisiana’s abortion ban, abolish the death penalty, eliminate permit requirements for concealed firearms and ban 18- to 20-year-olds from bars were turned back.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Will there be more sessions this year? Voting rights advocates have urged Edwards to call lawmakers back to craft a second majority-minority congressional district, in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding Alabama’s districts. Edwards says he will veto three antiLGBTQ+ bills, which could spark an override session. And some lawmakers have suggested a special session might be in order to address the regular session’s last-minute budget changes, which included an unexplained $100 million cut to the state health department.

JERAMIAH BLUM KNEW something had to be done. In 2021, MMR Group’s vice president of estimating lost the bulk of his estimating department in one fell swoop when 27 people transferred to the construction field

Blum’s department had traditionally served as a training ground for new estimators and future managers, many of them interns pursuing construction management degrees at LSU or Southeastern Louisiana University. On average, he had been releasing anywhere from six to eight estimators to the field per year, but a pandemic-induced backlog of work had increased the demand to unprecedented levels.

Theresulting void in his department forced Blum to tell the MMR construction team that he could provide only one or two new estimators in the coming year. That’s

Workforce innovations

Contractors

BY SAM BARNES

when he along with estimating manager Matt Jean began brainstorming for a new approach. Ultimately, they decided that the internship program would have to become its own stand-alone entity if they had any hope of meeting future demand.

With that in mind, the contractor created MMR University, an internal learning and development program tailored to augment higher education and professional skill sets over a 2½-year period. Complemented by new classroom facilities at MMR’s Baton Rouge headquarters, MMR-U combines in-person instruction with hands-on lessons, virtual learning opportunities, two summers of field experience and personal mentorship from MMR professionals.

After nearly a year of planning and preparation, MMR launched the pilot program this spring.

INTERNAL APPROACH

MMR took its inspiration from a handful of large international contractors with similar programs, even touring megacontractor Kiewit Corp.’s training facility in Omaha, Nebraska.

“It opened our eyes,” Blum says. “Thee guys are bringing in 800 interns a summer, and they hired

2,500 new employees last year alone. We sat down with them to findout what works, what doesn’t work, etc.”

In February 2022, MMR enlisted the help of Phillip LaFargue and Sarah Broome of LaFargue LLC to design the educational pathway for MMR-U. It was the organizational consultants’ fist time building a training program for a for-profit company, but they approached it much like any other learning program, Broome says. “It was a matter of breaking down the skills and knowledge that needed to be taught, then figuring out how to sequence and teach them in a way that students would both learn and retain the information.”

It took about eight months to develop the program, during which time they met with current and former employees and various department heads to determine the scope of the curriculum and the best way to structure the teaching process.

Theresulting curriculum is organized into three components—an online learning component that provides students with basic knowledge, terms and definition; a classroom component where students work one-on-one or in a group with an instructor; and a hands-on component where students apply what they’ve learned in the field

“Thefist cohort of 14 students began MMR-U this spring,” Blum says. “Thisfall, we’ll bring in another 14 students to bring the total to 28. Then,we hope to ramp it up to 42 interns by fall 2024, all students combined.”

Currently, MMR-U interns are stationed at jobsites across the country as part of their summer fieldplacement. For example, Hayley Macaluso, a construction management senior at LSU, is stationed at the Rio Tinto Kennecott Copper Mine in South Jordan, Utah, where MMR performs service and maintenance. At the same time, she’s taking two online physics classes with the intent of graduating in fall 2024.

Macaluso, who fist heard about MMR-U through LSU’s Construction Student Association, has been pleased with the program so far.

“It’s very intentional,” she says. “Many internships just throw you

DON KADAIR

DRASTIC ACTION: MMR Vice President Jeramiah Blum, talking with students in the company’s Craft Training Center, realized the need for MMR University after the company lost the bulk of its estimating department.

out in the field.Thy use you for three months and you try to learn as much as you can, but you’re teaching yourself most of the time.”

It has been a much diffeent experience at MMR-U. Macaluso began with online courses and then received instructor-led assistance with reading blueprints, estimating, etc. in a classroom.

“Now that I’m out in the field, the drawings have come to life, and it has just been eye opening,” she adds.

Word of the program’s success is spreading.

“We’ve fliped the script,” Blum says. “We used to get 30 resumes for six positions, now we’re getting 150 resumes. We got intentional about what we were doing, and we’re seeing results.”

MMR hopes to eventually increase the educational offeings at MMR-U to include upskilling, specialization, lifelong learning and leadership development, while also expanding geographically to the remainder of its 30 officeacross the U.S.

MAKING AN IMPACT

Labor shortages in construction are nothing new, but they’re expected to only get worse in the coming years. Recent research by Brookings shows that nearly 17 million construction workers in the U.S. are projected to permanently

leave their jobs over the next decade due to a wave of retirements, job transfers and  other labor market shifts.

Filling those positions is going to be tough, Blum says, because many young people simply aren’t interested in construction.

“Fifteen or 20 years ago, I didn’t have to go to a recruiting event,” he adds. “That’s changed over the last few years. Thenew generation is diffeent. Money is down the list for them. Thy want to know that there’s a career path, a work-life balance and an ability to upskill.”

Fred McManus, COO of Brown & Root, is all too familiar with the need for construction workers. He is also sensitive to the need for employment opportunities in the underserved communities of Baton Rouge. Recognizing an opportunity to help address both problems at the same time, McManus flewto Chicago to meet with Corey Brooks, a pastor who is the founder and CEO of Project HOOD Communities Development Corp., a group that seeks to, among other things, place underserved youths and adults into entry-level construction jobs.

Inspired by what he heard, McManus began developing a

similar program in Baton Rouge with the intent of connecting underserved communities with training opportunities at Associated Builders and Contractors–Pelican Chapter. He reached out to several Baton Rouge-area nonprofit groups for help and recruited the assistance of ABC–Pelican Chapter President and CEO David Helveston. He also got the backing of ABC members Performance Contractors and ISC Constructors.

“I wanted to make sure I had support here, and they got totally on board with it,” he says.

In their role, participating organizations such as TheBlack Family Initiative, the Christian Outreach Center and TheLife House in St. James Parish identify and recommend potential candidates for the program.

“Each of these organizations has a work readiness program that prepares them for entry into the workforce,” McManus says. “While diffeent in some ways, these groups are all consistent in that they help those wanting help and they’re faith based.”

Dubbed “Faith Builds,” McManus’ workforce initiative offically launched in January with some 26 students enrolling in the ABC training program, each sponsored by an ABC contractor. McManus says 17 of the students eventually completed the fist semester core curriculum through the National Center for Construction Education & Reacher. In July, they’ll enroll in craft-specificclasses.

“Thoe aren’t bad statistics,” McManus says. “We’re starting to see some success here.”

In the end, the goal of the program is to reduce the strain on struggling communities and simultaneously create a diverse and inclusive talent pipeline for the construction workforce.

HAVING FAITH: Wanting to address employment needs as well as boost underserved communities , Fred McManus, COO of Brown & Root, along with several area nonprofits and the local Associated Builders and Contractors created the Faith Builds initiative, inspired by a similar program in Chicago.

“Thee’s enthusiasm for it, and there’s high demand for jobs in this area,” McManus says. “Thistakes care of two issues … it fillsthose jobs and helps those who really need help.”

Louisiana Office of State Parks is looking for entrepreneurs to establish public-private partnerships.

but attendance fell from around 6,000 per game the fist year to less than 2,000 by the end.

“Thesecond ownership group that came in was not nearly as aggressive in terms of marketing,” Hodes says.

Once the novelty wore off, declining on-ice performance likely also played a role. Theteam made the playoffsin its third, fourth and fift seasons but won just 20 games while suffeing 43 losses in 2002-2003.

Hodes likes to offera diverse array of entertainment at the River Center and says Baton Rouge was the largest U.S. media market without professional sports. He says the region appears to have a “latent hockey community,” a notion the success of the three trial games supports, and says fans came in from all around the state for those games.

Hockey takes another shot

BARRY SOSKIN WAS a hockey player before he got into team ownership, though he doesn’t brag about his skills.

“Talent skips a generation, and my kid’s really good,” he says. “I’m a high school player, and an everything-else wannabe.”

Soskin, who lives in the Chicago area, owns a sporting goods store, holds commercial and residential real estate investments and has started a number of businesses over the years, some more successful than others. He recalls having drinks with his business buddies in 1989 when the idea of buying a sports team came up.

Class A minor league baseball seemed promising at fist, but buying and owning a team seemed too expensive. Soskin was attracted instead to the East Coast Hockey League, in part because the league had a salary cap.

BY DAVID JACOBS

want to see the fights, the hard hits, the creativity and speed. What I want to see, everybody else wants to see, too.”

NEVER STOP SELLING

He says his involvement in the ECHL included a stint on the expansion committee when several teams settled along the Interstate 10 corridor including the Baton Rouge Kingfis, who arrived in 1996 and split in 2003.

“Thy all did great, and they all faded away,” Soskin says.

Soskin is co-owner of the new Baton Rouge professional hockey team, which had not been named by late June. Theminor league expansion team has signed a three-year lease with the Raising Cane’s River Center, and everyone involved hopes the relationship lasts much longer than that.

He has been an owner of various teams over the past 25 years, including the two-time ECHL champion Toledo Storm.

“What I bring to the equation with all these teams is my business sense, and I’m a hockey guy,” Soskin says. “I

In April, Soskin joined Mayor Sharon Weston Broome and Wayne Hodes with ASM Global, which runs the publicly owned River Center, to announce that months of negotiations had concluded in a deal, making the anticipated new team offial.

“Let’s work together to make this a successful venture,” Broome implored.

TheRiver Center previously hosted three games to gauge local interest in the sport. Attendance averaged better than 7,000, even without a hometown rooting interest, beating Hodes’ goal of 5,000. Going forward, Hodes would like to average at least 3,000 or so fans for the 28 regular season home games, and he expects to better that in the fist year.

While neither was involved at the time, through their research, Soskin and Hodes have come to similar conclusions about why the Kingfis didn’t last longer. Theowners made a lot of money after moving the team from Erie, Pennsylvania, before selling it off, Soskin says. Thenew owners seemed to assume people would keep coming in the same numbers,

Hodes says he spoke with multiple leagues to finda good fitand preferred an expansion franchise Baton Rouge could call its own rather than one with ties to another city. Th Federal Prospects Hockey League season runs from October through April, and Hodes made sure any prospective team was willing to be on the road during Mardi Gras season to make room for Carnival-related events, so the home schedule will be front- and back-loaded.

Soskin also is launching a new team in Wytheville, Virginia, and has stakes in teams based in Port Huron, Michigan; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and Biloxi, where the recently reborn Mississippi Sea Wolves provide a natural league rival for Baton Rouge. Soskin and Chris Bryniarski are partners in the Baton Rouge team.

While Soskin expects ticket sales to provide most of his revenue, corporate sponsorships also are crucial. Soskin and Hodes won’t discuss the finepoints of the lease, such as the split on concession sales or whether any sponsorships are off-limits for the team, though the name on the building suggests deals with competing fast-food chains are out. Soskin says the agreement is reasonably fair, especially for a fist contract.

“I’m not in their pocket, they’re not in my pocket,” Soskin says. “If this isn’t a win-win for both parties, it’s not going to work long term.”

He says he is working to build relationships with local business executives and wants his team to be deeply

DON KADAIR

PUCK STOPS HERE: Barry Soskin, owner of the Baton Rouge hockey team , says a passion for the game, coupled with his business sense, will give the team a chance to be success ful on the ice as well as financially

It’s been 20 years since the Kingfish left town but Barry Soskin says he’s got the formula for making minor league hockey a success in Baton Rouge.

embedded in the community.

“I need help getting people in the front door,” he says. “Once they get there, it’s my job to keep them.”

A TOURISM TOOL

Thugh a cold-weather sport played on ice may seem out of place in warm climates, professional hockey teams can be found throughout the Southeast and Southwest. Hockey skeptics often are converted into fans when they see the sport in person, and with minor-league sports, ancillary promotions and experiences are a big part of the draw.

“Thisisn’t as much about hockey as it is about entertainment,” Soskin says.

Sporting events are a key piece of Baton Rouge’s tourism strategy, says Jill Kidder, who leads Visit Baton Rouge.

“We love the fact that we’ve got another sporting event in our toolbox,” she says. “It helps us build that brand.”

