Community Development

For 200 years, the Iberville-Treme neighborhood was home to New Orleans’ gens de couleur libres – “free people of color” – who were not enslaved before the Civil War. Despite sustained disinvestment, mounting crime, and the flight of its middle class to newly-desegregated neighborhoods, this community of free African Americans, the largest in the nation by the mid-19th century, provided a unique foundation for transformative artistic endeavor, most notably birthing jazz music.

Still a vital community in the mid-20th century, Iberville-Treme received its last private performing arts investment with the opening of the Carver Theater in 1950. Named after the famous African-American scientist George Washington Carver, the theater offered a state-of-the-art, non-segregated facility in which black New Orleanians could enjoy the latest Hollywood offerings from main-floor seating. By 1965 the end of Jim Crow laws made it possible for African Americans to sit with white audiences; they were no longer relegated to the balcony. Marooned within a deteriorating neighborhood, the Carver Theater closed for good in 1980.

In mid-2011, Crescent Growth Capital (“CGC”) began working with the Carver Theater to develop a plan that would rehabilitate the facility, create 133 permanent jobs and reinstate the artistic and cultural anchor of the neighborhood. In November, 2012, CGC helped the Carver Theater, First NBC Bank and the Louisiana Office of Community Development (“OCD”) close and fund a $5.5 million Qualified Equity Investment and a $2.25 million OCD Loan to finance the $9.7 million rehabilitation.

The new Carver Theater will provide badly-needed employment opportunities for the surrounding highly-distressed low-income community. The Carver will support 133 non-construction jobs, most of which will not require advanced degrees or special competencies. The positions are entry-level; the required skills will be learned on the job. Moreover, the theater is prominently situated in the center of the Iberville-Treme neighborhood – one of the most artistically fertile neighborhoods in the United States. Giving this neighborhood a platform for formal artistic expression is of inestimable value.

Furthermore, the Carver Theater’s sponsors will provide programming in support of this mission. Adjacent on-site facilities will house the Edward “Kidd” Jordan Jazz Institute. The institute will offer instruction in music performance, composition, and production. Dr. Henry Panion, a classical conductor and music arranger for Stevie Wonder, will collaborate with the institute on his new initiative, Gospel Goes Classical, providing the Carver with a prominent anchor production at the outset.

Finally, as a consequence of its use of historic tax credit equity, the Mid-Century Modern Carver Theater will be restored according to the exacting Standards for Rehabilitation promulgated by the United States Department of the Interior. The Carver’s redesign has received Historic Preservation Certifications from the Louisiana Division of Historic Preservation and the National Park Service.

The Joy Theater, the newest of New Orleans’ downtown movie palaces, was for decades a beacon illuminating the intersection of Canal Street and Elk Place.  From 1946 moviegoers enjoyed the latest Hollywood offerings, projected onto a huge single screen, from either ground-level or balcony seating.  The Joy’s bold Moderne design, which made extravagant use of neon and floodlighting, exemplified the hopeful spirit of post-World War II New Orleans.

The Joy’s heyday would last a brief fifteen years.  The decades following the theater’s completion witnessed a sea-change in moviegoing habits, both in New Orleans and around the country.  Sustained disinvestment in urban downtowns was accompanied by the development of suburban multiplex theaters, television grew to dominate the entertainment landscape, and the single-screen movie palace became as obsolete as vaudeville.  Despite these trying circumstances, the Joy Theater nonetheless persevered until finally closing in 2004, its Moderne-style beauty remaining essentially intact.

Though project sponsors concluded that the Joy was no longer viable as a movie theater, they perceived unmet market demand in New Orleans for a cutting-edge, versatile, medium-sized entertainment venue.  As an architecturally-arresting mecca for live music and special events – akin to the House of Blues but possessing superior amenities, increased programming flexibility and vastly greater levels of visitor comfort – a restored Joy would dramatically punctuate the reviving downtown theater district, complementing the touring show focus of the soon-to-reopen Saenger Theatre across Canal Street. 

Crescent Growth Capital was retained to model and close an intricate $5.0 million New Markets Tax Credit financing that leveraged state and federal historic tax credit equity, state Live Performance Infrastructure tax credit equity and state workforce credit proceeds to generate over $5 million in net subsidy to help realize this $12 million project.  CGC and its consultants also successfully applied to the Louisiana Office of Community Development and secured $3 million of D-CDBG funds to close the project’s final financing gap.