Education

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.

University of the Incarnate Word – Dubuis Hall

November 24, 2023 by

Present in Texas since 1867, the Catholic Order of the Incarnate Word purchased in 1897 the 283-acre estate of the late Colonel George Brackenridge, located in San Antonio at the present-day intersection of Broadway and E. Hildebrand. By 1909 “Incarnate Word College” enrolled 125 young women. Accelerating enrollment growth demanded the construction of a dedicated dormitory building, and the Collegiate Gothic-style Dubuis Hall was completed in 1929. Coeducational enrollment began in 1971, and the college was renamed the University of the Incarnate Word in 1996.

Desiring to reposition the never-renovated residence hall as a “freshman dormitory” designed to encourage the development of esprit de corps among incoming college classes, the university approached Crescent Growth Capital once again to determine whether tax credits could allow for a significant subsidy to be derived, to offset the $10 million project cost.

In April 2020, Crescent was hired on a contingent fee-basis to qualify Dubuis Hall for Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credits and monetize the resulting credit award on behalf of UIW. A twin-track process was necessary to accomplish this: 1) Nominate Dubuis Hall to the National Register of Historic Places and 2) Prepare and submit the Texas state historic preservation certification application (Parts A, B and C).

Crescent’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a four-element Historic Preservation Certification Application (including multiple Part B supplements) over a two-and-a-half-year period, as well as supervising the parallel effort undertaken to individually list Dubuis Hall on the National Register of Historic Places. Subsequent to its National Register listing on May 30, 2023, Crescent received Part C approval from the Texas Historical Commission on June 20, 2023. A lengthy monetization process developed, with Crescent successfully navigating numerous delays to convey net sale proceeds of approximately $2 million to the university in November 2023, representing the fourth discrete UIW capital project for which Crescent has arranged a sizeable subsidy.

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.

Allen University – Good Samaritan-Waverly

July 21, 2023 by

The mid-20^th century Good Samaritan-Waverly Hospital building represents the culmination of the efforts of Columbia’s Black residents to establish modern healthcare facilities amidst the Jim Crow system of segregation prevailing in South Carolina before the advent of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The long-anticipated fruit of the 1938 merger of the city’s Waverly and Good Samaritan Hospitals, the present building was completed as a state-of-the-art facility in 1952 and included operating rooms, x-ray equipment, fifty beds, and a nurse training facility.

Despite the hospital’s comprehensive suite of services, operating margins were tight, due to a high debt load and persistently low reimbursement rates for care. In the wake of desegregation, Richland County completed a new, racially-integrated general hospital, which prompted the closure of Good Samaritan-Waverly in 1973.

The shuttered hospital was acquired in 1987 by Allen University, an HBCU founded in 1870 whose main campus is across the street. A succession of plans were considered over the years, and in 2008 the building was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Subsequent to the appointment of President Ernest McNealey, in late 2017, plans began to coalesce around an adaptive re-use for the hospital. Fundraising commenced, but by the end of 2019 a significant gap remained.

In August of 2020, Crescent Growth Capital was hired to provide historic preservation consulting and tax credit arranger services on a contingent fee basis. Crescent authored the Historic Preservation Certification Application for South Carolina State Historic Tax Credits and Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits, successfully advancing an argument to justify the corner addition proposed for the project by pointing to the mid-block siting of the hospital at the time of its completion.

From a structuring standpoint, as tax credit arranger Crescent sourced $12 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocation authority, combined the resulting subsidy with federal and state historic tax credits, and took advantage of the South Carolina Abandoned Building Tax Credit to bring over $4 million in bottom-line benefit to the project.

In 2023, Allen University inaugurated the Waverly-Clyburn Building, within the original hospital, along with the Boeing Center auditorium, constructed as an addition. Building uses include a home for Allen’s newly-established school of education, for teacher training; a permanent home for the Institute for Civility; a newly-established South Carolina African-American Hall of Fame; and a new home for the university’s seminary.

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.

University Charter School

May 8, 2023 by

University Charter School (“UCS”) is a non-profit charter school that first received charter authorization from the Alabama Public Charter School Commission on 10/26/17, serving PreK-8^th grade. UCS has a place-based and STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, the Arts and Math) curriculum with an emphasis on college and career readiness, community partnership, and technology integration to provide a balanced learning environment.

The school currently operates out of a building on the University of West Alabama campus that it shares with the Department of Education. UWA College of Education undergraduates routinely participate in the UCS K-12 in-class curriculum, providing UCS teachers with unparalleled professional development opportunities. Furthermore, UCS 9-11^th grade students earn Dual Enrollment (DE) credits by taking UWA courses, earning up to 40-48 college credits prior to their high school graduation. UCS students pay half the UWA tuition for the DE classes, and so far, UCS has been able to offer scholarships for most of its students to cover these costs.

As UCS’ enrollment has grown, however, the shared building space has become increasingly insufficient for the Charter’s needs. Additionally, the University desperately needs UCS to expand to offer a full PreK-12 curriculum so it can attract and retain strong professorial candidates, who view strong, local K-12 schools as a necessity when considering relocation.

In April of 2023, in partnership with Empowerment Reinvestment Fund, National Community Fund, United Bank, and PNC Bank, Crescent closed on a $31.9M Federal NMTC financing to construct a new 70,000 SF school facility that will provide adequate space for the Charter to grow into a full PreK-12^th grade enrollment. The new facility will allow UCS to increase its enrollment from 578 to 700, and provide 20 general instruction classrooms, office/meeting space, a cafeteria with a Farm-to Table Educational Garden, and a gymnasium/auditorium.

The building design includes multiple elective and lab spaces that can house fine arts, visual arts, computer and health sciences, foreign languages career training education, literacy STREAM and various support labs for core curriculum coursework. A special needs classroom and related support spaces are also included in the design. Finally, the newly-constructed school will also offer students a full-size gymnasium that can be converted into an auditorium, as well as locker and storage room areas, and weight room.

UCS’ enrollment is 51.9% minority, and 52.8% eligible for free or reduced lunch, and the school will be the only PreK-12 school in the area. Furthermore, the University of West Alabama relies heavily on UCS as a vital cog in its efforts to attract top-notch professorial candidates to Livingston.

The new school facility is expected to increase total FTE’s by 20-40 over the 7-year compliance period. This NMTC subsidy will provide UCS with the additional equity necessary to build up to 6 additional classrooms, which would allow the entire enrollment to fit in the new facility. As currently designed, the new school building could hold grades 4-12 only.

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