10/12 magazine Winter 2009 : Page 35
Louisiana Green Fuels’ St. James Sugar Mill A megalopolis. That’s what they’re calling the phenomenon that’s predicted to take hold of the 10/12 corridor sometime during the next four decades. It’s a label coined by French geographer Jean Gottmann, known for his seminal study on the urban region of the Boston-Washington corridor. It refers to an extensive metropolitan area or a long chain of roughly continuous metropolitan areas. In other words, much of that land from Lake Charles to Slidell and down to New Orleans that currently looks like forest or field will eventually be swallowed up by the linear city known as the 10/12 corridor. So who stands to benefit from that transformation? Or who, perhaps, is making it happen? One is a high-powered lawyer who has a predilection for well-traveled interstate intersections. Another is a logging giant that doesn’t mind selling off acreage if the price is right. One is a prominent urban developer whose work is worth an estimated $800 million. And two of them have their roots in one of Louisiana’s oldest cash crops—sugar cane. Meet the land barons—five of the corridor’s biggest land owners. www.1012corridor.com 10/12 MAGAZINE • winter 2009 35 Meet five of the corridor’ s biggest landowners. By Penny Brown Font R o n n i e o l i v i e R
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