Kidder plans to encourage package deals that could include hockey tickets and a hotel room, for example.

Casey Tate, assistant executive director with the Downtown Development District, says the team will add to the activity downtown and boost local tourism, particularly

from visitors within a 30-mile radius, creating additional business for bars, restaurants and hotels.

“I think it’s also great for the people that live downtown, he adds. “You have a real big-city atmosphere when you can attend a professional event, have drinks afterward and walk back to your apartment.”

Brad Watts owns three businesses downtown—Cecelia Creole Bistro, the Loft at Cecelia event space and the River Room bar—so he’s happy about anything that shines a spotlight on downtown.

“Thechallenge for us as business owners is, how do you keep those folks downtown?” he says. “How do you keep them from just coming to the event they’re going to and heading back to wherever they came from?”

Watts says he went to quite a few Kingfishgames and recalls how attendance tailed offtoward the end as the team struggled. Downtown businesses will look for ways to connect with hockey fans who might not know much about what they have to offe, with support from the DDD and the Downtown Business Association.

“Thekey is all working together,” he says, adding that putting a good team on the ice would help.

BIG CROWDS : An average of more than 7,000 fans attended three games held at the Raising Cane’s River Center this past winter in contests meant to gauge local interest in a team.

COLLIN RICHIE

Fighting for relevance

BY WILL SENTELL

THE MALL OF LOUISIANA, the jewel of Baton Rouge retail less than a decade ago, now findsitself in need of a reinvention to keep the sprawling complex relevant to shoppers, local real estate experts say.

“Thee is definiely a trend away from the indoor, climate-controlled malls,” says Michael Budden, Benjamin Jones professor of retail marketing at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Budden and others predict that about half of the nation’s roughly 1,000 indoor malls will be gone in fie years.

One highly visible site on the northeast corner of the Mall of Louisiana illustrates how things are changing. Thespot used to house an H. H. Gregg electronics store. Now the site houses Main Event, an entertainment center dotted with big-screen TV’s, a bar and restaurant, and an endless array of arcade games. Kids pay $17.99 for an hour of bowling and two slices of pizza, and adults can book the place for three hours of corporate events, “team

bonding” or happy hour.

“Thee mall owners are having to shift to entertainment experiences, anything to keep people at the mall for a longer amount of time,” says Dex Shill, commercial sales and leasing agent for Latter and Blum.

Mark B. Hebert, president of Kurz & Hebert Commercial Real Estate and a veteran of 40 years in the business, agrees that malls face a rocky future. “Thy are either going to be prisons or pickleball courts,” he says with a laugh.

But jokes aside, malls are being squeezed on multiple fronts, he says. Rising interest rates means tighter credit that will keep mom and pop stores from backfillig empty spaces.

“You are seeing the early stages of a real tight credit market looming,” Hebert says. “So the malls, including the Mall of Louisiana, are going to be seeing it on all fronts. Thy are having to reinvent themselves everywhere.”

TheMall of Louisiana, which opened in 1997 with 180 stores over 1.5 million square feet, still has its

advantages. It sits on Bluebonnet Boulevard near Interstate 10 in what is arguably the prime retail corridor in Baton Rouge. Around 160 stores fillthe two levels, including an array of kiosks and a food court. But a stroll around the property points up some of the problems.

Sears, which used to be one of the anchors and covered more than 113,000 square feet, has been closed since May 2021. TheBoulevard, touted as an upscale row of stores— including Apple—near the main building, is dotted with empty storefronts. And spaces that used to house James Avery, a jewelry store; Altar’d State, which sold women’s clothes; Sleep Number, which sold beds; and Verizon sit empty.

Thefact that Main Event and Blue Zoo Aquarium are two of the biggest draws points out what experts have been saying: Themall must offe more nontraditional entertainment, dining and other options to attract the customers who used to flck to Macy’s, Dillard’s and J.C. Penney.

Charlie Colvin, president of

Momentum Commercial Real Estate, says he doubts that the traditional mall concept is sustainable over the next 10-20 years because retailers are just not seeing the amount of foot traffithey once did. Experts say malls need nearby apartments, hotels, medical officeand other options to generate customers.

Themall’s leaders, however, dispute the bleak narrative.

Randy Holcombe, vice-president of retail for Mall of Louisiana landlord BrookfieldProperties, challenges the notion that his stores are suffeing from any sort of post-pandemic hangover.

“Thecustomer wants to get out; people want to get out and see other people and go out and shop,” Holcombe says.

He says the explosive growth of Warby Parker outlets shows that retailers value the presence of bricksand-mortar stores.

“Retail is not going away,” Holcombe says. “Fashion certainly isn’t going away. When was the last time you bought something online

Shifting consumer and economic dynamics are forcing the Mall of Louisiana to reinvent its retail mix to keep customers spending. Experts wonder if it will be enough.

COLLIN RICHIE

NEW LOOK: The Boulevard, once touted by mall officials as a high-end answer to lifestyle centers, is increasingly being filled with entertainment venues, chain restaurants and more moderately priced retailers.

that you did not have to return? People want to touch and feel the product.”

Blue Zoo Aquarium, which is on the ground flor next to Dillard’s, is another novelty for the mall. Visitors pay between $13.95 and $19.95 to gaze at stingrays, sharks, reptiles and birds.

Gene Satern, senior general manager for the mall, says that near the end of the school year it’s not unusual for the parking lot to have two dozen school buses toting kids to Blue Zoo, which opened in 2021. Neither Holcombe nor Satern would discuss leasing rates, vacancy rates or foot traffic. But placer.ai, which tracks foot traffibased on cellphone usage, says the number of mall customers has declined since 2017, from just over 150,000 per week to just under 150,000 in May.

But Draycen Richmond, 13, who lives in Central, says he likes to spend an afternoon at the mall every few months, paying visits to GameStop, Gameware and Spencer’s.

Shopping centers in the Baton Rouge area are generally healthy, according to a survey by the Baton Rouge TRENDS in Real Estate Retail Committee. In 2022, the vacancy rate was 7.17% compared to 8.81% in 2021. Rents ranged from $9.33 per square foot to $24.60 in anchor stores, and from $14.92 to $26.24 in non-anchor stores. Thesurvey did not include the Mall of Louisiana.

Andrew d’Ostilio, who handles sales and leasing for Latter and Blum, says that since the pandemic, shoppers in Baton Rouge are hunting for convenience—whether for food or soft goods. He says Towne Center is easier to get around than the Mall of Louisiana.

“Themall is a little cumbersome,” d’Ostilio says.

Issue Date: July 2023 Ad proof #1

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Opinions vary on whether the Mall of Louisiana is the place to be for young people, a traditional source of customers. Some moms say the mall’s heyday has long passed and been replaced by Perkins Rowe and Towne Center as destination sites for teenagers.

Others point to Juban Crossing in Denham Springs as a destination. Theoutdoor shopping center features two rows of stores—including Belk, Old Navy, T.J. Maxx, Bed Bath & Beyond and Shoe Carnival—on opposite sides of a giant parking lot. One glaring vacancy is where a Forever 21 store used to be.

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One merchant says Juban Crossing lures customers from Baton Rouge for two reasons: easy access from Interstate 12 and less crime. Theshopping center is supposed to be the fist of four developments that will comprise a 471-acre mixed-use community, but the timetable is unclear. Operators of the shopping center declined to discuss the property. Yet it’s hard to findanyone who will say that space has filld as quickly as initially anticipated. Theexception is Juban’s outparcel properties.

Budden says he sees the declining appeal of malls every semester through his students at Southeastern. He says two-thirds of his female students would rather buy clothes online and ship them back if they do not fi.

“Thy are not going to the stores and see if it fit,” he says. “It’s just a diffeent mindset.”

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In Loving Arms Pediatric Day Health Center offers a combination of Skilled Nursing, Education and Therapy in a child-friendly environment, likened to a day care setting. Our team of nurses, therapists and early childhood education specialists are trained to handle various cases with the utmost precision, dedication and competence. Health services and transportation are provided. If you are a physician looking for a patient referral source, please give us a call.

TIM MUELLER

SOMETHING FISHY: Th e fact that Blue Zoo Aquarium and Main Event are two of the biggest Mall of Louisiana draws is evidence that the traditional mall concept is not sustainable , local real estate experts say.

Storage capacity has nearly doubled to accommodate up to 2,000 containers.

The successful public/private partnership between the Port of Greater Baton Rouge and SEACOR AMH has produced steady increases in the number of containers handled at the Port’s barge terminal.

As a result, a project to create nearly 4 acres of additional paved container storage capacity has been successfully completed. The yard is now capable of handling approximately 2,000 containers including containers measuring 40 feet, versus 20 feet.

Meet the Big Red Beast.

A 20% efficiency gain in container operations at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge is just one positive outcome of the Port’s new, deep-reach container stacker known as The Big Red Beast.

With a telescopic boom for stacking four containers high, shorter loading and unloading times have helped meet the increasing demand for container shipping services between Baton Rouge and New Orleans for area customers. The addition of the custom-made stacker is another component of the Port’s recent expansion of its successful container operations.

For more information, contact Greg Johnson at (225) 342-1660.

Special appeal

BY ERIC L. TAYLOR

Five unique or historic homes on the Baton Rouge market.

HOMEBUYERS LOOKING for new construction have many options to choose from in Baton Rouge—and not everyone is looking for the traditional. Some buyers want a house that stands apart from the rest—whether because it’s historic or has some form of unique character about it. Thisyear, we looked for the most unique houses for sale in Baton Rouge in the range of $650,000 to a little over $1 million. Theresidential market has cooled from last year, which has dropped the prices of these homes, landing them in many readers’ price range. In no particular order, here are fie of the most unique homes for sale as of early June.

$649,000

5544 Highland Road

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 2

Year built: 1796

Square footage: 2,190

Agent: Carla DeYoung, Tigerland Properties

List date: July 2021

Description: One of Baton Rouge’s most historic homes on the market is Joseph Petitpierre’s Creole cottage on Highland Road. Built more than 225 years ago, the home sits on about an acre of land overlooking Bayou Fountain and features an addition designed by A. Hayes Town. The home has large front and back porches as well as exposed bousillage walls on the interior.

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657

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 3

Year built: 1919

Square footage: 4,415

Agent: Charisse Hanchey, Coldwell Banker ONE

List date: May 2022

Description: What jumps out first about what is commonly known as the Sachse House are its colorful, geometric stained glass panels designed by Baton Rouge artist Steve Wilson. Located on the Spanish Town parade route, this century-old home also features an unobstructed view of the state Capitol and more than 120 windows. Sachse House also has a basement, which is a rare find in south Louisiana.

Dale R. Baringer, with 42 years of experience, leads his team of transactional and litigation attorneys who are equipped to handle most any of your business needs.

$985,000

1310 Thibodeaux Avenue

Bedrooms: 5

Bathrooms: 3

Year built: 2013

Square footage: 3,693

Agent: Addie Graffeo, Patton Brantley

Realty Group

List date: February 2023

Description: This angular, modern home seems like it was plucked out of a Manhattan skyscraper and dropped in Mid City. Like the exterior, the interior features a neutral color palette and mixes wood, metal and tile throughout its open floor plan. One of its more distinct features is a black ceiling in the movie room, which is backlit to resemble a starry night sky.

$945,000

1033 Fulwar Skipwith Road

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 3.5

Year built: 1966

Square footage: 2,919

Agent: Jerry Del Rio, Del Rio Real Estate

List date: October 2022

Description: Located on 2 acres adjoining swampland near Highland Road is a mid-century home that feels like a time capsule buried in the 1960s. The guest and master bathrooms have been updated, but the architecture’s retro appeal has been preserved throughout the rest of the abode, complemented with age-appropriate furnishings.

OCTOBER 28, 2023

$975,000

831 North Street

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 4

Year built: 1848

Square footage: 4,512

Agent: Christie Farris, Keller Williams

Realty Red Stick Partners

List date: April 2023

Description: In the heart of downtown, the Potts House was built in 1848 by local builder and master brick mason Nelson Potts. He built the property in a classic revival style and his bricklaying craftsmanship continues to hold up today. Equally stately and timeless, it’s easy to see why the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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A(re)developing story

Historic

BY MAGGIE HEYN RICHARDSON

SIX YEARS IN the making, the Noël Family Distillery sits in a stylishly renovated former power and light building on Veterans Boulevard along the Mississippi River in historic downtown Donaldsonville. Visitors there will findan open flor plan with exposed brick walls and brightly colored tables for sampling the company’s boutique spirits and craft cocktails.

