After announcing last year that he was moving his offshore transportation company from the Central Business District to Metairie, Shane Guidry said this week that Harvey Gulf Marine International will remain in its longtime home in the heart of downtown.
The Hancock Whitney Center headquarters at 701 Poydras St. in New Orleans, La. Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019, formerly known as One Shell Square. Shell relinquished naming rights on 2018 but it still occupies nine floors, where it employs about 1,000.
Guidry attributed the about-face to the recent election of Jeff Landry as governor and Landry's plans for dealing with crime in New Orleans. Guidry is a close confidant, advisor, and megadonor to the incoming Republican governor, as well as a co-chair of Landry's transition team.
“Now that we’ve won the Governor’s Mansion and I’m going to be heavily involved on the law enforcement side, we have a good plan we’re going to be implementing to reduce crime in New Orleans,” Guidry said. “If I’m going to be part of making New Orleans safe through our state law enforcement agencies, then I have to be here.”
New Orleans crime was a major theme in Landry's winning bid for governor in the fall. A few months before Landry's election, in May, Guidry blamed the city’s crime problem when he announced that Harvey Gulf and its 100 employees would leave their 24,000-square-foot office in the Hancock Whitney Center and move to new offices to be built on the site of the former Texas Motel on Airline Drive.
He later scrapped plans for the new building but said he still planned to move his company to Metairie, this time into leased office space in the Galleria.
Landry made crime in New Orleans a priority on the campaign trail last year and, since his election, has suggested he will bring State Police troopers back to the city full time. He also created a special transition committee to deal with New Orleans-related issues, as well as a crime and public safety committee co-chaired by a former New Orleans prosecutor.
In the meantime, violent crime has decreased significantly in New Orleans. Murders were down 27% in 2023 from the year before, and most other categories of violent crime also saw substantial improvements.
Policing interest
Guidry has had a longtime interest in law enforcement. He served for many years as a reserve deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, and after Landry was elected attorney general in 2016, he brought on Guidry as a "special aide."
Guidry, who received a token salary of about $12,000 in that role, has said he helped build up the AG's investigative division.
“I rebranded the unit to become the LBI, Louisiana Bureau of Investigation,” Guidry said. “I instituted new hiring practices and procedures which resulted in new, very seasoned agents.”
That branch of the office soon drew attention when Landry announced he would be sending his agents, uninvited, into New Orleans to make arrests in hopes of denting the city’s crime problem.
The effort fizzled after less than a year and few arrests. Landry blamed then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu for a lack of support.
Aggressive plan
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (left) and donor Shane Guidry (right). Landry's photo was taken by Patrick Dennis; Guidry's by Max Becherer.
While Landry, who takes office Monday, has not officially unveiled a plan for his administration's role in New Orleans, the prospect of the state deploying more troopers to the city has won praise from some business owners and raised caution flags from policing watchdogs, concerned about transparency, the use of excessive force and racial profiling.
Guidry did not discuss specific details of Landry’s plan. But he said, “We are going to have an aggressive crime plan and are going to move very quickly.”
He said Landry did not ask him to keep Harvey Gulf's office in Orleans Parish. Instead, he felt like it was the right thing to do, given his commitment to working on the transition team.
"New Orleans has great restaurants and hotels and people love to come see it," he said. "It makes sense to be here if we can get it vibrant and rolling again.”
Guidry, who lives in Old Metairie, said keeping his company in New Orleans will save him around $2 million in moving and renovation expenses.
'Not a real estate guy'
Guidry has also had a change of heart recently about building an indoor pickleball facility on the site of the old Texas Motel. After deciding not to build the office building there last fall, Guidry had said he wanted to develop Jefferson Parish's first indoor pickleball facility to capitalize on the craze around the popular game.
He has since abandoned those plans and is listing the property for sale.
“I’m not a real estate guy,” he said. “I’m not looking for a 10 or 11% return on my investment. I’m looking for 40%.”