City creates website for starting a business in Shreveport

Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux has had the goal for a while to make doing business in the city easier. Last week, the city launched a new website that takes a step in that direction.

The new Economic Development One-Stop Shop is designed to make starting or growing a business in Shreveport easier, faster and more transparent, according to a news release.

“The new website has been several months in the making,” Arceneaux said. “It was one of the recommendations of the Small Business Task Force.”

It was one of the first assignments he gave to Economic Development Director Bill Sabo when he joined the administration last November.

“I handed it to him and said, ‘Here’s your first assignment,’” the mayor said. “He began working on it. Bill designed what he wanted. Our IT people built the site. So it was all done in-house. We didn’t hire a contractor to do it.”

The website features simplified guides for starting a business, real estate development resources, updated permitting timelines, and links to the city and regional partners, the release said. It reflects a shift in the city.

“If you’re going to open a new business or expand your business, it will provide you with checklists and numbers to call and everything that you should need,” Arceneaux said. “It may not solve all of your problems, but it will solve most of your problems.”

The website is a work in progress, he said, but it was essential to release it to the public.

“It will be a dynamic site, in that it will evolve over time,” Arceneaux said. “As people use it, they will say I needed it to do this, and it didn’t do that. But if you wait until you have it perfect, No. 1, you will be wrong. It won’t be perfect. And No. 2, it’ll just delay the effectiveness. So we decided to launch it.”

Sabo is already at work adding more functionality to the site.

“Bill is working on making sure virtually all of our applications can be completed online,” the mayor said. “Not just by downloading a PDF and having to hand it in, but using it online and handing it in. There are still some aspects of the process in some respects that require a personal visit to the police station or to Government Plaza. But most of it can be done and submitted online.”

Arceneaux said he was glad to see it launched and that Sabo was the right man at the right time for the job.

“That’s something that we have needed for a long time,” he said. “We had somebody who was dedicated to doing it. And we accomplished it. I am really excited about it. I think it will be helpful to our citizens, and one more thing to help businesses get started, and make it easier to get started and expand.”

The public has received it eagerly as well. “People seem to be very excited about it,” Arceneaux said. “I think it will be a really positively received by the public. It’s the little things that you do to enhance business development. You won’t be able to tie a particular job creation to this, but there will be jobs created as a result of this.”

Shreveport Pilots

Baseball is a team game. Celebrating baseball is a team sport, too.

On June 23, Arceneaux led a city-wide pep rally to cheer on the LSU Shreveport Pilots baseball team, which completed a historic 59-0 season and captured the NAIA National Championship in Idaho last month.

“Monday was cool,” Arceneaux said last week of the celebration. “It was cool that we had a team from LSU in Shreveport that went 59-0, which is still an astonishing accomplishment. To have 59 baseball games and not lose a single one in an entire season. I don’t think it will ever be done again. And the great thing about it is that because of that goose egg, you can’t get lower than that.”

When it looked like the Pilots were going to complete the perfect season, Arceneaux assembled his team and made a game plan. Time was of the essence.

Arceneaux spoke with Shelly Ragle, then with LSUS Chancellor Robert Smith and Erin Smith, LSUS director of media and public relations, on Friday, May 30. There was a reason the celebration needed to be scheduled for Monday morning.

“The players are not in school, and they are ready to go home,” he said.

So SPAR and LSUS joined forces and worked tirelessly through the weekend to set up Festival Plaza for the event.

And the public responded. Arceneaux estimated the crowd at 1,000 people.

“I think it came off great,” he said.

“We had confetti cannons, music and a DJ. The whole thing was set up wonderfully. It was just coordinated beautifully in a single workday. It shows what we can do when we set our minds to it.”

Arceneaux has several reasons to celebrate.

“Baseball is a sport I grew up with,” he said. “I was a fan before being a fan of other sports. And these are special people, not just special ballplayers.

They were so appreciative. It was a fun thing to do. And it came off well. I think Shreveport enjoyed it.”