President and CEO of the Downtown Development District Davon Barbour wears festive clothes during the Holiday Lighting of Canal Street Event outside Canal Place in New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
President and CEO of the Downtown Development District Davon Barbour wears festive clothes during the Holiday Lighting of Canal Street Event outside Canal Place in New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
The head of New Orleans’ Downtown Development District, a state agency that oversees some of the security, beautification and economic development efforts in parts of the Central Business and Warehouse districts, has resigned to take up a similar job in Austin, Texas.
Davon Barbour announced Wednesday that he would be leaving the DDD, as it is known, at the end of February to become CEO of the Downtown Austin Alliance.
Barbour has been the CEO of the DDD, which has an annual budget of about $10 million, since December, 2021, when he replaced Kurt Weigle, who’d been in the job for nearly two decades.
The DDD—which is bounded by Iberville Street, the Pontchartrain Expressway, Claiborne Avenue and the Mississippi River—was created in 1974 as an independent state entity. It is funded by a millage on commercial properties in the district to pay for things like additional security, lighting, promotional events and some subsidies for improvements to business premises. It is widely credited as the first business improvement district in the country.
Barbour, whose DDD contract had been extended for another two years in November, said he told the board just before Christmas that he’d be leaving because of the “phenomenal opportunity” presented by the Austin job.
The Downtown Austin Alliance, created in 1993, operates as a private sector nonprofit with a budget of just over $16 million.
Chris Ross, the DDD board chair, said they had been “shocked” by Barbour’s resignation but will soon choose an executive search firm to look for his replacement.
Barbour said he is most proud of “building and strengthening alliances” since he’s been in the DDD job. This included helping to get City Council approval to fund the BioDistrict, which is an overlapping state entity whose task will be to promote biomedical businesses and jobs in the city’s medical corridor, which runs from Loyola Avenue to South Carrolton Avenue and covers a large part of downtown from the Pontchartrain Expressway to Iberville Street.
Ross said Barbour had “helped change the perception of the DDD, especially when it came to working with the city administration.”
Weigle had tangled with the city over funding and the use of monies promised to fix the drainage system in the area it covers.
The DDD was among several agencies that had sued City Hall over taxes that it collects on their behalf but had been withheld to use for other purposes. The agencies prevailed in the courts after several appeals by the city government.
Email Anthony McAuley tmcauley@theadvocate.com.
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