San Antonio’s Eastside neighbohood has long struggled economically, with metro San Antonio income growth and investment largely occuring at the urban periphery. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro’s administration has pledged to focus attention and resources on the Eastside, an area familiar to Crescent Growth Capital through its involvement in structuring the Healy-Murphy transaction, which closed in April 2011. More recently CGC was able to recommence catalyzing needed investment on the Eastside, thanks to an invitation received from its past client, the University of the Incarnate Word, to execute a $10 million NMTC financing to help fund the Eastside Center for Vision Science & Health Care.

The Eastside Center promises to remedy an acute need for eyecare, as well as support better targeting of social services.  Currently, there is only one eye care specialist maintaining a practice on the Eastside, a sprawling neighborhood of 170,000 residents.  Partnerships with other Eastside social service providers and educational institutions will be implemented, such that activities ranging from literacy assessments to internships for students at a nearby community college, St. Philip’s, will transpire within the new facility.

The Eastside Center itself will be a 30,000 square-foot, new-build public health facility dedicated to bringing badly-needed vision care to the disadvantaged population of the Eastside. Approximately 50,000 patients will be treated annually, with all insurances accepted, including Medicare and Medicaid, and with a sliding fee schedule in place to permit treatment for even the uninsured. The vision clinic will build upon UIW’s pre-existing expertise in providing optometry services to impoverished minority populations, employ 50 permanent staff and generate the additional pedestrian and vehicular traffic essential to bolstering aggregate market demand for new retail establishments on the Eastside.