A sugar cane field is at the site of the proposed Greenfield Holdings grain terminal project near the Wallace community in St. John the Baptist Parish. The company walked away from its plans for a $400 million facility, citing excessive delays in obtaining permits and opponents who want preserve a burial ground for the enslaved on the site. (Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)
Greenfield Holdings caught many off guard in early August when it announced it was walking away from plans to build a massive $400 million grain export terminal in St. John the Baptist Parish.
The company was quick to blame a federal permitting process for its demise, adding that local opponents of the project looked past its job and investment impact for selfish reasons.
Nearly three months later, differences over the Greenfield project remain among residents in West St. John, the more sparsely populated, less developed half of the parish compared with its heavily industrialized east bank.
To some, Greenfield was the long-awaited savior ready to pour its resources into the community. The company had pledged to put its money directly into public schools, a new health clinic and other civic endeavors – all contingent on the development moving ahead.
“So not only did we lose a grain terminal, we lost opportunities,” said Chad Roussell, a proponent of the Greenfield terminal project from nearby Edgard.
Opponents saw it as the latest corporate intruder selling a false bill of goods.
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A closer look at Greenfield gives the impression that the terminal was not just a missed major economic development opportunity for Louisiana but also a linchpin project for a company trying to get off the ground.
Before walking away from the St. John project, Greenfield sold four grain elevators it owned — two in Louisiana and two in Arkansas. It also folded plans for a $20 million grain facility in Kentucky.
It’s not clear if Greenfield has any remaining ownership interests or investments in grain storage or terminals. Its attorney is the only contact from the company who could be reached, and she did not respond to questions about other possible holdings or who else, if anyone, still works for Greenfield.
There’s little to no evidence the business has any other interests in agriculture, based on information the company has made public and limited available government documents. A link on the Greenfield Holdings website to inland grain elevators lists no such locations. Online records with the U.S. Department of Agriculture show no other Greenfield sites beyond the ones it has sold.
Lynda Van Davis, a Washington D.C.-based attorney and head of external affairs for Greenfield, confirmed in a phone interview the company sold its Arkansas and Louisiana grain elevators.
Greenfield still owns the property in St. John. Van Davis, a former New Orleans judge, said it wasn’t clear what it might do with it.
In Henderson, Kentucky, Greenfield proposed a grain elevator and locking dock for a 25-acre site on the Ohio River. The project was intended to give farmers in the region another option for getting their crops to market, hopefully at a higher price with the new competition Greenfield would provide.
Missy Vanderpool, executive director of Henderson Economic Development, said the proposal fizzled because the project in Louisiana was scrapped. Officials had already issued permits for the Kentucky facility, which Greenfield first pitched in 2022, she said.
The company’s online presence lays out its strategy — one that hasn’t come to reality.
“Greenfield’s business plan includes potentially buying and/or building grain elevators on the interior waterways of the country, such as the Mississippi, Ohio River, and Illinois River, to vertically integrate further up the supply chain,” the webpage reads.
Industry reports claimed the St. John grain terminal project would have been the largest of its kind built in the U.S. in four decades.
Promise attracted politicians
Just the promise of the company’s plans for St. John was enough to spur Gov. Jeff Landry to condemn federal officials for dragging out its approval of the Greenfield proposal.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers extended its permit approval deadline for the Greenfield terminal project five times since the company’s initial application in 2021, including the most recent delay that added another six months to the process. The corps’ concerns include the proposed facility’s potential harm to historic sites along the Mississippi River.
“After years of delay — it’s despicable that the Corps of Engineers had additional delays with this project — choosing to adhere to special interest groups and wealthy plantation owners instead of hardworking Louisianans,” Landry said in a statement included in an Aug. 7 news release from Greenfield.
The big dollar amounts and job numbers Greenfield attached to the terminal project won favor from Landry and other officials. The Port of South Louisiana sought $20 million from the federal government to pave the way for the facility.
Greenfield promised its facility would employ 100 people once it opened with an average salary of $75,000. It projected annual state and local tax revenue of $300 million.
Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, keeps tabs on factors that influence agricultural transportation and logistics. He didn’t want to make assumptions about why Greenfield abandoned its grain storage investments, but he noted market conditions aren’t favorable for exports that would have been the bread and butter for the St. John terminal.
“It is well known within the agricultural industry that U.S. exports are currently facing some headwinds (softening demand from China, strong U.S. dollar, high interest rates, strong competition from other countries, etc.), but the industry does ebb and flow,” Steenhoek said in an email. “We have had periods of weak exports and periods of strong exports. The current environment happens to be challenging, but that may certainly change.”
‘Formosa 2.0’
The Greenfield project was planned just downriver from the Wallace community in St. John, founded by Black Union soldiers after the Civil War. Their descendants include twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner, who operated a hospitality business before launching their nonprofit, the Descendants Project, to fight industrial encroachment in their community.
