Career Training

West Las Vegas Library

April 5, 2024 by

Las Vegas-Clark County Library District (LVCCLD) is planning a new facility to serve the severely distressed West Las Vegas neighborhood. The neighborhood is deeply impoverished; more than four out of ten households earn less than $25,000 a year, and nearly half of all households with children live in poverty. Six of the seven census tracts to be served by the new library are severely distressed. (The census tract that will host the library possesses a poverty rate of 55.1% and a household median income amounting to not even one-third of the region’s figure.) Over 75% of the population within the library’s service area is non-white, and with fewer than 1 in 10 of those over 25 years old having earned college degrees, overall educational attainment is low. West Las Vegas is also considered to be the most unsafe neighborhood in the city, with violent crime rates over 700% higher than the U.S. average. The neighborhood is crying out for a well-resourced, broad-based intervention.

The new West Las Vegas library will devote no more than 15% of its interior square footage to book stacks. Rather, libraries today are “services-centric” opportunity hubs. To unlock the human development potential of its highly-disadvantaged service area, the new library will focus on four areas: Business & Career Services/Workforce Development (Employ NV Career Hub), Family Learning, School Support (children & teens), and Social Services & Healthcare (in partnership with Intermountain Healthcare & the Southern Nevada Health District). 21^st century skill sets will be taught, including Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Creativity and Innovation, Communication and Collaboration, Visual Literacy, Media Literacy, Entrepreneurial Literacy and Global Awareness. This will leverage the library system’s mature programming capacity: Over 1,000 programs per year will be offered, addressing topics such as early childhood and parenting education, media production within dedicated makerspace labs, culinary and nutrition programs, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) projects, and English language, high school diploma, and citizenship instruction.

In March of 2024, in partnership with Clearinghouse Community Development Financial Institutions, Prestamos CDFI, Accion Opportunity Fund, and Chase Bank, Crescent closed on a $33.5M Federal NMTC financing to construct a 40,000 SF library – more than twice the size of the library currently serving the neighborhood – will support this within Project-Based Learning Spaces, including an Innovation Lab, Youth Technology Area & Multimedia Area (A/V Studios, Green Room, Editing Suite, Music Room), Children’s Collection & Story Time Space, Tween Area, Teen Area, Adult Learning Classroom, Adult Learning Lab, Employ NV Career Hub, Business Center, Computer Lab, Conference Room and Event Spaces (with a kitchen), Tech Area Flex Space, Quiet Room, and Study Booths.

The library will engage in four key areas: Business & Career Services/Workforce Development, Family Learning, School Support, and Social Services & Healthcare.

By combining cutting-edge programming, experienced outside partners, state-of-the-art infrastructure and sympathetic design, the new facility will catalyze transformative improvement in educational and social outcomes for its users.

Approximately 22,000 people will be served annually by the services provided by the new branch, and 250 jobs will result from its construction and operation.

Metrocrest Services

March 1, 2024 by

For more than 50 years, Metrocrest Services (“Metrocrest”) has provided programs for individuals, families and seniors that lead to self-sufficiency and foster independence. Every day, Metrocrest offers a comprehensive bundle of services to address gaps in finances, employment and nutrition to help holistically end poverty for residents of Addison, Carrollton, Coppell, Farmers Branch and the City of Dallas in Denton County.

The Metrocrest Services Bundled Model is a holistic approach that has three areas of focus: Basic Needs (housing stabilization and food), Financial Capability (education and coaching) and Workforce Development (job counseling, GED preparation and certifications/education). Focusing on a client-centered approach, Case Manager Coaches (CMC’s) build trust and empower clients through one-on-one coaching sessions where clients drive the conversations.

With this approach, Metrocrest clients build upon their past successes and are able to construct a stable foundation for their future. A recent survey of clients who sought help in the previous 18-months underscores the success and stability found with the agency’s help: 66 percent of families reported at least 6 months of housing stability after receiving rent assistance and 85 percent reported a better understanding of their finances after working with a case manager or utilizing educational resources. In FY23, Metrocrest Services assisted 22,006 unduplicated individuals and distributed 3,793,238 meals through its food programs (food pantry and seasonal programs).

