Ursuline Academy has educated young women for nearly three hundred years. Founded in 1727, only nine years after New Orleans’ establishment, the school currently occupies an eleven-acre campus inaugurated in 1912. Nearly six hundred students attend grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12.

In recent years Crescent Growth Capital has repeatedly helped Ursuline Academy leverage its capital projects fundraising to generate tax credit subsidies, resulting in a more attractive and competitive suite of educational and programmatic offerings. In 2010 Crescent structured and closed a New Markets Tax Credit financing to enable a key element of Ursuline’s post-Hurricane Katrina recovery plan: the debut of a dedicated Early Childhood Learning Center. Another central institutional objective, the rehabilitation of the school’s circa 1935 gymnasium to accommodate its enlargement and conversion into a Fitness and Wellness Center, was achieved with the assistance of Crescent’s contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services. Subsequent historic preservation consulting work was undertaken by Crescent on behalf of the Ursuline Sisters to subsidize improvements to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, located on the academy’s campus but administered independently.

In January 2020, Crescent was again approached by Ursuline Academy to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services, this time in support of its development of a SMART Lab and STEM Studio within its 1912 academic building. The academy deleted a circa 1960 library space to allow for the installation of an IOT-enabled SMART Lab, a cutting-edge practice platform for STEM instruction, a robotics competition zone, an entrepreneurship space, and a media lab. An adjoining bathroom stack was also reconstructed to code, conditioned by the new central HVAC system installed for the SMART Lab and finished with salvaged marble partitions and historic wooden fittings.

Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a twelve-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over twenty-two months. Part 3 approval was received on November 16, 2021, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent and tax credit sale proceeds delivered to Ursuline in December.