Opened in late May, the distillery was founded by Donaldsonville natives Chip and Natalie Noel, a father-daughter team who became interested in rum production and wanted to reinvest in their hometown. Natalie Noel, the company’s CEO, is a Baton Rouge entrepreneur and a partner in two other businesses—Well Thory and Healing

Sole—with local orthopedic doctor Meredith Warner. Chip Noel is a retired corporate pilot whose rum curiosity was piqued on frequent work trips to the Caribbean.

“I kept asking myself why we weren’t doing more rum distilling in Louisiana,” he says.

TheNoels invested close to $1 million to open the distillery, which sells private label rum, tequila and

vodka, including an original pickle flavored vodka Natalie Noel developed. Thecompany is also making its own not-yet-released aged rum under Chip Noel’s direction.

Thedistillery is part of a recent wave of development projects across downtown Donaldsonville. Thetown of less than 7,000 has seen some $30 million in new investment in the last three years.

“I’m so happy to be a part of the community,” says Natalie Noel, who sees other new businesses as an accelerant to her operation. “It’s great to be part of what’s going on.”

Sleepy Donaldsonville is situated in the southeast corner of Ascension Parish on the west side of the Mississippi River, a far cry from its larger neighbor, Gonzales. Ascension Parish’s population has

nearly doubled since 2000, but Donaldsonville’s has declined, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Still, since 2019, more investors are spotting opportunities to bring buildings back into commerce in Donaldsonville’s 27-block historic district, thanks to a focused effort by the city of Donaldsonville and the Downtown Development District that began with a master plan in 2019.

“What we tried to do is expand our toolbox for getting these projects done,” says Lee Melancon, director of community and economic development. “That meant looking at housing, the arts, preservation, attracting investors and making a point to create new partnerships.”

Downtown projects include the high-profileLemann Art Lofts, located diagonally opposite the distillery, as well as improvements to Crescent Park and forthcoming recreational trails and wayfining along the levee. An expanded, high-tech downtown library is also underway, and several new small businesses and restaurants have opened or will open soon. Numerous residential properties in

ANCHOR TENANT: Lee Melancon, director of community and economic development, stands by the Leman n Art Lofts, the centerpiece of downtown Donaldsonville’s redevelopment.

COLLIN RICHIE

PUBLIC SPACE: Among the projects completed or underway are improvements to Crescent Park and recreational trails along the levee.

COURTESY VISIT DONALDSONVILLE

the downtown area have also been renovated, many by outside investors, Melancon says.

Along with drafting a master plan, Donaldsonville also earned national accreditation from the Main Street America program in 2021 for meeting a set of community standards.

Melancon is now focused on sourcing state, federal and private funding and guiding investors on how to use historic preservation tax credits in the restoration of the community’s old properties.

Melancon says Donaldsonville will also see more than $50 million in infrastructure improvements, which include wastewater, natural gas and drainage projects.

“You can’t grow without infrastructure,” says council member Michael Sullivan, whose district includes downtown. “Infrastructure is a huge priority.”

Downtown has also seen a rash of residential development by outside investors, some of whom see opportunities to flipproperties, Melancon says.

Thelargest project to date is the

Lemann Art Lofts, a 55,000-squarefoot property with 42 one-and two-bedroom units that opened in October 2022. It was developed by Houmas House owner Kevin Kelly and New Orleans developer James Neville, and artists are given preference when it comes to rental units. All renters, artists or not, must meet a low-to-moderate income requirement.

TheLouisiana Housing Corporation invested $5.7 million in CDBG funds and $446,000 in low-income housing tax credits.

Theproperty, a former mercantile built around 1878, also benefited from historic preservation tax credits.

“We’ve always said it’s our anchor,” Melancon says. “It’s our Hilton Capitol Center.”

Thefist flor of the building, to be completed in 2024, is slated to house the Parish of Ascension Early Childhood Learning Center.

Kelly has also bought three properties next to the distillery and has plans to redevelop them, Melancon says. However,

no specificplan for the spaces has been formally announced.

Juanita Pearley, executive director of the chamber of commerce and board chair of the Downtown Development District, says that the recent investment in public spaces like Crescent Park has helped create a stronger sense of community.

“We are so proud of what’s coming to fruition,” she says. “We’re able to have the public come together in a beautiful location with a nice atmosphere.”

Melancon says that adding housing for workers remains a priority, particularly with CF Industries’ announcement last August of a $198.5 million plan to add carbon capture and sequestration capability to its existing ammonia production facility in Donaldsonville. Theproject is expected to add 103 direct jobs.

Melancon says the community also needs housing for seniors.

“We’re hoping to attract some assisted living facilities,” he says.

Melancon says Donaldsonville plans to update its master plan by 2024.

“I’m so happy to be a part of the community. It’s great to be part of what’s going on.”

NATALIE NOEL, co-founder, Noël Family Distillery

THREE YEARS AGO, Ty and Allyson Hingle’s son let them know he wanted to attend LSU. That inspired some reminiscing about their college days, including their time at a certain bar near campus popular with fraternities and sororities that closed under tragic circumstances in 1997.

“I made the comment to her, ‘I hate that he’s not going to have a Murphy’s to go to,’” recalls Ty Hingle, who owns Mattress Direct.

That conversation sparked an idea: opening a new Murphy’s for

Glory days

BY DAVID JACOBS

the new generation. With the blessing of the original bar’s owners, who are not involved in the project, that’s exactly what Hingle’s group did.

Thegroup took over and renovated the former home of Chimes Textbook Exchange on West Chimes Street just north of campus. Thebuilding itself boasts some Greek history, having served as LSU’s fist fraternity house after the university moved from downtown, Hingle says.

Murphy’s On Chimes, which opened at the end of March, is one of several new Baton Rouge service businesses under familiar names. Chelsea’s Café, Uncle Earl’s, the Happy Note, and Zee Zee Garden also are among the brands that have been reborn in another form, and TheCaterie is on deck.

Thenew companies, which often lack any connection to the old one

other than the name, get a marketing head start and the opportunity to capitalize on nostalgia and latent brand loyalty. Thy also run the risk of confusing or alienating the consumer, who may be disappointed that this new place isn’t quite what they remember.

“I think there’s a reason that this is a trend,” says Adrian Owen Jones, chief growth officewith advertising and marketing fim TheeSixtyEight. “I don’t think it’s a one-offhappenstance.”

A DEEPER CONVERSATION

Jones says companies increasingly favor “interaction over interruption,” focusing less on traditional advertising and more on community engagement. Reviving an old brand can be a more natural way to start a conversation with consumers than trying to loudly break into a crowded marketplace with an unfamiliar brand.

“Customers who remember the brand can engage with it on a deeper level,” she says.

Jones says older fans may feel sincere nostalgia toward a favored brand, while younger customers may appreciate it on a more ironic, kitschy level. She cites Chelsea’s Live, a music venue inspired by longtime venue and restaurant Chelsea’s, and Zee Zee’s, a neighborhood pub named after Zee Zee Gardens, as companies doing a great job of embracing the old brand while being very clear about what’s diffeent.

Zee Zee’s opened in December at the former home of George’s beneath the Perkins Road overpass, so it actually celebrates two longtime neighborhood favorites. An old George’s sign sits on the patio, and the restaurant’s tables have been preserved with past patrons’ Sharpie-scrawled messages.

People still come in asking for their favorite George’s items, says Jordan Ramirez, a partner in Zee Zee’s. But that menu was huge, he says, and trying to replicate George’s wouldn’t have made sense with the restaurant still having two locations in town.

“Thee’s positives and negatives,” he says.

For the most part, people have responded well to the renovated space and the new atmosphere,

COLLIN RICHIE

FOND MEMORIES:

Reminiscing about their days at LSU prompted Ty and Allison Hingle to bring former offcampus hot spot Murphy’s back to life— or at least the name.

Whether it’s nostalgia or marketing, bringing back familiar names is an emerging service industry trend.

Be Our Guest

A

and meeting guide for the Capital Region

Ramirez says. Zee Zee’s is primarily a restaurant until 9 p.m., when it starts to feel more like a bar.

Chelsea’s Café was beloved as a restaurant and live music venue. Aaron Scruggs, part of the ownership group that opened Chelsea’s Live on Nicholson Drive last year, says the group knew it couldn’t re-create the original (despite repurposing some of the artwork and the old neon sign), but also knew the name would create a buzz.

Theowners discussed serving some of the most popular menu items from the original Chelsea’s but decided against it since Mid City Beer Garden was already doing that. Dave Remmetter, who owned the original Chelsea’s, also is a partner in Chelsea’s Live and the Mid City hot spot.

“We knew people would be confused,” Scruggs says. “Our response to that was change ‘Café’ to ‘Live’ and deal with the confusion it would bring.”

All publicity is good publicity, he adds.

THE NOSTALGIA FACTOR

In 2016, brothers Jordan and

Anthony Piazza opened Phil’s Oyster Bar and Seafood Restaurant in Southdowns, a tribute to the namesake Government Street institution their late father, Gus, ran for more than 30 years. Jordan Piazza is also part of the group that in 2019 bought Uncle Earl’s Bar on Perkins Road, losing the dive bar vibe for a more upscale experience but keeping the name.

Maybe some of Earl’s longtime patrons miss the old version, Piazza says, but many who may have frequented the bar when they were younger now like being able to hold nice events there.

“It’s like, ‘I grew up, and so did the bar,’” he says.

Piazza has launched Rebirth Brands, which will focus on revitalizing familiar names. His next projects include a catering business named after TheCaterie, a popular restaurant and live music venue destroyed in a 2010 New Year’s Day fie, and a yet-to-be named eatery in the former home of Kalurah Street Grill.

In the competitive service industry, where new concepts often close in the fist few years, he says,

BORN AGAIN: Jordan Piazza, who is involved with several projects that recycle local classic institutions, has launched Rebirth Brands, which focuses on revitalizing familiar names in the local bar and restaurant industry

DON KADAIR

nostalgia can give you an early boost.

“Why try and introduce a brandnew concept to people when you have one that people already know?” Piazza says.

But how do you know if an old brand is beloved? Here’s one test, says Hunter Territo, president and creative director with branding and marketing fim Xdesign: Could you sell a T-shirt with the logo on it?

He says business owners considering bringing back an old name from someone else’s business should think carefully about why.

“What is it about Murphy’s [for example] that you’re bringing back?” Territo says. “Is it a PR thing to get some headlines, or is it, ‘We’ve got this great story, and we want to bring that same type of experience.’”

Murphy’s is a curious case, because the target consumer base is too young to remember the original bar. And for some locals who do remember it, the salient memory might be the 20-year-old fraternity pledge who was overserved there and later died of alcohol poisoning.

“Enough time may have passed,” Territo says. “Everyone loves a comeback story.”

A NEW STANDARD

So has the new Murphy’s young clientele even heard of the original bar, which closed years before many of them were born? You

OLD IS NEW AGAIN

might be surprised.

“A lot of our guests say, ‘Oh, my parents met at the original Murphy’s,’” Hingle says. “Or, ‘My parents told me when they went to LSU that Murphy’s was the place to go.’”

Hingle wants his bar to set the standard for safety and responsible consumption. He says he has worked closely with law enforcement and government regulators to ensure staffmembers know how to curb underage drinking, avoid overserving legal drinkers and deal appropriately with any potential incidents.

In January, LSU President William Tate called on bars to take responsibility for underage drinking after the death of 19-year-old student Madison Brooks, who police said had been drinking at a Tigerland bar.

“Our goal is that a year from now, LSU says to the community, ‘Thisis how we think a bar should be run,’” Hingle says.

While everyone is welcome, he wants his bar to maintain the Murphy’s tradition as a Greek hangout. Thebar provides a shuttle bus for sororities, so the young women can arrive and depart together.

“It’s got the nostalgia, but it’s designed for today’s college student,” Hingle says. “It’s more of a tribute to the old Murphy’s than it is a replication.”

There are pros and cons when it comes to reviving an old brand.

PROS:

• It creates a built-in public relations opportunity by spurring media coverage.

• Nostalgia can get people in the door right away.

• You’re not starting from scratch with your marketing. “That’s half the battle in marketing: to stand out.”

