Community Renewal Good Stories - Central Louisiana

Information by State  Print version

RC Tax Credits Yield Employee Health Insurance

Central Louisiana, RC

Before HUD designated an RC in Central Louisiana in January 2002, Catahoula Manufacturing in Jonesville could not afford to provide health insurance for its employees. Then, in 2004, business owners Charles Champlin and his daughter Dareth Delhoste found that the benefits of RC wage tax credits for employees living and working in the RC made providing health insurance affordable.

"The family looks at this as an investment in its employees," commented Heather Urena of the Kisatchie Delta Regional Planning District. RC tax incentives such as the $1,500 per employee wage tax credit enable employers to offer benefits to employees.

"The RC program is helping to sustain local businesses and to encourage faster investments. The program is helping business owners to decide to act sooner rather than later," Urena commented. The RC program's goal, to attract sustained private investment and a diverse employment base in some of the most distressed pockets of poverty, has garnered attention from around the Nation, she said.

Champlin and Delhoste own two companies in the Central Louisiana RC: Catahoula Manufacturing and The Fish Net Company. Catahoula Manufacturing makes netting for fishing, batting cages, and other products, which is then sold at The Fish Net Company, the family's nearby retail store. These two homegrown companies contribute to the local and State economies.

Another recent success in the Central Louisiana RC is the purchase by local entrepreneur Jessie Newcomer of a blighted brownfields site on Bolton Avenue in the city of Alexandria. Newcomer is using environmental cleanup credits and a possible RC commercial revitalization deduction (CRD) allocation to offset the costs of cleaning up this major eyesore.

Newcomer's business, Visual Strings, is planned as a high-technology manufacturing site for violin parts. The project is expected to help revitalize downtown Alexandria, according to the Alexandria Daily Town Talk.

For more information on the programs of the Central Louisiana RC, please call President and CEO Tana Trichel, Northeast Louisiana Economic Alliance, at (318) 757-3033.