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Weathering the Storms Despite natural and man-made disasters, the Gulf Coast apartment industry is poised for a rebound By Erika Schnitzer, Managing Editor In the wake of the BP oil spill, the Gulf Coast continues to make headlines daily, leaving behind a number of open-ended questions about its long-term effects on employment and housing in the region. “I don’t think we’ve seen the oil spill impact thoroughly yet; it’s not so much what the oil spill has done, but what will be a great threat is the [drilling] moratorium. It puts out of work tens of thousands of people,” says James P. McNamara, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Biosciences Economic Development District (GNOBEDD), a 1,500-acre economic development district created by the State of Louisiana in 2005. And the area could use an employment boost. The New Orleans-Metairie- Kenner, La. metro area reported an 8.2 percent unemployment rate in June 2010, a 1.2 percent increase from the month prior, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics while unemployment in Mobile, Ala. was 10.9 percent and the Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent, Fla. metro area reported a 10.5 percent unemployment rate. In addition to the loss of jobs from the drilling freeze, global security giant Northrop Grumman Corp. recently announced that it will close its Avondale shipyard, which employs about 5,000 people and provides another 5,000 supporting jobs, in 2013. This news is at once detrimental to the city’s employment base, though it can be viewed positively, points out McNamara, who notes that the abandoned facility may provide New Orleans with a prime piece of real estate, either for the marine industry or as additional port space. “We can weather that storm,” he says optimistically, “partly because of the emerging bioscience sector,” which is expected to increase the demand for apartment living in Central City by at least 20 percent over the next four years. The new $2.5 billion Tulane/LSU hospital is expected to add 6,000 jobs, and a new $90 million cancer center and a $60 million biotech incubator, both of which are about 50 percent complete, will add hundreds of new jobs. “We’ve seen a lot of change in the market since Katrina, and it’s turned out to be a strong market … because it moved in a different direction than other markets,” notes Matt Schwartz, principal of The Domain Companies, which has market report This page: The Domain Companies has developed three mixed-income projects in the Biosciences District of New Orleans. The projects were all financed using Go-Zone housing tax credits, Go-Zone tax incentives, Community Development Block Grant Funds and IDB taxable bonds.