CONS:

• Expectations may be unusually high, and people may prefer the old experience over what you’re offering. “This is a memory you’re playing with now.”

• Eating habits and consumer preferences change, so the old brand may not be as appealing as it once was.

• Pickup and delivery are a big part of the business nowadays, so creating a familiar, nostalgic setting won’t do you as much good as it used to.

—According to Stuart Feigley, president of Feigley Communications

Horseshoe Lake Charles Lake Charles, Louisiana

PROTECTING WHAT MATTERS!

An Ascension Ready Mix Company

365 thinking on crime

BY WILL SENTELL

LOUISIANA’S FASTEST-GROWING software fim could have been launched anywhere in the nation. But Mohit “Mo” Vij, president and CEO of 365Labs, always insisted on Baton Rouge.

“We are breaking the stereotype that high-tech can only happen in Silicon Valley,” says Vij, whose company has become the go-to software source for law enforcement, collecting a slew of honors along the way. “Culture matters and we can still build better technology literally on the edge of the swamp.”

What Vij, whose shimmering officsits in the @Highland technology park just a mile or so from the Mississippi River, and his fim have done is to radically streamline the day-to-day processes of booking people into jail, paying a traffi ticket, managing records in the district attorney’s officand keeping track of inmates for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff ’s Offi.

Mark Dumaine, a longtime friend of Vij and a consultant for 365Labs, compares the modernizing of law enforcement to what Amazon has done to make shopping easier.

“Thy are providing a platform,” Dumaine says. “Mo’s model is as strong if not stronger of a landscape shift for public safety as Amazon was to commerce.”

The51-year-old Vij grew up in the Punjab state of north India before arriving at LSU three decades ago, where he earned two master’s degrees. His focus was industrial engineering—how to improve processes. He also left the university with a sense that he owed the city that adopted him and that fighting crime, like education, was one of

Mo Vij and the award-winning 365Labs is bringing all-in-one technology to law enforcement.

ALL IN ONE: Among the criminal justice technology developed by 365Labs is software th at streamlines and coordinates records during the booking process.

Baton Rouge’s biggest needs. His initial fim—General Informatics—gradually led to the 2016 launch of 365Labs and the realization that day-to-day law enforcement was bogged down in a sea of paperwork that was sucking valuable time from its primary mission.  Something as simple as booking a suspect into jail used to require entering the same information into diffeent systems eight times. Each entry involved a different software system, and each system was operated by a diffeent company.

“You start realizing that 70 percent of the work is clerical work for law enforcement,” Vij says. “And you end up doing more clerical work than the real law enforcement work.”

365Labs provides software that allows the information to be entered just once, but its success is contingent on a single company building and connecting the system. “We got to bring everything under one umbrella,” says Vij, adding that efficiey results in a safer public.

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux got acquainted with

Vij in 2008, when the sheriff ’s offic was being inundated with complaints about problems paying traffictickets. Since then, software from 365Labs has drastically upgraded operations at the sheriff ’s officand made paying tickets much easier.

“He really knows his business,” Gautreaux says. “Everything he has done for us took us out of the dark ages.”

Access to records is now easier for department offials and the public, the investigative unit has been upgraded, and even headcounts are better managed. The warrant system has also been computerized and simplifid.

“It used to be ‘duplicate this, duplicate that,’” Gautreaux says. “A lot of things have just been tremendous tools for us and are all things that Mo started.”

Products offeed by 365Labs include body and dashboard cameras, jail management and booking software, and apps to make schools safer. Thee are also apps to let the public interact with law enforcement, and digital lineups replace the old-fashioned ones.

Thecompany has a presence in more than 10 states in addition

to working with law enforcement agencies in Baton Rouge, Zachary, Baker and Central.

Offials from out of state routinely make the trek to Baton Rouge for technology demos. On a recent Tuesday, 365Labs hosted 17 offials who had traveled more than 2,500 miles to see what the company had to offe.

In 2022, Inc. magazine listed 365Labs, which has about 50 employees, as the fastest-growing software fim in Louisiana, and among the fastest growing in the nation. In April, Ernst & Young named Vij as a 2023 Gulf Coast fialist for Entrepreneur of the Year. In addition, the company was listed No. 3 on last year’s list of the fastest-growing fims led by LSU graduates.

“Mo is the classic fist-generation, successful immigrant,” says Dumaine, who worked in the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s officfor 25 years before moving to Houston. “He came to this country with nothing to sustain him but his belief that his degree from one of the premier Indian engineering schools would be a

benefitin this country.”

Dumaine says it used to take a month to get a police report fild with the district attorney’s offic .  “So someone sat in jail for one month before the paperwork was reviewed,” he says. “You had in Baton Rouge a multitude of agencies, at least seven law enforcement agencies, that were not connected together.”

Upgrades provided by 365Labs have changed all that.

“Mo is a visionary,” Domaine says. “He has the ability to foresee trends ahead of other people and

other people eventually catch up to what he saw 20 years ago.”

Dumaine says that what began as a business relationship turned into a 20-year friendship.

“Thepeople he works with in business, over time, he becomes friends with, which I findunusual.”

For Vij, engineering runs in the family. His wife, Anjali, is an electrical engineer who worked for Texas Instruments. One of his daughters is studying business and technology management at New York University’s engineering school. Theother is studying operations

research and fiancial engineering at Columbia University.

Vij is a motorcycle enthusiast, an avid reader and an LSU sports fan, who tries to hire LSU grads.

“Just an incredible guy,” says R.K. Mehrotra, a Baton Rouge insurance agent whose family has been friends with Vij and his family since 2010. “He is the hardest-working person I know. He works tirelessly. He is laser focused. Just really knows what he is trying to accomplish.”

Mehrotra echoes the view of others that 365Labs could have thrived in Austin, or Dallas or California.

“For his business, he needs talent,” Mehrotra says. “He needs computer-minded people. Some of those big cities have more to offerbut that hasn’t deterred him one bit.”

Adam Knapp, president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, says Vij’s commitment to Baton Rouge is clear.

“Mo has always had kind of a vision for building the technology sector not only in his own company but the Greater Baton Rouge tech scene.”

ADVOCATE: East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore has embraced the Case 365 digital platform, saying his attorneys can get years of case information within seconds.

RADIO WAS A friend growing up, says Baton Rouge-based radio personality Jodi Koontz.

“I used to sneak my radio into my room and hide it under my pillow,” Koontz says. “It was something I always looked forward to.”

Koontz has made her career in the radio industry, serving as the female lead for the Murphy Sam & Jodi broadcast on 96.1 TheRiver for more than 20 years. Five days a week, she gets to work before 4 a.m. to produce the morning show with her colleagues—Bob Murphy, who they call “Mr. Diplomacy,” and Sam

North, the jokester of the show— and then do a follow-up podcast and additional social media content.

“I really thought I would do this for a few years and then get a real job—these hours are ridiculous,” Koontz says. “But radio is what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s like a teacher teaching a class for the fist time—when I’m doing my job, there’s an energy that takes over.”

“Jodi loves to tell the story of how we ‘passed’ on her,” recalls Murphy. “She walked into my officone day and said she wanted the chance to feed offour existing chemistry. I really respected that honesty and confidenc, so we convinced management to give it a try. Therest, as they say, is history.”

‘Radio is what I’m supposed to

After graduating college in South Carolina, she started at the radio station as a producer for the show— then called Murphy & Sam—but knew she had potential to make a larger impact on the morning program. When Murphy started looking for a female lead for the show, she took her shot.

doing’

BY HOLLY DUCHMANN

“In the room with Murphy and Sam, I knew I had chemistry with them before they knew it,” Koontz recalls. “I literally stood in Murphy’s officdoorway and told him I know you’re trying to audition people with experience—I think you should give me a shot.”

She began her audition the following Monday by sitting in on the show—and she never left. Thelesson, she says, is to ask for what you want.

Koontz not only found a rewarding career in radio—she also found her partner. She and Murphy married in 1999 and are raising two children. Thy even had a studio installed at their home so that one of them could work from home in the mornings to be with the kids. Thy share their lives on the show, she says

And her workday doesn’t end with the show. After the trio wrap up their morning show, they produce their daily After the Show podcast. When Koontz is done in the studio, she jumps online to interact with her audience on diffeent social media platforms.

“As soon as we got on social media, it was evident that it was an opportunity to connect in a diffeent way,” Koontz says. “Thee platforms change constantly. It used to be about where you were in the moment—now it’s a conversation platform.”

Thechemistry among the three is a successful formula. Theshow is syndicated to more than 50 radio stations across the U.S

When they fist started pitching the demo for a syndicated show in 2003, Koontz expected the show to stay within the South, and their fist affiate was in Amarillo, Texas. Since then, the show has been picked up by stations in such places as Hawaii, North Dakota and American Samoa

“Theday we decided to syndicate, my eldest child was a baby in a walker,” Koontz says. “We could have picked up and gone to another city. That may have been easier. But Murphy and I both have family here, we love it here and we felt more at home to stay here.”

Koontz, who is a Denham Springs native, recently was honored for her work in radio programming by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation, winning a 2023 Gracie Award in the National Syndicated Radio Host category. TheGracies honor outstanding

be

FAMILIAR VOICE: Jodi Koontz, female lead for the popular Murphy Sam & Jodi radio show, was honored nationally with a 2023 Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Medi a. Foundation.

programming created by women, for women, and about women, in all facets of media.

She was nominated for the award by Murphy.

“Watching Jodi grow professionally and to have her as a spouse is doubly exciting for me,” Murphy says. “Raising a family together and being part of a trio that works hard to create the best possible content for listeners is incredibly rewarding.”

Thevibrant redhead traveled to Beverly Hills, California, in May to walk the red carpet at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and accept her Gracie, joining the likes of Christina Applegate, Gayle King and Barbara Walters who have also won the prestigious award. While nearly 200 women in various facets of media won Gracies this year, Koontz was one of 17 to win in a category for which they were asked to give a speech.

In her speech, at the end, she shared that her work in radio has healed her in many ways.

“I do sometimes still feel like this insecure, young, redheaded girl

with no self-esteem but had a lot to say and a lot of personality,” she said in her speech.

“I couldn’t see the teleprompter because of the light and I made a split-second decision to not squint

and went offscript,” Koontz says. “I got vulnerable in my speech. Afterward, so many women came up and told me they related to what I said. Women will always be your support system.”

Murphy has been in awe watching his wife grow in her radio role over the years.

“She took ownership and gave us guidance for content development that keeps the show’s target audience in mind,” he says. “She’s blossomed into the natural content lead for the show, not just the anchor.

“I just sat back and watched the acceptance speech in amazement. She’s poured a lifetime of work into what she does—she pours everything into what she does every single day.”

While she won’t speculate on what lies ahead for the radio industry, Koontz believes it will continue to evolve and play a part in audience members’ lives

“Radio is intimate, it’s in the moment,” Koontz says. “People take their showers with us. People take their kids to school with us. When people wake up in the morning, they just want to know everything is OK. We have a relationship with our audience and we’re a trusted source of information during trying times.”

“Jodi loves to tell the story of how we ‘passed’ on her. She walked into my office one day and said she wanted the chance to feed off our existing chemistry. I really respected that honesty and confidence, so we convinced management to give it a try. The rest, as they say, is history.”

BOB MURPHY (right), co-host, Murphy Sam & Jodi

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Culinary innovator

Foodii’s latest plans include a new retail shop and a focus on product development and bottling.

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Special Advertising Section: In Good Company Profiles

SINCE IT OPENED in 2013 in a former poultry lab on the LSU campus, the LSU AgCenter Food Innovation Institute has been best known for helping culinary entrepreneurs develop products and get them to market. Hanley’s Foods salad dressings, Alvin Ray’s Bayou Best Pickles, City Gelato and Davey’s Salsa are a few of the dozens of small companies that have launched through Foodii, which provides accepted tenants $25-per-hour sanitary kitchen space, marketing support and food science research and labeling.

Thetenant incubator remains the cornerstone of Foodii’s work, currently boasting a record 37 small food companies. But behind the scenes, the decade-old entity has been steadily building out its higher revenue generating ventures. Along with a bottling facility that is fillig a niche in the co-packing industry, Foodii also offes a sensory lab that food companies can hire to test new product ideas, and a food science

division that provides clients with nutrition labeling and shelf stability studies. A new retail store is also planned for the bottling facility, selling tenant products and prepared foods, says executive director Gaye Sandoz.

