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Local officials met Tuesday to talk about progress on a plan for revitalizing Morgan City and Berwick. They may have heard more than they were expecting.

Murphy Exploration & Production Co. is exploring the possibility of moving into Youngs Road property being vacated by Shell Oil, Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said at the St. Mary Excel forum. And a developer has made inquiries about plans for 29 apartments for senior citizens on Victor II Boulevard, he said.

The Murphy move to 39 acres in Morgan City would bring 15 jobs, Grizzaffi said. He isn’t sure when the senior apartments designed for people 62 and older might become reality.

Governments still have to watch spending, Grizzaffi said. But “we can feel the momentum turning.”

Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur said he couldn’t talk much about it, but there are commercial development opportunities on property along U.S. 90. And Atchafalaya River Estates, one of two subdivisions under development in Berwick, is awaiting Corps of Engineers approval.

The ULI study suggested a wide range of local needs and opportunities, structurally and cosmetically.

It found a need for affordable housing and to deal effectively with empty storefronts and blighted property. The study suggested a database of maritime repair work for the local shipbuilding industry.

The planners suggested that Berwick focus on specialty retail to reinvigorate its downtown and make its riverfront a venue for restaurants and entertainment. They said Morgan City should try to create a pedestrian zone connecting Front Street with Lawrence Park.

In all, the study contains 48 pages of findings, recommendations and possible funding sources.

Grizzaffi and Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur could point to some progress toward the study’s recommendations.

The popular monthly Saturday closing of the La. 182 bridge for walking and bicyclists came out of the study, although Arthur said bridge renovations may force the hours to be reduced to a few hours on every third Saturday.

Berwick has also hired a compliance officer and is working on blighted properties, Arthur said.

The two municipalities have been working on connecting biking and walking trails. And Grizzaffi said Lawrence Park has a new $170,000 playground.

Front Street lacks the direct access to the riverfront that Berwick enjoys, but it does have a $2.5 million city wharf renovation, Grizzaffi said.

Better signs are another goal. Carrie Stansbury, director of the Cajun Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, said new give new welcome signs have been placed on U.S. 90, La. 182 and La. 70.

Cajun Coast is also trying to add an April birding event to go along with its popular Eagle Expo each February. The bureau is also working to bring back fishing events like those run by BASS and the Fishing League Worldwide.

Grizzaffi had talked about state law involving private property as a reason big tournaments stay away. But Stansbury said the problem isn’t so much private property as the failure to post private property. Professional anglers who stray into private property during a tournament can be disqualified, she said.

Tammie Moore, campus director at South Louisiana Community College’s Young Memorial Campus, also represented the St. Mary Chamber of Commerce. She pointed to workforce development opportunities such as Young Memorial’s commercial diving and licensed practical nurse programs.

And Cindy Cutrera, economic development manager at the Port of Morgan City, said it’s important for shipping interests to report tonnage and to join in communicating to federal officials the importance for funding the dredging of area waterways to the authorized 20-foot depth.

The offloading of a recent ship plying the import-export trade resulted in an economic impact of $175,000, Cutrera said, citing an analysis by economist James Richardson. Regular import-export traffic could mean 270 jobs here, she said.

The port is paying to dredge away material that other parts of Louisiana need to rebuild their vanishing coastal land, Parish President David Hanagriff said.

“We should be getting paid money to dredge,” Hanagriff said.

BATON ROUGE — Gov. John Bel Edwards spent his first four years in office tangling with conservative House Republicans who regularly fought his agenda. As Edwards heads to his second term starting in January, those tensions are likely to worsen and expand into the Senate.
Many of the Democratic governor’s GOP allies in the Senate, particularly Senate President John Alario, are exiting because of term limits. And more conservatives were elected this fall to both legislative chambers.
Several of those lawmakers ran against Edwards’ actions in office and his overall agenda, suggesting the governor’s next four years could be rocky ones in a Legislature where he once served.
“John Bel Edwards will probably face the most conservative Legislature in 100 years,” Southern University political science professor Albert Samuels said Monday.
As Edwards was celebrating his Saturday victory over GOP challenger Eddie Rispone, conservative Republicans and their allies were plotting their next moves.
“We lost a huge battle with the governor’s race, but we’re getting ready to fight a war for the next four years, and our front line of defense is going to be the Louisiana Legislature,” Republican political consultant Lionel Rainey told conservative talk radio host Moon Griffon on Monday’s show.
Edwards got a slight boost when Republicans fell two seats short of reaching the veto-proof, two-thirds supermajority that they sought in the House. They’ve exceeded that benchmark in the Senate. To override an Edwards veto, Republicans in the House will need to not only work as a bloc, but also persuade two Democrats to vote against their party.
Still, Edwards could see more bills that he dislikes heading to his desk, rather than stopped in the Senate, where he could often count on Alario and other Republicans to help block legislation he didn’t want to reach him.
St. Mary gave the GOP a boost when Republican Vincent St. Blanc won the District 50 House seat. He'll succeed Democrat Sam Jones, who is term-limited.
Republicans in January will hold 27 of 39 Senate seats and 68 of 105 House seats, and the GOP candidates elected often are more conservative than the term-limited lawmakers they’re replacing, particularly in the Senate.
After the October primary election, Attorney General Jeff Landry, who heads a PAC that worked to elect more conservative Republicans to legislative seats, described the outcome as a “whole new day in Louisiana.” That election saw Republicans flip two seats held by Democrats in the Senate and term-limited GOP lawmakers in the chamber replaced by more conservatives, including several who had helped create problems for Edwards’ agenda in the House over the last four years.
At his victory celebration Saturday night, Edwards talked of his upcoming agenda: increasing spending on early childhood education, new investments in major infrastructure projects and boosted worker training initiatives. And he talked of bipartisanship.
“I’ve seen what we can do when we work together for good of our state,” he said.
But Republicans who blocked the governor’s proposals to increase Louisiana’s minimum wage and enact new equal pay requirements on businesses are certain to continue stalling such measures in the new term. Samuels said Republicans who notched large victories in the House and Senate are likely to feel more emboldened to work against Edwards, rather than work on compromises.
“There’s no shortage of things to do. I’m just not sure they’re going to do them,” Samuels said.