Metrocrest Services is committed to building a stronger community together – a thriving community for all. As the only agency providing a comprehensive approach to social services in northwest Dallas County, Metrocrest is uniquely positioned to provide the tools and resources for individuals, families, and seniors to respond to crises, get out of poverty, and stabilize. Having celebrated its 50th anniversary year in 2021, the Board of Directors turned its focus on the next 50 years. Looking towards the future, Metrocrest developed a plan to increase capacity and improve services and programs through the construction of a new facility to focus on expanded client services and community engagement.

In February of 2024, in partnership with Enterprise Bank, PeopleFund Advisors, and Capital One Bank, Crescent closed on a $15.5M Federal NMTC financing to construct a new facility, which has expanded Metrocrest Services’ breadth of services in the Dallas area.

The new 48,000 square-foot facility has quickly become the epicenter of Metrocrest Services’ daily operations and includes: expanded case management services, a Center for Employment and Continued Education, an expanded Food Pantry with a new Volunteer Center and allocated space for complementary services. A Training Kitchen and Teaching Garden is available for community engagement, events, and for special programming. This increase in capacity will afford Metrocrest multiple opportunities to expand current programs and introduce new services in one central location.

The $19.1M project has already created 5 new FTE positions, while greatly expanding the scope of all Metrocrest’s existing programming.

Hope Center

October 31, 2023 by

SA Hope Center began over 30 years ago as a benevolence ministry of Oak Hills Church. The SA Hope Center became a 501c3 nonprofit organization in 2001 and moved to its current location in the Westside on 321 N. General McMullen Drive in 2005. In 2014, the SA Hope Center’s program model took a shift from a food pantry program to a multi-faceted social service agency.

In 2014, SA Hope Center’s program model took a shift from a food pantry program to a multi-faceted social service agency that addresses the root causes of poverty to help the community become holistically sustainable.

The SA Hope Center has been serving the community on its westside campus in a donated 40+ year old portable buildings previously used for other purposes. These buildings have been “well-loved” and have served countless thousands over the past 16 years, but are currently falling apart and must be replaced.

In October of 2023, in partnership with PeopleFund Advisors and Capital One Bank, Crescent closed on a $8.0M Federal NMTC financing to construct the new Westside campus, which greatly expands SA Hope Center’s ability to serve the community in their greatest times of need, highlights of which are as follows:

400% increased capacity to provide transformational classes such as workforce training, financial literacy, and Parent University.
190% increased capacity to provide one-on-one case management services to an estimated additional 750 households annually.
New counseling room to provide clinical and spiritual counseling services.
Kids Club to fill a major gap in programming to ensure parents can focus on gaining new skills while children benefit from social, emotional, and educational programs.
Renovated food and clothing services building doubling capacity to provide services and adding climate-controlled storage and a new loading dock.
Covered interior courtyards
400% increase in administrative and support staff offices
2 new meeting spaces for visitors, meetings, and overflow programming.

SA Hope Center’s new facility plans on creating 14 jobs during the entirety of the NMTC Compliance Period, 100% of which pay above the living wage rate for Bexar County, Texas, and 100% of which that will offer benefits.

Center for Transforming Lives

May 20, 2023 by

The Center for Transforming Lives (“CTL”) traces its origins to 1907; under various names its mission has always been to serve women in need. In the 1930s, CTL recognized that it could help most effectively by aiding both women and their children. While the following decades saw CTL’s steady development of a variety of programs and partnerships targeting poor and homeless women and their children, the need for such services increasingly outstripped the ability of the organization to provide them. By the start of the coronavirus pandemic, waiting lists for services were common, and CTL’s 1920s-era building in downtown Fort Worth was poorly located, woefully undersized, nowhere near able to accommodate all of CTL’s services and personnel, and with maintenance costs spiraling out of control.