“I’m always thinking of new revenue to support the program,” Sandoz says.

One of the biggest and most signifiant expansions Foodii has made was the opening of its bottling facility in 2020. Located on Gourrier Avenue near West Parker Drive, the midsized co-packer is capable of fillig 25,000 bottles a day, a step up from Foodii’s facility in Ingram Hall, which can fill7,000. TheGourrier Avenue facility can also hot-pack bottles, meaning it can transfer a cooked product from a preparation vat into bottles immediately.

Thebotting facility was funded through a $2.5 million grant from the state’s Officof Community Development. A $2 million

grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration is supporting additional expansion of the site. Along with the retail store, Sandoz is planning to add two production kitchens that will allow more tenants to work on products.

Sandoz and bottling facility manager Tony Barber say the facility’s target markets include Foodii tenants who are ready to scale up, and existing food companies that need

EXPANDING MARKET:

The Foodii bottling facility, capable of filling 25,000 bottles a day, according to facility manager Tony Barber, is targeting incubator tenants and food companies needing smallto medium-sized runs.

the services of a co-packer willing to produce small- to medium-sized runs.

“Co-packers don’t want to do small runs, and if they do, they want $10,000 up front,” Sandoz says. “Most small companies can’t affod that.”

Moreover, she sees an opportunity to lure back companies that have been working with out-of-state co-packers.

“Co-packers don’t want to do small runs, and if they do, they want $10,000 up front. Most small companies can’t afford that.”

GAYE SANDOZ, executive director, LSU AgCenter Food Innovation Institute

COLLIN RICHIE

“Our goal for this facility was to bring companies back into Louisiana, because they go out of state to get their product packed,” Sandoz says.

Former LSU quarterback and sports drink manufacturer Matt Flynn bottles salad dressing at the facility for Tony Chachere’s. Pat O’Brien’s bottles its bloody mary mix there, and Sal and Judy’s bottled its salad dressings at the site before moving to a larger facility.

“We helped Sal and Judy’s and brought them back,” Barber says. “Thy were out of state with a copacker in Ohio.”

Louisiana has fewer than fie co-packers, she says.

“Our facility is not to compete with them, but help them,” Sandoz says. “If a company or a co-packer gets shut down due to a hurricane, they can make their products here.”

Sandoz says one of Foodii’s biggest diffeentiators is its ability to also provide nutrition labeling and research and development on shelf stability, a rare offeing among nationwide food incubators. Recent projects for Tabasco and Fiery Crab

made use of Foodii’s food science services as well as its bottling facility.

Fiery Crab, a Louisiana seafood restaurant chain with roots in Lafayette, contracted with Foodii to produce a retail line of its popular seafood sauces. Along with bottling the product, Sandoz says Foodii’s food scientists performed the R&D needed to make the sauces shelf stable.

Last October, Foodii began working with legendary Louisiana hot sauce maker Tabasco to help the company refineits avocado jalapeno hot sauce dressing and produce a

test run for market. Foodii worked with Tabasco’s team to create a shelf stable formulation for the dressing, which was launched in February with help from digital content creator Tinx. Working with Foodii meant Tabasco didn’t have to interrupt its own manufacturing line, Sandoz says. She sees an opportunity for other large companies to use Foodii’s services similarly.

“A lot of companies just don’t know about the bottling plant yet, so we’re trying to get the word out,” Sandoz says.

Thebottling facility’s two large

kitchen spaces will be built out with the help of a grant from the Louisiana Business Incubator Association. Sandoz makes a point of adding specialized equipment to help tenants be more successful. For example, she says she’s adding candy-making equipment for a praline manufacturer and more oven space for bakers. She is also adding a dough dropper for a tenant making frozen tea cake dough.

“We try to look at companies and ask what they need to be successful,” Sandoz says.

Even if they don’t use the bottling or incubation services, food companies can contract with Foodii for help with nutrition labeling or shelf-life studies.

Along with the additional kitchens, the bottling facility will include a retail store facing Gourrier Avenue just offWest Parker. Thestore, which is in the process of being designed, will be open to the public and sell coffe, to-go breakfast and lunch items and products made by tenants.

“Theretail store is going to be huge,” says Sandoz, who anticipates it will open before the end of 2024.

PRODUCTION RUN: Former LSU quarterback and sports drink manufacturer Matt Flynn bottles salad dressing at the facility for Tony Chachere’s.

COLLIN RICHIE

Seeds of success

Louisiana Nursery is not only celebrating its past but also planning for its future.

BY HOLLY DUCHMANN

VISIT ONE OF Louisiana Nursery’s three locations in the Capital Region and it becomes quickly apparent it’s not a typical nurser y.

Each location—two in Baton Rouge and one in Prairieville— features more than 2.5 acres of merchandise, ranging beyond the normal assortment of Southern garden staples to include garden supplies, home decor, collectibles, gifts and potter y.

Since being founded in 1983, it has grown to be the largest independent garden center business in the state and is one of the largest in the South, according to Garden Center magazine’s annual ranking. Last year, the magazine listed Louisiana Nursery as the 36th largest independent garden center in the nation—ranked by annual retail sales volume.

Thewide array of products for sale helps the business stand out

“Our overall mix of merchandise sets us apart,” says Mitch Mayes, president and owner of Louisiana

Nursery. “We’re one of the largest pottery retailers as well as indoor house plant retailers in the United States.”

Pre-pandemic, the three stores were selling about $750,000 worth of indoor plants a year. That shot up during the pandemic and Mayes now estimates the business is selling $1.25 million in houseplants.

Louisiana Nursery is also one of the largest live Christmas tree sellers in the state. Thenursery doubles its staffthrough seasonal hiring and sells thousands of trees each year Mayes is a second-generation owner of the business, which was founded by his father, Roger Mayes, after he was laid offfrom Woolco, a discount department store that had shuttered all of its locations. After working more than 25 years in corporate retail, Roger Mayes decided to go into business for himself and opened the fist Louisiana Nursery on the corner of Florida Boulevard and Flannery Road.

That original store was open only 18 months before relocating to a new home less than a mile away on Florida Boulevard, which remained open until 2013. Louisiana Nursery now has locations on Coursey Boulevard and Perkins Road in Baton Rouge as well as its store in

Prairieville. Thebusiness has been able to retain several staffmembers for decades—including its fist employee, who retired but then returned to work.

Mitch Mayes assumed ownership and took the helm as president of Louisiana Nursery in 2009 after his father retired.

NEXT GENERATION

Thugh Mayes has two children, he says gardening is not a passion for either. So a few years ago, he began brainstorming on how to find a successor and what the company should look like going forward.

“I don’t have an heir to necessarily take over the business,” Mayes says. “I’ve been knowing it for a while but I had to findthe right person to be the next generation of Louisiana Nursery. Thigs are changing so fast, you have to have young, dynamic people in places to ride the wave of the future because the brick-and-mortar retail business as we know it will not exist, or will change dramatically to be something unrecognizable.”

Mayes believes he has found that next generation in Ben Pecnik, a New Iberia native whom he recruited from the corporate retail world. Mayes worked with Pecnik’s wife at Louisiana Nursery’s Prairieville location and he had also heard about his positive impact at the sporting goods store he managed. After Mayes learned that Pecnik was being transferred to Lafayette to manage a store there, he requested to meet with him

The“quick visit” a few days before Christmas in 2021 turned into a two-hour conversation and Mayes offeed Pecnik a job the next day.

“I hired him as my vice president,” Mayes says. “We hadn’t had a VP in our company since I was vice president for my dad 15 years ago.

“My dad started the company and built it. My job was to make it more successful and profitble, which I’ve done. Now Ben’s job is to keep going with it.”

Louisiana Nursery celebrated its 40th year in business this year, and Pecnik says he sees his role as ensuring that the company has another successful 40 years in the Capital Region.

“We’re evolving to stay competitive and relevant,” Pecnik says.

COLLIN RICHIE

BLOOMING PARTNERSHIP: Mitch Mayes (right), owner and president of Louisiana Nursery, recruited Ben Pecnik from the corporate world to one day take over the largest independent garden center business in the state

“We’re one of the largest pottery retailers as well as indoor house plant retailers in the United States.”

Mitch Mayes

“We’re working to maintain the customer base we’ve developed and to expand on the things that have made the brand successful for so many years.”

Since joining the company, Pecnik has been working to beef up the brand’s digital capabilities. He helped it launch a new website as well as a new employee management software

In the future, the pair plan to expand east and break ground on a nursery and retail store at the corner of Florida Boulevard and Juban Road in Livingston Parish. Additionally, they plan to expand the Prairieville location with a contractor’s yard behind the retail store, which will offersupplies and services to contractors.

Mayes and Pecnik look to maintain the boost in sales Louisiana Nursery has seen since 2020, which they say is partly due to the pandemic drawing more young people to gardening. Thetwo also plan to expand the company’s e-commerce capabilities over the next few years.

“As we get deeper into the e-commerce revenue stream, I think the focus needs to be on our brand,” Pecnik says. “Our name is one of the most important things that we have. Whether it’s a digital transaction or a face-to-face interaction, there’s a customer behind every one of those orders. As particular as we are with the items on the shelves or on the lot, we have to be just as particular with the items we stock online.”

BROAD APPEAL: Not only is Louisiana Nursery known for its pottery and Christmas trees, but the stores also attract customers looking for home decor products.

FACES OF FAMILY BUSINESS

Family businesses have a special connection to the past and future. Preserving their family legacy is important, but they are always looking forward in order to create opportunities for the generations to come. For these local companies, success runs in the family.

Lyons Specialty Company

Lyons Specialty Company

ESTABLISHED 1923

HISTORY

HISTORY

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

(From left) Nicholas Raetzsch, Jane Dunlap, Hugh Raetzsch Jr., Betsy Raetzsch, Matthew Raetzsch, Wilson Raetzsch

(From left) Nicholas Raetzsch, Jane Dunlap, Hugh Raetzsch Jr., Betsy Raetzsch, Matthew Raetzsch, Wilson Raetzsch

Cypress Roofing

Lyons Specialty Company

HISTORY

HISTORY

Cypress Roofing was founded in July 2019 by Caprice Cline and her children, Joshua, Samantha and Alexandra. Josh has since found love and moved to Florida, so the company is now a 100% woman-owned business. “We started this business to help people,” says Caprice. “We know it sounds cliché, but this has been our motivation day in and day out. We are a company that values faith, family, honesty and integrity—not just the bottom line.”

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

According to Caprice, “It’s great 99% of the time, but the other 1%, the Mom in me wants to come out! Seriously, we are so blessed to have the privilege to work beside family every day. And we have about 10 other family members who work with us, so we have family all around us. So much fun!”

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

We believe the most important thing we can do as humans is to give back to others and our community. We are involved in our church and local community through the Chamber and Rotary. One important way we help our customers is through the process of working with insurance companies. We also specialize in working with Realtors and management companies in making the repair and replacement process easy.

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

We have grown from our original four to a company of almost 25 employees. We now have our commercial license and are delving straight ahead into this part of the business. We have gone from replacing one to two roofs a week to 8-12. God has richly blessed us. Our first year, we produced a little over $600,000 and last year did $11.5 million.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

We just completed the purchase of property to begin the process of building our Cypress Headquarters in Gonzales in Ascension Parish. We are from the area and want to continue to invest in our community. We have partnered with an expert in every facet of commercial roofing and are super excited about this new division.

(From left) Samantha Michel, Caprice Cline and Alex Carmouche

(From left) Nicholas Raetzsch, Jane Dunlap, Hugh Raetzsch Jr., Betsy Raetzsch, Matthew Raetzsch, Wilson Raetzsch

Horizon Financial Group

Lyons Specialty Company

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

HISTORY

After several years as a financial advisor, Pete Bush and two others formed Horizon Financial Group in 1999. His brother Andy Bush joined the group a few months later, but left to run his own firm from 2004 to 2009. At that time, he rejoined Horizon and became a partner. After lengthy careers in broadcast media and healthcare, a third brother, Bill Bush, joined the firm in 2015 to bolster the advisory team and serve as Horizon’s Media and Marketing Manager. Horizon’s other partners include husband and wife team Clint and Brooke Gautreau, and CCO Colby Barnett.

