Meta boom is expanding to Monroe | Business News

Until last year, there wasn’t much going on in downtown Monroe, a small city in northeast Louisiana that has suffered from decades of disinvestment.

But on a recent Tuesday night, the 70-room Hotel Monroe in the heart of the city’s historic downtown was booked solid, as it has been most weeknights since its May opening. At the trendy new Sushi Koko two blocks away, customers couldn’t get in without a reservation.

And at City Hall, a group of Atlanta developers had pitched the city council, successfully it turned out, on a multimillion-dollar plan to turn the dilapidated old Coca-Cola building on the banks of the Ouachita River into a complex of apartments, restaurants and a high-rise hotel.

Since Meta broke ground in January 2025 on one of the largest AI data centers in the country in nearby Richland Parish, about 30 miles to the east, the massive investment has spilled over into neighboring communities. Monroe, the largest city in the area, is having a moment.

In the months since the groundbreaking, hotels and restaurants have been slammed. Demand for housing, at least in some parts of the city, has surged, spawning construction of new rentals and boosting home sales. Sales tax collections are up 10% year over year, and American Airlines recently added another flight to the Monroe Regional Airport.

Local developer Larry Culp has lived in the area his entire life. He’s never seen anything like it.

“It is the best thing that has ever happened to this area,” said Culp, who is leasing townhomes faster than he can build them in his new Legacy Park complex north of Monroe. “It is going to transform the area.”

Decades of decline

A century ago, Monroe was the bustling birthplace of Delta Air Lines and home to one of the first Coca-Cola bottling plants in the country. In the 1970s, the former Century Telephone Enterprises grew into what would become CenturyLink, an early cellular provider, then Lumen Technologies, which still calls Monroe its headquarters and is one of Louisiana’s two Fortune 500 companies.

But Lumens’ operations center and executives moved out of state a few years ago and most of its employees now work elsewhere. Meanwhile, the manufacturing and agriculture that powered the area’s economy have changed. The jobs have dried up and young people have moved away.

Since 1970, the city has lost more than one-fifth of its population, now around 47,000. Two in 5 residents live below the federal poverty limit. The median annual income is $40,000. And yearslong plans to reinvigorate the area have stalled or failed, which is why there is so much enthusiasm from so many about the Meta project.

“The community where they are building is one of the poorest areas of the whole state,” said Monroe real estate broker Brian Bendily, who is on track to sell more houses in March than during any other month in his 20-year career. “Generational change is coming. We’d like to see more business come with them and tag along.”

In some parts of the country, critics are pushing back against new AI data centers, which can drive up utility rates and threaten underground water supplies, even as their corporate owners reap generous state and local tax breaks. Though advocacy groups from south Louisiana are trying to raise community awareness about the potential downsides, in Monroe, there’s little homegrown opposition.

For their area and, especially, their city, many see mostly upside potential.

“People can complain and be nervous,” said Cory Bahr, an award-winning chef who owns Sushi Koko and two other downtown restaurants. “But the train has left the station. We can capitalize on it and grow our city or be mad. I choose growth.”

‘Sharing the love’

Monroe restaurants and hotels are among those feeling the immediate impacts from the influx of 4,000 or so out-of-state workers. The engineers and executives, the latter of which fly into town every few days or weeks, are eating at the city’s best restaurants, which includes Bahr’s Koko and award-winning Parish. 

“I have a group of executives who come in three or four times a week and start in one restaurant then finish up across the street in the other,” Bahr said. “They spend between $500 to $1,200 a night.”

Local restaurants are also supplying meals to workers at the site who have few dining options in Richland Parish. Joey Trappey, who owns four Monroe area restaurants, caters 250 lunches a day to the site — a job he has subbed out to other eateries.

“I have 15 local restaurants on my rotating list,” he said. “That way, I’m spreading the love.”

The ripple effect is also evident in the hotel boom. Developer Mike Echols says demand for rooms is so steep at his Hotel Monroe — a $60 million historic rehab in an old bank building — he’s now stepped up the timeline for two other hotels he has planned, including a $25 million Marriott Tribute that will be located in a former department store.

The goal, said Echols, who is also a state legislator, is to get 1,000 rooms downtown.

“This AI corridor is a long-running story,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

Monroe Mayor Friday Ellis points to the Atlanta developers now pursuing redevelopment of the city’s iconic Coca-Cola building, long a dream of city leaders, as evidence of the interest northeast Louisiana now holds to out-of-state investors.

“We issued an RFP for this project in 2022,” Ellis said. “Seven months ago, we started seeing interest — because of Meta.”

Real estate bump

The influx of workers that is fueling hotel and restaurant activity is also creating a need for more housing. In a suburb 10 miles north of the city, Culp is building Legacy Park, a complex of two- and three-bedroom townhomes that rent for between $1,900 and $2,100 a month with a pool and pickleball court. All 64 units built to date are leased, 50 or so to contractors for Meta. An additional 160 units are planned.

“The people leasing these units are telling me they’ll be here seven, eight years,” said Culp. “They’re telling me that when Meta comes, all these other companies follow.”

“You don’t know what to believe,” he added. “But when you hear it from people working on the project, it means something.”

The housing market is also experiencing a bump, brokers say, though it’s not reflected yet in sale prices. Bendily said volume is up, both for his business personally and the market as a whole. Demand is particularly high for prosperous neighborhoods in West Monroe across the Ouachita River and Frenchman’s Bend, a golf course community with average home sales ranging from $350,000 to $750,000.

“I recently sold one to a family from Sweden who moved here with their two kids,” he said. “They work for Meta.”

Not a boom for all

The Meta ripple hasn’t spread evenly across Monroe. In the city’s low-income areas to the south and east, Democratic state Rep. Pat Moore hasn’t gotten calls from investors looking to redevelop the aging housing stock in her district or build on the vacant land where 200 blighted and adjudicated houses were recently demolished.

She also worries that increased apartment demand will worsen a shortage of rental units in the market as a whole, though her area isn’t feeling the effects yet.

As for new employment opportunities, she said some of her constituents are finding work in construction. “But the ones that need most to benefit aren’t feeling it,” she said.

Still, she is not opposed to the project or its potential to help the area. On the contrary, she is working with nonprofits and local leaders to target blight and crime in her district, “one neighborhood at a time,” she said, while also promoting workforce training programs for young people.

“My job is to make my district look clean, safe, attractive, so the people who come here will want to stay, live, build a family,” Moore said.

Long-term deal?

While much of the boost to Monroe’s economy so far has been from construction activity, local business leaders point to signs that suggest the boom is creating more sustainable opportunities.

For construction company owner Joe Holyfield, it began in late 2024, when Meta and some of its contractors leased the remaining vacancies in an office building he owns. That led to a series of contracts to build temporary housing in Richland Parish and several smaller jobs on the site itself, which opened still more doors.

“There wasn’t any way to get waste off the site and potable water in,” he said. “So, we created a new company.”

Holy Dippers, as the new venture is called, is now providing those services to the site and looking to potentially expand to other projects out of state.

Altogether, Holyfield’s payroll has grown nearly 50% and he’s created around 40 new jobs.

Grow NELA Executive Director Rob Cleveland said the area is banking on more data centers coming, piggybacking on Meta’s utility infrastructure and spawning additional waves of activity.

He also points to out-of-state companies that have bought warehouses and opened permanent facilities in the area to service Meta with cables, racks and equipment.

“These are not three-year leases,” he said. “These are companies making a 20-year commitment to the community.”