Funded by a $5.7 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment structured by Crescent Growth Capital, the Ursuline Academy Early Childhood Learning Center is the first component to be realized of Ursuline Academy’s ambitious post-Hurricane Katrina recovery plan, simultaneously striking a blow on behalf of the oldest operating Catholic School in the United States (established in 1727), providing needed early childhood education capacity to New Orleans and disseminating best practices to partnering public facilities. Located within a highly distressed census tract struggling with a 25% poverty rate, the Early Childhood Learning Center would not have happened without the New Markets Tax Credit subsidy.
Education
Our Lady of the Lake University
In 2008, the circa 1895 Main Building of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX was heavily damaged in a four-alarm fire. A $27.5 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment was structured by Crescent Growth Capital to enable the rebuilding of the historic Main Building, forcefully reiterating OLLU’s status as the foremost venue for Mexican-American economic advancement in the San Antonio region.
The reconstructed Main Building will constitute the foundation stone of a larger effort to revitalize the immediate neighborhood, a highly-distressed census tract with a 25% poverty rate and unemployment nearly 50% more prevalent than in the United States as a whole.
Absent the New Markets subsidy, the university would have had to make up for a multi-million dollar insurance shortfall by cutting back its curricula, reducing student services or increasing tuition, undermining its historic mission of serving disenfranchised populations.
Goodwill Regional Headquarters
Goodwill Industries has historically served people struggling with disabilities, economic disadvantages, and other barriers to employment, helping its clients achieve independence and self-sufficiency through employment support services.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Goodwill’s Southeast Louisiana affiliate was besieged with a surge of applicants, though its regional headquarters had sustained catastrophic damage and had to be shuttered. Goodwill decided to site its replacement headquarters facility on the Tulane Avenue corridor of New Orleans, a neighborhood suffering from longstanding disinvestment. A crushing poverty rate of over 45% combined with pervasive unemployment – more than 16% as of the 2000 census – to create a decidedly troubled environment. Nonetheless, the avenue still functioned as a major artery in New Orleans and boasted frequent city and regional bus service, a major benefit to Goodwill’s clients. However, the new headquarters facility, encompassing office space, classrooms and a retail store, was facing a $4 million shortfall.
Crescent Growth Capital structured a $15 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment combining Goodwill’s resources with the NMTC allocations of two unaffiliated community development entities, an equity investment from a bank, and a leveraged loan from the same bank to generate a tax credit subsidy that realized Goodwill’s vision.
Neighborhood Centers, Inc.
When Neighborhood Centers, Inc., the largest non-profit provider of social services in Houston, launched an initiative to radically reshape the model for metro-wide social service provision, Crescent Growth Capital was enlisted to enable its first manifestation.
CGC structured an $11 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment to fund the Gulfton/Sharpstown Neighborhood Campus. The campus built upon Neighborhood Center’s pre-existing Head Start program by adding a charter elementary school, a comprehensive family education center, and an economic development incubator.
Considered Houston’s Ellis Island – due to the hyper-dense population of immigrants who occupy the neighborhood’s enormous oil boom-era multi-family apartment complexes – the Gulfton/Sharpstown neighborhood exhibits unquestioned dynamism alongside troubling poverty. Approximately 40% of families with young children in the community live below the poverty line, and nearly half of all households earn incomes below $25,000. With fundraising for the new campus having stalled, CGC leveraged existing pledge dollars to enable this beneficial addition to a challenged neighborhood.