Port of New Orleans opens new cold storage facility
Refreshments and hors d’oeuvres are spread out atop pallets on a fork lift as the Port of New Orleans and New Orleans Cold Storage hosts the dedication of the Henry Clay Avenue Refrigerated Terminal Wednesday in July 2012. The $40 million project includes a 142,000 square-foot warehouse for storing and freezing perishables located along the Mississippi River at the Henry Clay Wharf. (Ted Jackson / Times-Picayune archive)
 

Business Facilities magazine, which focuses on business site selection, is giving New Orleans top ratings among ports and information technology job centers. It announced the leading cities on Monday with the full rankings scheduled to be published on Aug. 5.

“With its proximity to the center of the U.S. via a 14,500-mile inland waterway system, six class one railroads and a nexus of interstate highways, New Orleans is the port of choice for the movement of everything from steel, rubber and manufactured goods to commodities like coffee,” said Business Facilities Editor in Chief Jack Rogers in an article from the magazine.

The article praises $100 million in infrastructure improvements at the Port of New Orleans designed to accommodate expansion of the Panama Canal and the 2012 debut of improvements to the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal.

New Orleans came out as the top city for the port. For information technology jobs, it ranked third behind the longtime tech powerhouses of San Jose, Calif., and San Francisco.

In technology, the article cited the city’s recent luring of the GE Capital technology center after a deal worked out by Louisiana Economic Development at the state level that funds increased software development training at colleges and universities.

“NOLA’s success in attracting GE’s IT Center of Excellence and Louisiana’s commitment to back this growth sector with an innovative partnership between business and higher education gives us confidence that New Orleans will be a national leader in IT for years to come,” Rogers said in the article.