Catalyzing Entrepreneurship Assets, Gaps, and Interventions for Areas Beyond the New Orleans Renaissance A Forward Cities Report by the New Orleans Research Advisory Council, researched and written by Richard Campanella, with special thanks to Summer Suleiman, Allen Square, Aaron Miscenich, Glen Armantrout, Matt Wisdom, Louis David, and Forward Cities co-founders Denise Byrne and Christopher Gergen. New Orleans, Louisiana, 2015. CONTENTS Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction and Goals ............................................................................................................................................................................. 2 Definitions and Process ............................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Geography and History of Study Area ...................................................................................................................................................... 6 Baseline Socio-Economic Data .................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Assets and Gaps in the Current State of Entrepreneurism in Study Area ................................................................................................. 9 Asset/Gap: Existing Businesses, Missing Businesses ............................................................................................................................ 9 Asset/Gap: Social Capital, Fiscal Capital ............................................................................................................................................... 9 Asset/Gap: Nonbasic and Basic Sectors ............................................................................................................................................. 10 Asset/Gap: Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises ............................................................................ 10 Asset/Gap: Transportation Arteries, Reliable Public Transit .............................................................................................................. 11 Asset/Gap: Historicity and Proximity to Historic Core ....................................................................................................................... 11 Asset/Gap: Affordability, Rising Costs of Living ................................................................................................................................. 12 Asset/Gap: Flood Zones and Urban Risk ............................................................................................................................................ 12 Asset/Gap: Dillard University as Anchor Institution ........................................................................................................................... 13 Asset/Gap: Creole Culinary Heritage, Culinary Offerings ................................................................................................................... 14 Asset/Gap: Vocational Education and the Skilled Trades Heritage .................................................................................................... 14 Potential Interventions for Fostering Entrepreneurship in the Study Area ............................................................................................ 16 Co-Location of “Food, Food, Food” .................................................................................................................................................... 16 Cluster Strategy: Creation of a Visitable Destination ......................................................................................................................... 16 New Orleans Master Crafts Guild ...................................................................................................................................................... 17 Cluster Strategy for Light Industry, Artisan Product Manufacturing, and B2B Businesses ................................................................ 18 Overlay Districts ................................................................................................................................................................................. 18 Live/Work Zoning ............................................................................................................................................................................... 20 Short-Term Rentals, AirBnB, and the Sharing Economy ..................................................................................................................... 20 Unbundled Procurement for Neighborhood DBEs ............................................................................................................................. 21 Entrepreneurial Ombudsman ............................................................................................................................................................ 22 Restrained Regulatory Environments and One-Stop Licensing .......................................................................................................... 22 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 23 Appendix: Organizational Inventory ....................................................................................................................................................... 24 1 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY disconnected communities.” With support from national donors such as the Case Foundation and Aspen Institute, This Forward Cities report explores and recommends specific Forward Cities operates by organizing consortia of leaders, interventions toward fostering entrepreneurial activity while entrepreneurs, and citizens in four comparable American avoiding gentrification in a selected neighborhood in New cities and, using a consistent set of goals and investigative Orleans. Working with a wide array of community advocates rubrics, guiding them to explore and improve their and entrepreneurs, members of the Forward Cities New entrepreneurial ecosystems through cross-city learning. To Orleans Research Advisory Council selected in early 2015 a this end, Forward Cities’ two key tactics are the formation of study area that boasted sufficient potential and momentum, local advisory councils “to ensure local input and ownership yet that lay outside the current or soon-to-be “renaissance by the key stakeholders and donors in that city's ecosystem,” spaces” of the post-Katrina city. In the ensuing months, we and the launching of a mapping and research component, 2 explored, researched, mapped, and analyzed socio-economic which this report represents. data in the 2.5-mile area, and interviewed stakeholders in its The cities include Cleveland, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; commercial, civic, nonprofit, academic, and government Detroit, Michigan and New Orleans, Louisiana, all of which sectors. Analyses aimed to identify assets and opportunities have historically experienced economic booms followed by conducive to a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, as well declines and, more recently, sporadic revival as well as as gaps and deficiencies, and proceeded to propose ten upheaval. New Orleans offers an extreme case within this potential interventions. After debates and discussions with cross-city collaboration, given the massive trauma of the stakeholders at year’s end, council members decided to 2005 Hurricane Katrina deluge and the unevenness of the recommend pursuing and implementing the following ensuing recovery. Financial contributions made specifically interventions in the next phase of the Forward Cities effort: for the New Orleans work come from Entergy, Greater New (1) Formalizing the Informal Economy, through techniques Orleans Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Blue Cross-Blue such as the easing of permitting processes, simplifying Shield, and the Foundation for the Mid South. paperwork, providing tax advice, greenlighting use of The goals of this investigation may be captured in the residencies as workplaces, streamlining of bureaucracy for following guiding question, complete with its four conditional microbusinesses, microfinancing, and ombudsmen support; statements: How may we foster local entrepreneurial activity (2) Empowering the Dillard University Film Program to aid which (1) produces sustainable fiscal, human, and/or social film-based enterprise development by students of this HBCU, capital in (2) spaces at the margins of New Orleans post- in an era when Louisiana ranks among the most popular Katrina-recovery renaissance, (3) among peoples not states for film production and digital media; proportionally represented in the archetypal renaissance (3) “Food, Food, Food,” an effort to promote food-based scene, (4) without precipitating gentrification, displacement, enterprises in a neighborhood that is—or should be—world and neighborhood upheaval? famous for its Creole culinary heritage. These opportunities Parsing the above directive, readers will note that condition may include eateries, retail, wholesale, at-home