"The city and the parish are moving forward with the project," said Bill Altimus, Bossier Parish administrator and District 9 police juror. "We're spending money. We're bonding money as we speak. We're on the agenda to borrow $20 million for the parish."

The new center, which is scheduled to open in 2009, is intended to draw businesses, research and expertise to complement Air Force Cyber Command, which has provisionally opened at Barksdale Air Force Base. Barksdale already has served as a proving ground for the cyber mission and is home station for a major component of the new command, Air Force Cyber-Strike.

"We feel very strongly (Cyber Command) is here," Altimus said. "Sometimes you've got to swing for the fences."

Bossier City and Bossier Parish together have approved $50 million to open the center on 64 acres just east of Bossier Parish Community College north of Barksdale.

Earlier this year, the Legislature dedicated an additional $50 million for the center, and Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed the measure.

If and when the funds head north depends on the Louisiana Economic Development Department, headed by Secretary Michael Olivier and Assistant Secretary Don Pierson.

Pierson, former executive director of the Greater Bossier Economic Development Foundation, said that Economic Development is circulating a draft cooperative endeavor agreement that soon will be run past Altimus and other parish and city leaders, and that it should be weeks, not months, before the funds can move.

"The only requirement is that they move through the appropriate system, the division of administration, and other contract review bodies involved," Pierson said. "But we see no impediments to the funding being readily available."

When motivated, the department can commit energy and resources pursuing economic development. A case in point is ThyssenKrupp, a German steel company that teetered for a long time between setting up a $3 billion mill in Louisiana or Alabama. The company eventually chose Alabama, but not before Louisiana offered tax breaks, $400 million in cash and securing a location along the Mississippi River for transporting products.

Parish and city leaders are meeting with architects and project planners, Cyber Innovation Center staff is being hired and ground should be broken sometime next year.

"Representatives of the city, parish, innovation committee and staff met with WRT, out of Philadelphia, master planners that have been hired by us to assist in the development of the site and a master plan of the entire area," Altimus said Tuesday. "Several concepts where shown and discussed. Our local architects, Mike McSwain and Mark Prevot were also in attendance and had input along with all of us to narrow down some possibilities."

Grist from this meeting will help the local architects determine where the first Cyber Innovation Center buildings should be sited, he said. "They will be back here the first week of November with some hard vision on how things should be."

The $50 million the parish and city have committed will cover startup of the center and much of its physical plant.

As of Tuesday, estimates for creating roads and overpasses to provide access to Barksdale via Interstates 220 and 20 and U.S. Highway 80 are just more than $36 million, with the infrastructure for the center proper pegged at $8.6 million. The total is $44.83 million.

That leaves just more than $5 million, plus what the state will provide, important wiggle room because the center will have to invest in equipment and technology to tie into the the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative and the Lambda Rail, one of the world's fastest Internet nodes.

"There's some unknown stuff to us," Altimus said. "Tying into the LONI line, and then to run the line through the site itself, what will that cost? We just don't have a handle on that."

But he thinks Louisiana is committed to the project. "If you listen to (Gov.-elect) Jindal, they're really committed now. If they were lukewarm before, they're hot now."

Luck and cooperation have helped, too. Plans for a highway interchange-cloverleaf that will provide access to Barksdale were done in 1975, and traffic counts that will allow them to be updated easily have been done in recent years.

"The (state) Department of Transportation and Development and the Federal Highway Administration have been very helpful and have really been working with us on this project," Altimus said. "They're working with us to make sure it is as easy a process as we can go through.

"If we can do all of this under a permit, then we can hire the professionals, we can bid out the project using the normal bid process that we go through for everything else, and we can get it done."

State District 36 Sen. Robert Adley, long a booster of the Cyber Innovation Center, said it "does require the corporate endeavor (agreement) and that does require some contract review. It's normal."

He said he'll do whatever he can to facilitate.

"I cannot imagine, in my wildest dreams, (how) the state of Louisiana could not understand how important this is."

The state does, Pierson assures. "With a project this important, it's easy to be very positive."