Alive push changes role

• By SCOTT DYER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Nov 3, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:00 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has emerged as a major force in helping Mayor-President Kip Holden sell voters on a proposed $989-million capital improvements program that includes the largest tax-backed economic development plan in the history of East Baton Rouge Parish.

It’s the latest development in a partnership that was created last year when the city-parish contracted the Chamber to serve as its economic development department for $500,000 a year. Now in its second year, the alliance already has produced dividends.

Albemarle Corp., a chemical company, announced earlier this year that it is moving its headquarters from Virginia to Baton Rouge.
And more recently, Electronic Arts Inc., a top video game company, unveiled plans to establish a major testing center in south Baton Rouge near LSU.

But the city-parish’s quest for economic development will begin a new chapter if voters on Tuesday approve Holden’s proposal.
The centerpiece of the package is a planned $247.5-million combination museum-zoo-aquarium. The Audubon Nature Institute would operate the attraction downtown on the riverfront.

Like the Audubon Zoo and the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, the proposed Baton Rouge museum would be built with tax dollars. Holden is asking voters to approve a new half-cent sales tax and a 9.9-mill property tax for the next 30 years to fund the program.

Holden’s plan also includes an expansion of the River Center, drainage improvements, replacement of 38 dangerous bridges, a new Parish Prison and a new juvenile justice center, modernization of more than 200 traffic signals and other projects.

Jim Ellis, chairman of the Chamber’s board, said Audubon’s proposed Alive attraction, is the “juice” of the proposal because it’s projected to raise enough new tax revenues to pay off the 30-year bond issue in 17.5 years.

The Audubon attraction is projected to generate 2,000 permanent jobs when it opens in 2012 and 11,000 jobs by 2016.

Over that same period, a study co-authored by LSU economist Jim Richardson estimates that local tax collections will rise from almost $11 million from when Alive opens in 2012 to about $30 million in 2016.

The permanent jobs and tax revenues not only would come from the Audubon attraction, but from restaurants, hotels and other businesses that will spring up to handle the extra traffic,  according to the study.

The study estimates that Alive will draw 600,000 people in its first year of operation, and more than 700,000 by 2016.

Along with state Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, Ellis co-chairs the Committee for the Future of Baton Rouge, a political action committee created to push the bond issue.

The latest available report filed by the committee shows that the group had raised $20,000 as of Sept. 25.