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

Our parents had six kids in six years and part of our formative years were spent growing up on a farm in southern Indiana, near Louisville, KY where we were born. Farming requires teamwork—sometimes hard work—and you can’t quit until the work is done. Moving to Louisiana in 1979 taught us sacrifice, courage and commitment. Our relationships are built on faith, trust and confidence.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

With so much history together, there are wonderful and fun aspects that are hard to replicate, like shared stories and inside jokes. Sometimes no words are needed. But there are other situations and conversations that can be tougher because we’re family. Appreciating each other’s strengths and unique abilities is crucial in making it about addition and multiplication versus subtraction and division.

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

The early years included several different partnerships and business structures that created some internal conflict and energy draining interactions, but the core group has remained together. Since late 2010, everyone started seeing the business through the same lens and we went from a collection of individual practices to one ensemble team rowing in the same direction. This collective culture, knowledge, trust, reputation, and usefulness has blended under our common vision.

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We continue to look for new ways to add value and support for our loyal clients, via emerging technology and adjacent services. After acquiring three practices, with another set to close, we see more M&A activity opportunities across the southeast in our future as this fragmented industry continues to consolidate. We recently hired two new team members to stay ahead of this growth, bringing our total to 14, while simultaneously grooming the next generation.

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

(From left) Andy, Pete and Bill Bush. The brothers attend the Kentucky Derby every year and call themselves Horizon’s Derby Dudes.

Daigle Industries, LLC

Lyons Specialty Company

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

HISTORY

HISTORY

The story begins with the establishment of R.J. Daigle & Sons Contractors, Inc. in 1977 by RJ Daigle and his sons Vance and Ronnie. Over time, R.J. Daigle became a trusted name in the asphalt industry. In 2013, Vance and Ronnie formed a trucking company, Daigle Industries.

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company.

The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

In 2017 Daigle Industries expanded into concrete production with two mobile mixers.

The next generation (Nick, Ethan and Colin Daigle) now manage both companies with the same brand of innovative, quality construction. Daigle Industries has grown its fleet to 35 trucks, with six mobile mixers currently servicing the Greater Baton Rouge area.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

Quality and safety are our driving forces. We achieve quality by embracing new technology to continually refine and perfect our products and services. In the dangerous heavy construction industry, the safety of our employees guides our decision making from day-to-day operations to long-term strategy. The Daigle family of companies has received three LWCC’s Safest 70 Awards.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

Like all relationships, it hinges on communication in both your personal and professional life. Working with family provides a stable foundation across all aspects of your life. Everything becomes more manageable because you have a family you can trust and rely on.

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

It has changed primarily in size and technology. In 1977, R.J. began with a single used steel drum roller that he bought at auction. Since then, Daigle Industries has grown to include multiple companies with about 200 employees combined. With that growth has come innovation. For example, the company’s mobile mixers recently produced concrete that traveled over 1,000 feet through three pump trucks, across water to a barge.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We see our mobile mixers being used more in the industrial setting. In 2017 we started producing concrete for ourselves to perfect our product. We are in a unique position to provide fully customizable concrete at the snap of a finger, anywhere we can drive a truck. We are confident that our product can live up to the quality standard that the Daigle family of companies is known for.

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

(From left) Ethan, Nicholas and Colin Daigle

Johnson Drywall Solutions, Inc.

Lyons Specialty Company

HISTORY

HISTORY

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company.

The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

Derek Johnson worked as a project manager and estimator in the commercial drywall field for many years until his company downsized and pulled out of Louisiana. He and his wife Jodi took a leap of faith and decided to build a family-oriented company that could make real changes in the construction industry. They started out with just a few resources—a business plan, a little bit of cash, some tools and a few elite employees who shared their vision.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

Our core values have always been strong communication, trust in our ourselves and our people, and reliance on our faith. We also try to keep a sense of humor. What we do is risky and overwhelming at times, so we need to rely on each other’s strengths to overcome adversities and help us achieve and maintain success.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

It’s stressful at times, but we always strive to find that balance between work and family, and make time for both. It’s rewarding to have family and those who are as close as family, help us build on the foundation we’ve laid. We are able to show our children that by working together, with a dream and a lot of hard work, you can still build something out of nothing.

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

We started our company with just two contracts, so we had to build it from the ground up and keep it running with the same intensity that we started with. We are now a $12 million dollar-plus company, and we have continued to grow. We’ve grown from 10 employees to (depending on current jobs) over 50.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We are comfortable at this size, so we’re not necessarily trying to keep growing. But we would love to continue to help build all the new schools in our area and aid in the recovery efforts that have arisen from the recent natural disasters. We have always believed in the ability of a few good people to make great change … in fact, we’re proof of it.

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

Derek Johnson, vice president, and Jodi Johnson, owner and president

Lyons Specialty Company

GLENN BAKER’S HEATING & AIR CONDITIONING

ESTABLISHED 1923

ESTABLISHED 1954

HISTORY

HISTORY

Glenn Baker’s was founded in 1954 by Glenn H. Baker and Al Ross. In the spring of 1971, they hired a young Istrouma High graduate, Ronnie Watts, who worked there for the next 18 years, and bought the company from Mike Baker in 1989. Ronnie (now deceased), his wife Debbie Watts, and son Derrick Watts have worked there for many years. Derrick started in the field doing installations and is now the secondgeneration member to own Glenn Baker’s.

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

For a family to work together successfully, everyone must pull their own weight. When I began working in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

Honesty, integrity, loyalty, respect, compassion, perseverance, dependability and accountability, just to name a few. Ronnie Watts insisted on treating everyone like family, and was fond of saying, “We are here for our customers … not just to get their dollar.”

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

“Working for my father and mother was originally a high school job, but it developed into something more,” says Derrick Watts.

“Growing up and watching my parents run the business, I realized I would love for my wife and I to run it one day. I can finally say that dream

came true … my wife has worked with us for 15 years. It has been a wonderful experience to work with my family every day.”

So much has changed compared to when I began in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS?

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

The best change in the industry is the technology in the air conditioning systems. As an owner, we have to stay current with the technology. Every year, the systems get smarter and smarter. Our techs are always in training to stay up to date.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

Glenn Baker’s would like to expand in the residential, commercial and industrial fields in Baton Rouge and its surrounding areas.

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

(From left) Nicholas Raetzsch, Jane Dunlap, Hugh Raetzsch Jr.,

(From left) Brittany Watts, Derrick Watts and Debbie Watts

A&B Concrete Coring

Lyons Specialty Company

ESTABLISHED 1923

HISTORY

one must pull their own weight. When I began work ing in the business over 30 years ago, I was given an opportunity by my grandfather and my mother, Jane Dunlap. It was my job to make the most of that opportunity. Now that my kids are entering the business, they have the same opportunity.

Richard Jones Sr. started the business in 1969 in a Volkswagen beetle, selling concrete cutting equipment. As the years went by, a growing number of contractors wanted the work performed but did not want to purchase the new technology. A&B Concrete Coring started as a one-man operation and has grown to 35 employees who now work daily in many of Louisiana’s chemical plants as well as on road, utility, and commercial construction projects.

In 1945, LSU auditor William E. Davis, Sr. began selling 10-cent pecan rolls to local stores from the storage room behind his garage. He named his side business Baton Rouge Wholesale Candy Company. The next year, he purchased Lyons Specialty Company, which had been founded in 1923, from the owner’s widow for $7,690.61, leaving Davis just $75 in the business bank account. He continued operating under the Lyons name in order to keep the company’s existing customers. Davis’ grandson Hugh Raetzsch Jr. is CEO of the company today.

WHAT VALUES OR PRINCIPLES GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS?

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

We believe in family. It is important to each member of our staff and we have raised many children here at our office over the years. We support our families in many ways, from personal needs to benefits to time off.

Early on in my career was a difficult time. There were some strained relationships and even today, there are scars from those times. But over the last couple of years as my two older sons have graduated from college and entered the business, it has been extremely rewarding. I feel very fortunate to see my kids every day and share the successes of running a 100-year-old family business. Not many people get that opportunity. It is truly special.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH FAMILY?

in the business over 30 years ago. One of our core values is adaptability … it has been key to our success and the success of our customers. What’s important to our customers today is different than it was just a few years ago and what will be important to them five years from now.

appreciate each other and the talents and skills we all contribute to the business. Each of us has an important role in the company and supports everyone else on the team.

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

There are struggles when you are young and learning all the aspects of working with others and with family. There have been disagreements and power struggles, but those types of issues have been resolved. We

WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON FOR YOUR COMPANY?

We completed an expansion project in 2018 which doubled the size of our warehouse and office. This gives us the necessary space and added efficiencies to more than triple our current sales at our existing facility. We will continue to focus on growing our food service category, growing our MAX12 customer membership program, and growing our Marketing Advantage Monthly in-store marketing program.

The demand for our type of work has continued to grow each year, so we feel that moving forward, the future of our company is strong with many prospects and opportunities. Our industrial workload is solid, and we have multiple road jobs under contract that will be going on for the next couple of years.

(From left) Adam Jones, Richard Jones, Kacee Pakunpanya and Jimmy Jones

All rising professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, and small business owners are invited to join us in taking their leadership up a notch. Business Report’s Executive Leadership Academy is a transformative program that will take your career and your organization to new levels of success.

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The Leadership Academy was an incredible experience. I gained so much knowledge about how to be a great leader, and I was immediately able to apply that knowledge to my career. It allowed me to expand my professional network and to learn from others outside of my field.”

MARY MOWAD GUITEAU, IIDA, IFMA, Holly & Smith Architects, APAC

The Leadership Academy allowed me to grow- both personally and professionally- while connecting with a wide array of peers in the Greater Baton Rouge area. Cultivating relationships with these folks from such diverse backgrounds and industries proved to have immense value throughout the program. Highly recommend!”

MYLES LAROUX, Highland Wealth - Northwestern Mutual

CELEBRATING 30 YEARS

For over 30 years, Stonetrust Commercial Insurance Company has been a leading provider of workers’ compensation coverage and top-tier services to thousands of business owners in Louisiana and 11 other states in the midwestern and southeastern regions.  Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Stonetrust is dedicated to building long-term relationships with its insurance agency partners and has established a strong reputation with its policyholders of delivering unsurpassed service and exceptional results.  Stonetrust President and CEO Mike Dileo states, “We’ve been successful because we’ve assembled a great team of workers’ compensation professionals that are committed to our core values and passionate about delivering great service to every Stonetrust customer, every time.”With its primary goal of being the “First Choice” workers’ compensation company in all its markets, Stonetrust is wellpositioned for additional growth and success for years to come!

Michael G. Dileo President & CEO

Mike joined Stonetrust in 2010 as Vice-President of Underwriting and was named President and CEO in 2017.Under his leadership, Stonetrust has grown and expanded its coverage territory from 5 to 12 states and improved its A M Best capital adequacy and overall balance sheet strength rating to A – Excellent. A native of Baton Rouge and an LSU graduate, Mike has more than 30 years of workers’ compensation and commercial insurance management experience. He was recently named one of Baton Rouge’s most powerful and influential business leaders in the Baton Rouge Business

Report’s Capital Region 500!

IT’S AMAZING TO see what can happen when the people of Baton Rouge decide something they cherish must be excellent at something. Thy don’t expect it, they demand it.

We’re talking tops in America outstanding.

Mediocrity, being on a par with a peer city or two, or even the chimeric quest for the Southern regional average is for losers.

No, when it comes to LSU sports, our ardent embrace is the gospel, according to Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t fist, you’re last.”

Such is the standard by which those who “live purple love gold” judge their LSU teams.

Our scorecard for pretty much everything else? Be better than Mississippi.

Thegreat truth is undisputed national champion is typically not the fial destination, but let’s be clear: it is the unwavering goal.

The joy of great expectations

And hot boudin, cold couscous, ain’t it great when it happens?

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better after fashionista and legendary coaching giant Kim Mulkey and her won’t-back-down squad pounded Iowa in early April to earn LSU’s fist national title in men’s or women’s basketball, along comes Jay Johnson and his nevercount-us-out band of Tigers to win baseball’s seventh College World Series title.

As Bruce Springsteen tells Rosie, “Winners use the door,” and this year’s women’s basketball and baseball teams didn’t just use it—they kicked the damn thing down.

Sports, particularly of the LSU variety, and laissez le bon temps rouler are the marrow of life here.