Notwithstanding its dire facilities needs, CTL today offers a targeted and rare approach to boost poor and homeless women and their children into independence, financial security and, if necessary, psychological well-being. CTL engages with 1,500 Tarrant County families annually; its typical client is an African-American or Hispanic woman with one or two children experiencing poverty or homelessness. Household income for these clients averages only $20,000. Given the effectiveness of its approach, and in light of ever-increasing demand, scaling up became the chief imperative of the organization.

CTL’s board considered several alternatives and decided upon a wholesale relocation to a thirteen-acre site in east Fort Worth. Here, an existing commercial warehouse dating to 1959 will be repurposed into a modern, 102,000 SF facility. The combination of services offered in one location will permit single mothers to access counseling, housing assistance and resources for economic mobility all in one day, with drop-in daycare provided for their children and a robust early childhood education program also on offer.

In May of 2023, in partnership with Capital Impact Partners, People Fund, Pacesetter, McCormack Baron Salazar, and Capital One Bank, Crescent closed on a $39.5M Federal NMTC financing, to construct the Center for Transforming Lives’ planned Early Childhood Education & Economic Mobility Center (Riverside Campus) in Fort Worth, which will enable a quantum leap in capability and capacity for the 115 year-old organization, tackling Tarrant County’s entrenched debilities of high, multi-generational poverty and homelessness via a state-of-the-art facility perfectly sited for optimum accessibility and programmed to shatter the devastating cycle of poverty and homelessness experienced by so many single mothers and their children.

All programming will be organized around CTL’s potent two-generation approach, assisting both women in need as well as their children to disrupt the cycle of poverty and homelessness by arresting its otherwise likely intergenerational perpetuation. Key project elements will include an Economic Mobility Center, an Early Childhood Education Center, a Housing Connections Center, Counseling Rooms, and Play Therapy Spaces for children.

When complete, the new facility will increase childcare availability by 57%, grow by 27% the number of homeless women to be served, boost the capacity of economic mobility services by 65%, and provide to clients and the surrounding community a suite of behavioral health services currently unavailable. 52 new jobs will result, and 119 jobs will be relocated to the new campus.

Fisk University

January 19, 2023 by

Conceived in the hopeful aftermath of the Civil War to help satisfy the enormous demand for education on the part of Black Americans, Fisk University opened its doors on January 9, 1866. In subsequent decades Fisk University went on to bequeath to the nation a string of graduates constituting an unremitting procession of African-American firsts, including W.E.B DuBois, sociologist and the first Black recipient of a PhD from Harvard (1896); St. Elmo Brady, the first Black recipient of a PhD in Chemistry (1916); Hettie Love, the first Black female to graduate with an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (1947); Mahala Dickerson, the first Black woman attorney admitted to the Alabama State Bar (1948); and Etta Falconer, the first Black woman to earn a PhD in Mathematics (1969). Today, over 1,000 undergraduates and graduate students are enrolled at Fisk University.

And yet while Fisk’s commitment to academic rigor and minority opportunity has never flagged, African-Americans as a whole remain disproportionately poor and suffer from higher rates of violent crime, inferior health outcomes and lower levels of educational attainment than the average American.

Fisk University is keenly aware of these yawning disparities but has been focused until recently on putting its own house in order. Conscientious leadership and hard work in the new century have righted the ship, allowing Fisk to embark upon a bold plan of enrollment growth, career support for its graduates, and unprecedented engagement with its surrounding, deeply disadvantaged community.

Fisk University is planning four projects to grow enrollment and retention, boost career development and embark upon unprecedented engagement with its surrounding, highly-distressed low income community, including the following:

Academic Excellence & Student Performance Center
Roland Parrish Career Center
Hope-Franklin Library
Driskell House (Social Justice/Race Relations)

In January of 2023, in partnership with Hope Enterprise Corporation and Wells Fargo Bank, Crescent closed on a $7.5M Federal NMTC financing which generate eight new permanent jobs, retain a further eight positions and increase enrollment by an estimated 15%.

Ursuline Academy – SMART Lab/STEM Studio

December 28, 2021 by

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.

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