The Alliance for Positive Growth is ready to get back in the game.

“Never has there been a more important time to focus on building a better Southwest Louisiana,” said Faith Hooks, APG executive director.

APG is an organization of professionals in the fields of real estate, development, construction and all other interested parties working together to promote strong, progressive growth in Southwest Louisiana, and Hooks said the task has definitely taken on a new meaning after the pandemic and four natural disasters.

“Now is the time to find innovative solutions to jumpstart positive economic development to benefit generations to come,” Hooks said.

A first installment on that jumpstart was delivered Thursday in the form of the 3rd annual Positive Growth Banquet, a fundraiser with keynote speaker Joe Max Higgins, CEO of the Golden Triangle Development LINK. Higgins and his team revived a desolate three-county region of Mississippi after years of decline and economic depression. He has been featured on CBS and in The Atlantic and Harvard Business Review.

Before the event, Higgins shared some of his insight on how this resurgence was accomplished, claiming that integrity and determination more than anything cinched the deal that has brought nearly 15,000 manufacturing jobs and more than $6 billion in advanced industry development to one of the poorest areas of the country where unemployment in parts of the tri-county area was as high as 20 percent.

“I think when they met the team, they saw these guys are gonna do what they say,” Higgins said. “They’re going to get it done and when they have trouble they’re not going to stop.”

John Corzine, the man who located the steel mill in the Golden Triangle labeled Higgins as “a dog with a bone.” During a CBS “60 Minutes” interview, Higgins said, “The only way we win any deal is to tear off everybody else’s face.”

He admits some wanted to fire him before he got started. He didn’t want to take the job in Mississippi, telling the headhunter that told him about it, “I see poverty, despair, no future, no hope for a future. I don’t go to Mississippi,” he told her. That night he started looking at Columbus. It had six railroads, quality highways, major universities and Tennessee Valley as the power provider, and thought: “This area ought to be hitting it out of the park but the biggest employer sold toilet seats.”

There was no expectation for success and the area’s Achilles heel was a familiar weak area found in many communities that need jobs, filling the well-above $15 an hour jobs with skilled labor. He solved that with a “communiversity.”

“It’s not carpentry and welding,” he said. “It’s hydraulic mechatronics, cabling wiring and other technology.”

Big companies get a tax break

“They pay one-third of school tax and one-third of parish tax,” Higgins said. Some people say you’re taking money away from the school. It lasts 10 years. The steel mill has been there much longer. They’re paying exponentially more than that. So we give up a little bit.

When communities start getting back a little, it’s reinvested in economic development. He pointed out that this area is set to get $600 million in hurricane relief and American Rescue Plan Act money.

“You’ve got to figure out a way to do something that changes your place forever, for the good. Now I don’t know what that is. But surely to God, somebody here knows this stuff, right?”

This year’s banquet was dedicated in memory of Brent Lumpkin, APG founding member and respected business developer, who passed away last year due to complications from COVID-19. Would he have approved of Joe Max Higgins?

“He was always an advocate for anything that would diversify development in Lake Charles,” Hooks said. “So bringing in someone who is experienced with large scale and small scale developments in multiple states, with evidence based success, he would have approved.”

Hooks said the founding members of APG have never been about development for the sake of development.

“They taught me that it’s important to get the kind of developments that will advance this area for the next 5, 10, 15 years,” Hooks said. “We’re also here to advocate for making doing business here easier.”

Find out more about APG by going to  www.apgrowth.org, emailing info@apgrowth.org or by calling (337) 602-6788, ext 100.