LED announces $50 million Growth Fund, readies incentive and site development legislation ahead of session

Secretary Susan Bourgeois updated the Louisiana Economic Development Partnership Board on a series of innovation and investment initiatives on behalf of LED, including the launch of a $50,000,000 co-investment Growth Fund and an initiative called the Louisiana Institute for Artificial Intelligence. She said LED used the recent Super Bowl pavilion and related programming to raise the state’s profile to national audiences.

The announcements came during remarks that the secretary framed as part of LED’s first-year recap and a push into an implementation phase. The secretary said LED hosted thousands of visitors at the Super Bowl pavilion, attracted substantial press coverage and used the event to showcase the state’s energy and innovation assets.

Why it matters: The Growth Fund and the institute are intended to support in-state innovation and attract investment. Separately, LED staff said they are preparing legislation for the upcoming legislative session to create a new high-impact job creation program and to increase state investment in site development, moves LED officials said are meant to improve Louisiana’s competitiveness against neighboring states.

During the meeting Ileana Lade, LED’s chief economic competitiveness officer, described three priority areas LED staff has examined: Louisiana’s tax structure, site development and quality job creation. “We’re preparing to introduce legislation in this session,” Lade said, describing a new job creation program intended to focus on “high-quality, high-impact” positions rather than purely job counts. She said LED intends to engage industry stakeholders and legislators while developing the proposal.

On site development, Lade said other states are investing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare industrial sites and noted that Louisiana’s certified sites program leaves many sites with additional requirements — such as wetlands permitting or utility extensions — before they are truly development-ready. She cited examples of recent out‑of‑state site investment levels in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and said Louisiana has not made a comparable investment in recent years.

The board and staff also reviewed recent changes achieved during the special session, which staff credited with eliminating the corporate franchise tax and other streamlining measures. Bourgeois told the board a constitutional amendment tied to the tax package will be on the March 29 ballot and said passage of that amendment is still pending; she asked board members to pay attention to the campaign.

LED flagged the Super Bowl pavilion as a marketing success and said it generated earned media value staff estimated at roughly $2,000,000 for the state that day. Bourgeois and other speakers credited public–private collaboration in staging the pavilion and said the event demonstrated demand for a more prominent national narrative about Louisiana’s business and innovation opportunities.

Ending: Bourgeois said LED will print an annual report and distribute a prepress draft to board members. Board members asked staff to return with more detailed legislative language, regional site inventories and further detail on how the Growth Fund will be structured and governed; those specifics were discussed as “work in progress” and were not settled during the meeting.