Our inexhaustible joie de vivre is such that Todd Graves spent $30,000 at Rocco’s Pizza & Cantina in Omaha to make sure the world knew no one does Jell-O shots like LSU fans. Never one to get trumped on publicity, Gordon McKernan—the attorney, pitchman, women’s basketball fiancier and NIL cash supplier— ponied up more than $44K for 8,888 shots of gelatinous joy.

A chunk of the profitsmade off those 68,888 shots imbibed by Tiger fans will go to LSU’s food pantry. Quite the concept: helping the poor by getting hammered.

In case you were wondering, the average annual family income in East Baton Rouge Parish, according to the Census Bureau, is $58,167— some $16,000 less than what Graves and McKernan spent in the pursuit of a Jell-O shot glory.

It just means more.

That’s exactly why coaches like Mulkey, Johnson and football’s Brian Kelly leave top-shelf gigs and come to LSU. Theexpectations are high but they’re also given the resources to compete.

Losing championship games doesn’t get you fied, but employment lives become quickly endangered when legitimately contending for one stops being an option.

Just ask Ed Orgeron.

Neither the baseball nor women’s basketball teams were given big chances to be champions at the start of their respective postseason national tournament.

Mulkey’s squad raised eyebrows posting big-margin early-season wins against weak opponents, but a regular season beatdown by South Carolina and blowing a 17-point lead in a tough to swallow loss to Tennessee in the SEC Tournament had most folks thinking next year might be their year.

Johnson’s team was the preseason favorite and spent the fist half of the year atop the rankings, but a rash of injuries and a shaky bullpen down the stretch led many to believe the Tigers were pretenders.

Everything changed in the postseason as passion and tenacity blended with talent, cockiness and determination blended into two batches of championship gumbo.

Meanwhile, as win-or-go-home wins and Jell-O shots were piling up at Alex Box North by Northwest, the NCAA was effctively wiping out some three years of the Les Miles era in football and offially slamming the book on Will Wade’s renegade basketball tenure. Thee was also a rather prominent mention of John Paul Funes, who among other things prior to his 2019 conviction was using the Our Lady of the Lake Foundation as his own personal piggy bank to entice highly rated

football players and their families to TigerTown.

Despite Miles’ willingness to cheat and his alleged penchant for coeds, make no mistake he was fied because his team began losing too many football games—especially against big boy SEC opponents.

Sins are easily forgiven or ignored when winning, but they become fatal when packaged with mediocrity.

A friend, after sharing a video of Mayor Sharon Weston Broome being booed as she took the stage at baseball’s championship celebration, texted this question: Why isn’t Broome and other Baton Rouge leaders held to the same high standard as LSU’s coaches?

Theeasy answer is because most people have a signifiantly deeper emotional investment in LSU’s success than that of Baton Rouge, a city with challenges, for sure, but also huge potential.

People talk about LSU with pride and passion. Do you hear the same about Baton Rouge?

That’s truly a shame because Baton Rouge has the very real ability to be a high-quality, vibrant midsize city that attracts, rather than repels smart, young professionals.

Will our passion, pride and demand for excellence ever be as strong for Baton Rouge? Probably not. Sports is an escape from the real world; Baton Rouge is the real world.

We can, if we choose, be overbearing zealots about LSU without having to pay any real price—other than emotional. It’s well-heeled donors, ticket buyers, corporate sponsors, network TV contracts and those doling out piles of NIL cash that fiance all that goes into LSU’s athletic pursuits. Most of us need only provide supersized expectations, the passion to hold teenagers to an unforgiving standard of achievement and a closet full of LSU apparel.

Chasing Baton Rouge greatness comes with an actual cost—emotional and fiancial. Absent leaders to inspire us with a clear vision and game plan for a better tomorrow we simply aren’t willing to pay the price.

It would be great though if we built a Baton Rouge our LSU sports teams can be proud of?

Geaux Tigers!

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

ONE OF THE big issues facing Baton Rouge in the year 2000 was traffic. Synchronizing traffisignals— fairly standard operating procedure in many other cities—was discussed as a key part of the solution. It’s now 2023, several years after passing a billion-dollar MovEBR tax plan that supposedly includes synchronization and we’ve seemingly made little progress over the past 23 years.

I’m fed up with trying to findthese light synchronized streets. How about you? Finding Waldo is easier. Perhaps Mayor Sharon Weston Broome and her head of traffic, the same Fred Raiford who was in charge in 2000, can publish a list of these synchronized lights.

Where are our synchronized traffic signals?

One might think having both the money and the latest technology would be enough for city-parish engineers to get this project offthe to-do list. But apparently not, as evidenced by the photo on this page showing a light on Jeffeson Highway that has turned green while another a block away remains red, leaving trafficat a standstill.

On more than one occasion while recently traveling down Corporate Boulevard and then a stretch of road that includes College, Lee and West Lee drives, I experienced the poor planning fisthand, when a light turned green just as the next light a football fieldor so away was turning red, causing stop-and-go traffic

Who is responsible for this craziness? Thiscertainly isn’t what the public should expect 23 years after a problem is identifid and several years after agreeing to a signifiant tax increase.

Baton Rouge has the nation’s fourth-worst traffic, according to a ranking from GPS fim TomTom. “Traffiin the Red Stick is better

REFLECTIONS ALL THINGS NEW

than just three cities: New York, Los Angeles and Miami. And the city’s standing is pretty grave considering the Baton Rouge population is a mere fraction of those other metros—and that gridlock in the Capital Region will only get worse as work begins to upgrade and expand Interstate 10 over the next 20 years.”

Our problems with traffisignals have been known for 20-plus years and Raiford and others have failed to fixit. Do you agree?

No question, there are many other factors that contribute to our traffimayhem—the absence of a connected surface street grid and a multitude of political decisions and waivers that Raiford is all too familiar with. We are reaping what we sow.

We joke about referring to something that’s 50 years old as “the new Mississippi River bridge.” I was a teen and living near Stanford Avenue when it opened. It was around that same time that Stanford was widened to four lanes, from two. Theexpansion, of course, drew complaints but those in charge were looking 50 years into the future.

Compare that to Lee Drive, which should have been widened at the same time, or at least 20 years ago. Yet here we are 50 years later, and Lee remains two lanes until approaching the Highland Road intersection, though its widening is supposedly in the MovEBR plan. Thenagain, so, too, is light synchronization. Lee Drive is an example of no vision, no planning and no leadership.

Many of the decisions made in the past cannot be fied—at least without spending an inordinate amount of money, and especially with the same thinking and people in charge. But with all the technology available today, one would surmise that if other cities can synchronize lights, Baton Rouge can, too. Mayor, please deliver on what we all are paying for.

THIS IS THE PROMISE, provision and adventure found in 2 Corinthian 5:17 for all those that are in Christ: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is gone, behold all things have become new.” Life in Christ forward is lifelong discovery of all things new. We have a new identity (I Corinthians 1:30); new spirit that is alive (Ephesians 2:4); new meaning and purpose (Romans 11:36); new riches

CITY MANAGER SOLUTION?

Maybe our traffisituation would be diffeent if for the past several decades we had a professional city manager running the day-to-day of local government, like a Frisco, Texas, or Greenville, South Carolina. We had that chance.

Mayor Tom Ed McHugh blew a 1988 opportunity to get a pro in Ted Gaebler, who later authored the international bestseller Reinventing Government, going instead with his buddy, the assistant superintendent from the EBR public school system.

It was a big mistake and one that cost us for 12 years. Another example of an elected leader with no vision and zero risk tolerance. Baton Rouge could have been a much different city today.

Our current mayor also had the chance seven years ago but failed to hire a professional city manager. She is now on her fourth CAO. She wouldn’t think diffeent and pay the necessary price for talent and professional experience. Now, we all pay the price.

TheMetro Council should strongly consider putting forth a change to our plan of government, not only mandating this type of position, similar to Boston, but also creating two at-large council districts. Also wise would be putting a two-term limit for mayor and council members on the ballot. Let the voters decide on our plan of government for the future.

of grace (2 Corinthians 8:9); new family of believers (Hebrews 10:25); new attitudes (Ephesians 4:1-3); etc. In the future we will be giving a new body on a new heaven and new earth, with no pain, suffering, loss, separation, disease, etc. This is our hope that makes the suffering of this present time tolerable.

—Jeff Mitchell, Retired COL and Army Chaplain

This feature is a tribute in honor of Business Report founders, Rolfe McCollister Sr. & Rolfe McCollister Jr.

Rolfe McCollister Jr. is chairman emeritus of Business Report and a contributing columnist.

The combination of security, peace of mind, and aesthetics is a triple threat.

Gonzales Electric Gates has been the local expert for the installation of residential, multifamily, and commercial automatic gate operators and access control systems for 23 years in southeastern Louisiana.

What started as a small electric gate company has grown into a sophisticated operation that now offers many different levels of access control systems providing unparalleled security and protection. Catering to both residential and commercial projects, Gonzales Electric Gates greatly prioritizes its customer service. The company focuses on the personal relationship, and services all people and budgets, while still promising a high quality, functional, and beautiful electric gate.

Owner and CEO of Gonzales Electric Gates, Rod Braud, started his small business shortly after graduating high school at the young age of 19 years old. With nearly a quarter century of experience, Braud and Gonzales Electric Gates proudly

offers quality, custom electric gate installations and repairs access control systems for residential, multi-family, and commercial properties throughout southeast Louisiana.

Gonzales Electric Gates has always prioritized excellent customer service which includes “service after the sale,” and is committed to ensuring that each client has a positive experience.

Rod Braud values his dedicated team of expert technicians and continually invests in their education and professional growth. He provides his team with many training opportunities throughout the year to ensure they are educated on the latest information and technology behind all of the products and services offered to their clients.

As a family man, Braud acknowledges that his employees are “real people, with real problems, and real lives,” and he values the relationships he has formed with his team and their families outside of day-to-day business operations. The company culture promotes teamwork and encourages all employees to grow their knowledge and skillset.

Braud recognizes that he is only as strong as his team. To remind his team of their success, he offers employee appreciation days, holiday event parties, and quarterly interviews.

Gonzales Electric Gates bases its business strategy on four pillars that lead to success: quality, experience, commitment, and affordability. The company provides high quality, one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted iron gates to customers all around Louisiana. The team is built from decades of combined experience with a commitment to exceeding customer’s expectations.

The company works within any budget, and provides reasonable prices on all electric gate installation, repair, and maintenance. “Our mission is to exceed the expectations of every client who calls on us for electric gate and access control services,” said owner Rod Braud.

A local, growing business dedicated to excellence and top-notch service, Gonzales Electric Gates guarantees each customer an experience of quality, security, and satisfaction with all of their electric gate and access control systems.

The company takes pride in being the local electric gate specialists for the past 23 years. Enhance your property’s security and streamline access with reliable electric gates, tailored for homes and businesses.

ACCREDITATION CERTIFICATION

Woman’s Hospital has again attained Magnet recognition from TheAmerican Nurses Credentialing Center, the highest honor an organization can receive for professional nursing practice First recognized by ANCC in 2006, Woman’s is one of only 608 health care organizations worldwide to earn Magnet accreditation. Thefist postgraduate year pharmacy residency program at Woman’s Hospital has been awarded accreditation by the American Society of Health-System

Pharmacists Theaccreditation was granted by ASHP’s Commission on Credentialing and was awarded for the maximum period of eight years.

AWARDS HONORS

For the seventh consecutive year, Baker Donelson has been named to Seramount’s prestigious list of Best Law Firms for Women & Diversity. Thelist honors the top 50 fims that utilize best practices in recruiting, retaining, promoting and developing women lawyers and lawyers from underrepresented groups, including people of color.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana has been named by Points of Light to TheCivic 50 for the fifthconsecutive year. TheCivic 50 recognizes the 50 most community-minded large companies in the U.S. To qualify, companies must have revenue of at least $1 billion.

Thisyear, Blue Cross and its employees are also being recognized as fist in the nation for volunteer hours given to local communities. In 2022, Blue Cross employees gave more than 55,000 hours of volunteer service and made $2.3 million in charitable contributions, per the company’s  annual Community Partnerships Report

Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University has been named a College of Distinction for the 2023-2024 academic year, marking its commitment to providing a high-quality undergraduate education that focuses on hands-on learning, strong student-teacher relationships, a vibrant campus life and successful outcomes.