Here’s a sentence that might come as a surprise: Cabbage is cool.
That taken-for-granted vegetable, that sturdy, dense staple of many a poor, ancestral homeland, is finally getting respect.
“It’s all about how it is prepared, how it’s elevated,” said Paul Kahan, a James Beard award-winning chef in Chicago and self-professed cabbage freak.
He thinks that because cabbage has mainly been associated with sustenance, it hasn’t been given its due.
Cabbage is part of most of the world’s cooking history. Perhaps most famously, it was one of the only sources of sustenence in famine-ravaged Ireland in the mid-19th century. Thus the classic Irish dish corned beef and cabbage, not to mention colcannon.
In China, there’s cabbage sauteed with bean curd. In England, cabbage cooked with potatoes and other vegetables in bubble and squeak. In Norway, the hot and sour surkal. In the U.S., coleslaw. Fermented and pickled cabbage dishes abound, including kimchi in Korea, and sauerkraut in Poland, Germany and other parts of middle and Eastern Europe. Stuffed cabbage rolls are part of just about every cuisine, form golabki in Poland to holishkes in Jewish cooking to sarma in Croatia.
There’s more, but the point is: In all times and places, cabbage has been valued for its plenteousness, cheapness, long shelf life, and ability to be preserved for an even longer shelf life. It can be eaten raw or cooked in pretty much any way a vegetable can be cooked.
Now, it’s also trendy.
“It’s just delicious,” said Kahan.
He has been on the cabbage bandwagon for years, serving it at his upscale Chicago restaurants in various guises. At Publican, they char wedges of cabbage in a wood-burning hearth and then finish them in a pan with butter and shallots. Kahan remembers being inspired by a dish made by New Orleans chef Alon Shaya: “It was the first time I ever saw a chunk of cabbage served at a restaurant.”
And that’s how kitchen trends start — chefs get inspired, borrowing from other restaurants and other cultures; food publications take their cues from the chefs; and suddenly, cabbage recipes proliferate.
Robert Schueller, the “Produce Guru” at Melissa’s Produce, a specialty company out of Los Angeles, said chefs and restaurants are the clear drivers behind the cabbage movement. Cabbage is being used as everything from a taco topping (common in Mexico) to a base or nest for menu items such as marinated fish. Chefs like how cabbage maintains a crisper texture than other greens when served with warm foods, he said.
“We have seen a rise in Napa cabbage, too, which is used in Asian stir fries, fermentation and pickling, all of which are gaining in popularity. The most interesting thing is that the rise of Napa is not just in Asian groceries and restaurants,” Schueller said.
Gabriel Kreuther gets creative with cabbage at his eponymous restaurant in New York City. He purees well-cooked cabbage as a base for some garnishes; uses it in a side dish with trumpet mushrooms warmed in duck fat; and serves up a simple slaw of shredded cabbage, onion, oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper, maybe with some julienned gruyere cheese mixed in.
“It goes with everything; it’s refreshing, it gets better with a few days macerating time, it’s soft and crunchy, it’s healthy,” Kreuther said.
At the restaurant, they make their own sauerkraut, a dish he grew up with in his native Alsace region of France. Kreuther serves the sauerkraut in a smoked sturgeon; his sauerkraut tartlet topped with caviar mousseline is in a filo pastry shell and served under a wine glass filled with smoke.
Kreuther likes mixing poor man’s food with luxury ingredients and seeing how they play against each other. That explains another dish on his menu: layers of squab breast and foie gras wrapped with cabbage leaves, and then encased in Tunisian brik dough and seared until the outside is crispy.
And how do people react when they see cabbage on this highbrow menu?
“People pooh-pooh cabbage,” he said, “but when they taste it well prepared they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize cabbage could be so delicious!’”