When Greenfield used a 1990 zoning ordinance to advance its terminal plans, the Descendants Project sued and blocked the approval. The parish council relied on a controversial formula to switch the property’s use from residential to heavy industrial this past April.
The sisters also filed an ethics complaint against Parish President Jaclyn Hotard last November, claiming she used her influence to make the rezoning happen because the Greenfield project would benefit the parish president’s mother-in-law, who owns land near the site. A spokesperson for Hotard said the ethics complaint was “dismissed.” The Louisiana Ethics Administration only confirms the results of its investigations publicly if it intends to hand down a penalty.
“There were numerous unnecessary delays rooted in misinformation and worsened by frivolous lawsuits brought forth by bad-faith instigators,” Hotard said in a statement to the Illuminator.”It is my sincere hope that Greenfield reconsiders their decision.”
This is not the only run-in the Banner family has had with a parish president over the property.
In the 1990s, when Formosa Plastics Group of Taiwan proposed a rayon facility at the same site, local officials and business boosters appealed to Wallace residents to sell their property, including the home where generations of Banners had lived for at least 100 years.
The twins recalled, when they were age 11, Durel Matherne, a Gramercy businessman and quarterback on LSU’s 1958 national championship team, making multiple visits to their family home. According to the Descendents Project lawsuit, Matherne would visit when the sisters’ parents weren’t home and tried to convince their wheelchair-bound grandmother to sell the family property. A Formosa vice president accompanied Matherne on some of those visits, the Banner sisters said.
Matherne would later aid federal prosecutors in their 1995 criminal case against then-parish president Lester Millet Jr., who was convicted for extortion, money laundering and racketeering in connection with his attempt to lure Formosa to St. John Parish.
By then, Formosa had backed away from its project in the face of local opposition and the growing Millet scandal.
“Greenfield, to me, is Formosa 2.0,” Jo Banner said in an interview.
Property’s future unsettled
The sisters call Greenfield’s campaign to win public favor for the terminal project “plantation politics” that pitted segments of the Black community in St. John against one another.
The Urban League of Louisiana, an advocacy group for African-American communities, confirmed that Greenfield reached out to discuss what it would take to get its support for its St. John development. Tyronne Walker, the Urban League’s vice president for policy, strategic partnerships and development, said his organization decided against the connection but chose not to explain why.
As the Descendants Project gained prominence for its fight to stop Greenfield’s plans, the Banners say the company began its own local preservation efforts. They included a $25,000 donation to the financially struggling 1811 Kid Ory House and Museum across the river in LaPlace. The home was the birthplace of the jazz legend, and its property was the site of the largest slave rebellion on U.S. soil.
The donation helped the business reopen, but its owner ultimately put the house up for sale. The Descendants Project, with support from a funder the sisters would not identify, bought the property and made it part of their preservation mission.
“We know that it’s imperative for that place to be in the hands of someone that really cares about it,” Joy Banner said.
Activist genealogist IDs remains at former St. James plantation as enslaved people
The sisters learned last week the National Park Service has recommended that an 11-mile west bank stretch along the Mississippi River, including the Wallace area, be designated as a National Historic Landmark District. The status would limit development in the area for the sake of cultural preservation, which the Banners see as the ultimate mission of the Descendants Project.
The process to receive the federal designation started in summer 2023 with an extensive study to determine whether the site in question is historically significant. Additional steps toward final approval, which is up to the Department of Interior secretary, could take another two to five years, meaning the matter will be left up to the next presidential administration.
Roussell, the local Greenfield proponent, sees the historic district as another way to limit investment in West St. John, again denying economic opportunity to property owners along River Road.
“So you’re telling me that when I want to do something on my own property, I have to go and … seek approval from someone else that pretty much did not give me two pennies to buy this property, and they’re going to tell me if I can do it or not,” Roussell said.
Roussell, who is Black, said he would prefer diversified development in West St. John rather than more emphasis on what he sees as tourist attractions, even if they place emphasis on the history of slavery.
“We’re always going to remember what happened, but at some point we have to move on and not constantly keep being reminded of what occurred in the past,” Roussell said. “We all know slavery was something that occurred… But to keep talking about it, to keep showing the same thing from the past, it just doesn’t make any sense to me because we’re not getting anywhere constantly beating the same drum.”
Beyond the cultural impact of future development, the Banners are worried that the current industrial zoning of the Greenfield property opens the door to potentially far more noxious uses, they said. Plus, another project could occupy far more of the 1,700 acres than Greenfield had planned to use.
Hotard did not respond to questions about potential alternatives for the site.
The sisters remain frustrated that as the profile of the Descendants Project rises, they still struggle to make connections with officials in St. John.
“I have intervened in the United Nations space and gone to the White House more often than I have been able to talk to my parish (leaders) who are 15 miles away,” Joy Banner said.
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