Tirumalai

Medicine, has been named the 2023 Science and Innovation Center Abstract Award winner. He was recognized for his scientificabstract, Chronic Secondhand Cigarette Smoke Exposure Enhances Susceptibility to Carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella Pneumoniae Infection in a Mouse Model.” Theaward was given by the American Thoacic Society Assembly on Pulmonary Infections and Tuberculosis award selection committee.

Red River Bank is ranked 45th on S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 2022 list of the best-performing community banks with assets between $3 billion and $10 billion. S&P Global Market Intelligence ranks institutions based on their returns, growth and efficiey and places a premium on the strength and risk profileof the fiancial institution.

Rangasamy

Rangasamy, associate professor of research at the Center for Lung Biology and Disease with the department of pathobiological sciences at LSU’s School of Veterinary

REV/REV Business was recently awarded fie silver Telly Awards for projects completed in 2022. The Gonzales-based company took

home two silver Telly Awards for its  REV Rebrand  project— bringing together three legacy companies—Reserve Telephone Company, EATEL and Vision Communications. Thee additional honors were awarded for its local community relations effots, specifially for its  REV Tailgate Show (featuring East Ascension and Dutchtown High School), a spotlight on the recovering and rebuilding Grand Isle community post-Hurricane Ida, and the long-form documentary Middle Passage to Wallace: the Whitney Plantation Museum Experience

Th SASSO agency received a total of eight accolades across various categories in the 2023 edition of The Communicator Awards. Theawards were given to campaigns for three diffeent clients: CocaCola, b1Bank and Bernhard. Theawards

program attracts more than 3,000 entries annually from brands worldwide.

Woman’s Hospital has again been recognized as a Best Place to Work in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare based on employee satisfaction survey data. Thisis the 16th year in a row Woman’s has made the list—the only health care organization to earn the distinction  every year since the program’s inception.

BANKING & FINANCE

Tim Smith has been promoted to central region president for Investar Bank. In his new role, Smith will oversee the operations and growth of Investar’s commercial banking team in the region. With more than 20 years of experience in the banking industry, Smith has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence and innovation.

HEALTH CARE

Dr. Phillip Allen has been named vice president, chief of surgery and perioperative services for Our Lady of the Lake Health. In this role, Allen will oversee and lead the surgery department at the region’s only Level I trauma center and throughout the Baton Rouge region. Allen joined Our

Lady of the Lake Health in 2013, serving as an otolaryngologist, medical director of the graduate medical education department and, most recently, associate chief medical officeat Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.

Following a national search, Jonathan Brouk has been selected as the new president of Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Health. Brouk, who has served as interim president for Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Health since March, was named to the new role after serving in various executive leadership roles at Children’s Hospital New Orleans. Brouk is an experienced pediatric health care executive and attorney with a corporate legal background and a wide range of strategic leadership experience.

JONATHAN BROUK Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Health Issue Date: July 2023 Ad proof #2 • Please respond by e-mail or phone with your approval or minor revisions. • AD WILL RUN AS IS unless approval or final revisions are received within 24 hrs from receipt of this proof. A shorter timeframe will apply for tight deadlines. • Additional revisions must be requested and may be subject to production fees. Carefully check this ad for: CORRECT ADDRESS • CORRECT PHONE NUMBER • ANY TYPOS This ad design © Melara Enterprises, LLC. 2023. All rights reserved. Phone 225-928-1700 149 Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, July 2023

PREFERRED SERVICE PARTNER

BUILDING LOUISIANA’S WORKFORCE THROUGH COLLEGE ACCESS

The Louisiana Office of Student Financial Assistance (LOSFA) is a Program of the Louisiana Board of Regents, that strives to be Louisiana’s first choice for college access by promoting, preparing for, and providing equity of college access. LOSFA administers the state’s scholarship and grant programs and the state’s Internal Revenue Code Section 529 college savings program.

HOW LOSFA SERVES BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY

Assisting employees and their children with:

• Comprehensive college access and career exploration advising

• Connections to college access and other wraparound services and resources

• College application completion

• Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion

• Identifying resources to pay for postsecondary degrees, certificates, and credentials

• Workshops, presentations, and special programs on college access, financial literacy, and LOSFA’s scholarship and grant programs

• Participation in employee browses and informational sessions

• 529 saving account payroll deduction

HOW BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY CAN HELP LOSFA SERVE LOUISIANA

Connecting students and families to:

Networking and mentoring through our Student Network Groups

Job shadowing and internship opportunities

Speakers and content experts in business and industry

Developing essential skills for career success

Job and career placement

To learn more about establishing a partnership with LOSFA, please contact us at custserv@la.gov

Dr. Kristen Pontiff has been named medical director of the pediatric emergency department at Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital. Pontiffwill advance the effots in the emergency department to continue leading in specialized pediatric care. She is board certifid in pediatric emergency medicine and general pediatrics.

ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION

Four team members have been promoted to the senior leadership team of Royal Engineers & Consultants. Imbrie Packard has been promoted to senior vice president of Royal’s architecture and construction service line. Kristie Lancon has been promoted to senior vice president of Royal’s disaster recovery service line. Matthew Mumfrey has been promoted to senior vice president and Jessica Clausing has been promoted to senior vice president of accounting and fiance.

INDUSTRY

Parker Hay has been promoted to service center manager for

Southeastern Freight Lines in Baton Rouge Hay started his career at the Monroe service center as a management trainee. He has served in various leadership positions during his time with the company including outbound supervisor, pickup and delivery supervisor and, most recently, assistant service center manager in Baton Rouge.

Jude Housewright, Natalie Kaczynski and Blanche Gallagher have joined the TJC Group as project managers. Thethree will be responsible for assisting with government and regulatory affais, strategic communications effots and stakeholder engagement for the fim’s clients.

Ed Lee is the new director of facilities and service management at the Port of Greater Baton Rouge.

NURSING and REHABILITATION CENTER, LLC

“I applaud River Oaks Nursing & Rehabilitation Center for their commitment to providing the highest quality of care and enhancing the lives of their residents. The Bronze – Commitment to Quality Award is an incredible recognition of their unwavering focus on delivering quality care for their residents,” said Mark Berger, executive director of the Louisiana Nursing Home Association (LNHA).

River Oaks and sister Central Management facilities have earned 25 bronze quality awards and 20 silver quality awards since 2016. Of these awards, four bronze awards were earned in 2023. Since 2015, 105 Louisiana nursing facilities have earned a national quality award. Louisiana ranks eighth-best in the nation for the percentage of facilities earning a national quality award.

River Oaks Administrator Brock Naquin said, “The AHCA/NCAL Bronze Award illustrates our continued commitment to excellence and quality patient care.”

The National Quality Award Program by the American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) has three progressive levels of achievement – bronze, silver, and gold. Implemented by AHCA/NCAL in 1996, the National Quality Award Program is centered on the core values and criteria of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The program assists providers of long term and post-acute care services in achieving their performance excellence goals. The awards will be presented during AHCA/NCAL’s 74th Annual Convention and Expo in Denver, Colorado on October 1-4, 2023.

With more than 20 years of experience working in the rail industry in multiple states east of the Mississippi River, Lee now brings his expertise and focus on customer service to the staffat the port.

Dean Sack is the new CEO for Allied Power Management. Slack was most recently the company’s executive vice president. He succeeds Ron McCall, who has retired but will remain with the company as board chair. Allied also announced James Piazza as executive vice president of nuclear services and David Hansen as executive vice president of fossil services.

Donelson’s Baton Rouge offi. While serving in this role, Bodin will maintain his legal practice, which focuses on a wide range of civil litigation matters. He assumes the role from Phyllis Cancienne, who has served as managing shareholder since 2015. Cancienne will return to a full-time focus on her employment litigation practice. In 35 years of practice, Bodin has handled a large variety of commercial litigation and complex and creative settlements of cases.

Issue Date: July 2023 Ad proof #1

LAW

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Gregory Bodin has been named managing shareholder of Baker

• AD WILL RUN AS IS unless approval or final revisions are received within 24 hrs from receipt of this proof. A shorter timeframe will apply for tight deadlines.

Litigator Courtney Joiner has joined the McGlinchey Staffod fim’s labor and employment group as a member (partner) in the Baton Rouge offi. Joiner practices in the areas of labor and employment, education law and civil litigation. He

CORRECT ADDRESS • CORRECT PHONE NUMBER • ANY TYPOS This ad design © Melara Enterprises, LLC. 2023. All rights reserved. Phone 225-928-1700 (225) 292-0687 www.advisor.investments service@advisor.investments 4870 Bluebonnet Blvd., Ste B | Baton Rouge Congratulations TO THIS YEAR’S TOP 100 PRIVATE COMPANIES! 151 Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, July 2023

PARKER HAY Southeastern Freight Lines

JUDE HOUSEWRIGHT TJC Group NATALIE KACZYNSKI TJC Group BLANCHE GALLAGHER TJC Group

GREGORY BODIN Baker Donelson

River Oaks Nursing & Rehabilitation Center has been selected by the American Health Care Association to receive the 2023 Bronze - Commitment to Quality Award earning national honors for developing and demonstrating effective approaches that help improve performance and quality outcomes.

has worked on a variety of significant cases including one which required the Louisiana Supreme Court to clarify the scope of the school employee immunity law. He has also served as special counsel to the state of Louisiana and the city of Monroe as well as local counsel to the nation’s largest freight railroad company.

MARKETING

Meri Burroughs has been hired as vice president of marketing for REV/REV Business. Within this newly created role, Burroughs will lead marketing effots for REV’s residential and business segments including strategic direction-setting for marketing and communications across the growing company. Prior to joining REV, Burroughs held numerous leadership positions with both Cox Business and Cox Media— leading and setting strategy for teams of media and telecommunications sales professionals and managers.

NONPROFITS

Sadie Becnel has joined

Louisiana Policy Institute for Children as its government affairs director and general counsel. In this role, Becnel will utilize her background as legislative liaison for the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services to advocate for increased access to high-quality early care and education for Louisiana children and their families.

Chris Landry is the new president/CEO of the Louisiana Travel Association. Landry is a hospitality professional with more than 16 years of experience in sales and marketing. Currently, he serves as a regional director of sales for Larry Blumberg and Associates, providing support to its properties in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

PUBLIC SECTOR

Christopher Johnson has been promoted to assistant chief of police for the Baton Rouge Community College Police Department. Johnson has served as a law enforcement professional for more than 34 years. He began his career with the Baton Rouge Police Department in 1988. At BRPD, he served in various roles including as a detective in the homicide/armed robbery division, where he served as a supervisor for more than 18 years. He also served as a commander in the major assault and fiancial crime divisions.

REAL ESTATE

Will Watson has been named a principal and partner for Lee & Associates, and Alex Lorando has

been named a director in the Baton Rouge offi. Watson brings a niche expertise in the disposition, acquisition and exchange of self-storage facilities across the Gulf South. He has worked with investors on small-scale self-storage properties as well as on large-scale sites with over 500 units. Lorando has a strong multifamily and sales background, spending the last two years in sales for international tech fims and six years before that in the commercial real estate industry.

RESEARCH

D’Andra Odom is the newest member of the LA CaTS Community Engagement and Outreach Core. Odom joined Pennington Biomedical Research Center in March and will coordinate the Community Research for Optimal Wellness Network, a new program led by the Community Engagement and Outreach Core Odom was most recently health equity director for Aetna Better Health Louisiana. She also established and directed the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.

COURTNEY JOINER McGlinchey Stafford MERI BURROUGHS REV/REV Business CHRIS LANDRY Louisiana Travel Association

D’ANDRA ODOM LA CaTS Community Engagement and Outreach Core

Planting trees

establishes

People in communities with abundant green space generally enjoy better health and happiness. Gathering together promotes social ties and by planting and caring for trees we ensure clean and fresh air for generations beyond our own.

Benefits of trees:

• Gives off oxygen, the very thing we need to breathe.

• Traps CO2 gas and scrubs the air of impurities.

• Provides shade which helps reduce and moderate the temperature and climate.

• Prevents soil erosion and absorbs stormwater to minimize flooding.

• Provides wind protection to homes and shelter to birds and animals.

Keeping your neighborhood clean and green secures a brighter future. It can be achieved.

Beverly Haydel

President and CEO, Sequitur Consulting

“I didn’t get into hunting until after college. I started hunting as a way to spend time with my dad but now I love it. It’s a couple of hours to myself to recharge.”

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