Jeff Schwartz

Jeff Schwartz serves as Deputy Mayor for Economic and Community Development for the City of New Orleans. He previously led the city's economic development efforts for more than six years, guiding business attraction, private investment, and small business growth across New Orleans.

During that tenure, Schwartz was a driving force behind several of the city's large development projects, including the mixed-use River District neighborhood downtown, and the new Shell headquarters building anchoring it, the first Class A office tower to break ground in New Orleans in decades. He played a central role in the city's effort to redevelop the former Navy Support Activity complex in the Bywater, a long-vacant riverfront site being reimagined for housing and community use.

Before joining city government, Schwartz was the founding executive director of Broad Community Connections, the nonprofit Main Street organization dedicated to revitalizing the Broad Street corridor and the surrounding Mid-City, Tulane/Gravier, Bayou Road, and Tremé neighborhoods. Under his leadership, BCC delivered the ReFresh Project, transforming a vacant 60,000-square-foot former supermarket into a community health and food hub anchored by Whole Foods, a nationally recognized model of place-based neighborhood revitalization.

A New Orleans native, Schwartz has built his career at the intersection of economic development and community revitalization, working to return underused property to productive use and to ensure the city's growth reaches its neighborhoods and residents.