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History
The GCR Story
In 1979, Greg Rigamer established an aggressive planning and real estate development firm in New Orleans. The firm’s initial recognition and success was through the completion of a stalled planning effort for the permitting and location of the proposed Greater New Orleans Mississippi River Bridge #2. Greg Rigamer brought an intelligent and energetic perspective to this planning project and achieved consensus from opposing political interests while managing to obtain required Federal permits.
The new firm quickly found a role in several landmark-planning projects in Southeast Louisiana. From the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Inner Harbor Navigational Canal Socio-Economic Impact Analysis, to the U.S. Postal Service site selection studies, and Loyola University’s land development projects in Kenner, Louisiana, GCR & Associates, Inc. addressed challenging projects with a steadfast commitment to produce quality products. Given such notable efforts in the planning community, GCR established an impressive array of clients. In addition to land use planning and development, GCR also specialized in right-of-way management and acquisition. Through a multi-year relationship with the Louisiana Westbank Levee Association,GCR acqired properties for the expansive westbank hurricane protection levee system and helped further develop the West Jefferson Community.
Planning With Technology
Even during the early years, the firm deployed available technology to solve problems. In locating the Mississippi River Bridge, a sophisticated transportation gravity model was used to determine trip production and volumes based on current and future land use. Whether for transportation analysis or real estate development, modeling was an early expertise of the company.
As the scope of the firm’s projects grew, there was a need to develop turnkey services for planning and real estate development clients. GCR needed to expand and offer infrastructure design and surveying services. Therein Mike Flores, P.E. partnered with Greg to add a full service civil engineering component to the talents of the firm. Mike also brought in-depth experience with the aviation industry and a newly patented obstruction analysis program called Photoslope™. With the leadership of Mike and Greg, GCR continued with comprehensive planning studies for airports and other major public works entities.
In the conduct of project tasks, GCR sought to develop in-house reporting and production mechanisms to create better and more elegant deliverables. Early use and mastery of IBM personal computers and Apple Macintoshes afforded GCR a technical lead in the mid-1980s. As a small company GCR developed production and graphics capabilities that minimized the competitive advantage of the large planning and engineering firms. Furthermore, GCR took the initiative to write programs to analyze data and create models. This important work fueled growth. GCR began offering development services as part of planning and technical studies. The efforts sought to catalog inventories of land, ownership, and/or improvements and report on attributes, monitor activity, track updates. Clients looking to expand technical resources in the burgeoning PC world embraced these desktop computer solutions. GCR developed applications for airports, regulatory agencies, and private sector businesses. GCR worked with clients to study reporting mandates and then defined best practices to design intelligent solutions. Our work with the Nuclear Industry for Chemistry Data Management reporting is one example of GCR’s success in addressing a complex challenge with a reliable and widely accepted software solution.
With heightened access to the Internet in the late 1990’s, GCR used the Internet platform for new development opportunities. Today, the Federal Aviation Administration relies on GCR to manage all official facility information on over 18,000 airports throughout the United States. GCR has developed the Environmental Protection Agency's web application template for inventorying and managing all Brownfield sites. GCR provides consulting services to a broad base of clients in specific application areas such as Law Enforcement, Campaigns and Jurisdictional Management, and Transit Planning.
Today, GCR continues to aggressively pursue new projects and opportunities. We remain a solid business entity in New Orleans and have an impressive office environment at the University of New Orleans Research and Technology Park. In 2007, GCR will begin its 28th year in business.
