Don Shea, the former CEO of the New Orleans Downtown Development District, will become St. Tammany Parish’s first economic development director next month. Shea, who is currently executive director of the Jacksonville Civil Council, will join the parish government Jan. 28 and will be tasked with shifting St. Tammany’s economic development efforts into overdrive. His appointment is expected to go before the Parish Council for ratification on Jan. 3.

Parish President Pat Brister, whose 2011 campaign featured economic development as a linchpin, said Shea got high marks from both Jacksonville and local references. “He’s exactly the person we were looking for,” Brister said.

Shea served as executive director of the Shreveport Downtown Development Authority before taking a job in 2010 as the first chief executive of the Jacksonville, Fla., Civil Council, which consists of various city business leaders tasked with improving the economic climate in the region. He is also a founding member of the City Downtown Investment Authority in Jacksonville.

He also served a seven-year stint as president and CEO of St. Petersburg (Fla.) Downtown Partnership and as president of Capital Center Inc., the management company for the downtown business improvement district in Jackson, Ms. Shea began his career at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, working there in a variety of assignments, according to his resume. Following that, he was Director of Area Planning and Development at Medical Area Service Corp., a consortium of Harvard Medical School, its teaching hospitals and other higher education institutions in the Boston area.

Earlier this year, Shea was one of 12 candidates seeking to become executive director of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, the state-chartered agency formed to combat blight in the city and put properties back into commerce. The job went to Jeff Hebert, Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s blight policy director.

Shea, who from 1990 to1995 headed up the New Orleans DDD, said Friday he looks forward to getting back to the area for both personal and professional reasons. “I was very pleased with the aggressive nature of both Pat Brister and the Parish Council in establishing a robust economic development effort in St. Tammany,” he said. ” I couldn’t be happier to be getting back to the region.”

A report on the Jacksonville Daily Review website quotes Jacksonville authorities saying Shea he did a good job launching the Jacksonville Civic Council.

A Massachusetts native, Shea has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and a master of city planning degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Cambridge.

Brister, who took office in January, has made economic development a major priority for her first term. She has pushed to get more hotel occupancy tax money allocated to economic development in St. Tammany to match what is spent in other parishes.

With more economic development funding in place and Shea set to come on board, Brister said, “Now we’re ready to play in the big leagues.”

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