Non-profits

University of the Incarnate Word – School of Osteopathic Medicine

January 8, 2018 by

The population of Texas is growing at a meteoric pace, severely straining the state’s healthcare system. As of the 2010 Census, Texas ranked 47^th out of 50 states in the number of primary care physicians per 100,000 inhabitants (70.0 per 100,000 as of the 2010 Census). This figure conceals an even worse reality for South Texas. Remove Bexar County (San Antonio) from regional physician counts, and the South Texas region is left with a rate of primary care physicians per capita nearly half again as worse (43 per 100,000) as the statewide figure. Furthermore, only 10% of physicians in Texas are Hispanic, while 40% of the overall population is so classified, making for inadequate cultural competency and poorer care outcomes.

The University of the Incarnate Word decided to tackle this serious and worsening problem by founding a new medical school. The new school’s osteopathic curriculum is based on the recommendations of the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Physicians for the 21st Century report, which outlined four goals for medical education: standardization of learning outcomes and individualization of the learning process; integration of formal knowledge and clinical experience; development of habits of inquiry and innovation; and, focus on professional identity formation.

Where to locate this needed new institution? As chance would have it, an especially attractive facility to house the new school was on offer: the historic, recently-vacated campus of the former USAF School of Aerospace Medicine at the decommissioned Brooks Air Force Base. After successfully sourcing NMTC allocation and closing on two previous projects for the university, Crescent Growth Capital was hired again by UIW, this time to attempt a combined federal New Markets Tax Credit and Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credit financing to help fund the university’s School of Osteopathic Medicine.

In December, 2016, Crescent and UIW closed on a $6 milllion NMTC financing for the new medical school, utilizing allocation provided by Enhanced Capital and NMTC equity provided by Wells Fargo. Thirteen months later, Crescent delivered $1.65 million in Texas state historic tax credits to Enhanced Capital, having authored Parts A, B and C of the Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credit application and collaborated with the San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation to have the National Park Service certify SA OHP’s School of Aerospace Medicine local historic district. The completed rehabilitation restored the 1963 main building’s deleted courtyard entry on the south elevation and leveraged its mid-century modern design to create an appealing, contemporary home for the new school.

With its School of Osteopathic Medicine, the University of the Incarnate Word is now positioned to pursue its long-range goal of increasing the number of osteopathic physicians beginning their practice by at least 145 per year, helping to ameliorate the severe regional healthcare supply deficit. UIW will enroll 150 students per class, a significant share of whom will be Hispanic; graduates of the four-year program will receive the “Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine” degree (D.O.).

New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute

December 28, 2017 by

New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) was established for the purpose of marrying world-class culinary & hospitality facilities, content and programming with New Orleans’ indisputable standing as a world-class culinary & hospitality city. Beyond providing traditional training, education and R&D in the fields of culinary arts and hospitality, NOCHI aspires to elevate New Orleans to a position of thought leadership across multiple disciplines that intersect with food/hospitality for the purpose of creating rewarding careers and improving quality of life for its local citizens and the larger global community.

In 2014, NOCHI purchased the former ArtWorks building with the intent to renovate it into a state-of-the-art workforce training facility. The concept of a culinary and hospitality training facility was developed in response to two alarming trends in New Orleans: a shortage of trained restaurant staff, and high rates of both non-employment and underemployment, particularly among African-Americans—e.g., a 2013 study conducted by the Lindy Boggs Center for Community Literacy at Loyola University reported that 52 percent of African American working age men in New Orleans are not working.

In December, 2017, CGC and NOCHI closed on a $19M financing to renovate the ArtWorks facility, utilizing NMTC allocation provided by United Fund Advisors and Enhanced Capital, and a NMTC equity investment provided by Iberia Bank. The 93,000 sf facility will house a wide variety of programming, including Culinary Training Program, Workforce Training Programs, Enthusiasts Courses and Community Programming as well as Tulane’s Freeman School of Business new Hospitality Entrepreneurship programming.

As part of a cooperative endeavor agreement with New Orleans Convention Center, NOCHI is mandated to provide subsidized workforce training to between 100-500 students annually. These programs will range from “standardized” programs for industry-wide needs to employer-based custom training programs that NOCHI would help develop and execute.

Beyond the subsidized training they receive, NOCHI students will be able to take advantage of the school’s Educational Advisory Board, comprised of a wide representation of the local hospitality industry, who will oversee the customization of the curriculum to meet the needs of different types of participants, as well as of prospective employers, by adding field trips, job shadowing, guest speakers, and/or internship opportunities that can be arranged within less than a mile of NOCHI’s location.

Furthermore, NOCHI students will also be able to leverage NOCHI’s ties to the local hospitality industry to find a new position after graduation. While NOCHI’s facilities will provide for hands-on food and beverage learning lab space, the school’s proximity to hundreds of hotels allows for convenient access to real-world learning “lab” spaces for other hospitality positions.

Mesquite Library

December 20, 2017 by

Crescent Growth CApital (“CGC”) and the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District (“LVCCLD”) are pleased to announce the closing of a $10M NMTC financing, using allocation provided by the Clearinghouse CDFI, and a NMTC equity investment provided by Chase Bank. This new library project is one of LVCCLD’s new model libraries, aimed at providing a broad swath of community services and bringing the library into the 21st century.

The new 16,000 sf Mesquite Branch Library of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District lies in the heart of the rural community of Mesquite, population 17,059, located in Clark County, an 8,000 square mile county in southern Nevada. The community is 82 miles from Las Vegas NV, 20 miles from the Arizona border, 40 miles St. George UT, and 35 miles from the Paiute Reservation in Moapa, NV. Mesquite serves as a regional center for many functions. Children from nearby Arizona towns attend Mesquite’s Clark County School District schools.

Mesquite has been designated a priority need area for city, state and regional economic development and workforce agencies. The library site is located on the only CDBG block in Mesquite. The site is located within the City of Mesquite-designated Enterprise Zone and is in a rural area identified by Workforce Connections, the southern Nevada agency for employment, business and career support, as high need/low resource. Workforce Connections has provided a full-time onsite staff person to start-up and expand employment, business and career development services to scale when the new facility comes on line. Plans are now in progress to combine federal education, labor and library resources to conduct specific job training and OneStop services from this facility, along with English language instruction and citizenship.

Workforce Connections will provide staff, instruction and career coach expertise. The Library District will provide public access computers, laptops, Internet, Wifi, printers, scanners, copiers, and other office equipment, as well as a wealth of physical and virtual materials, information sources, databases and apps that support economic development and education. Once complete, the project will give the public access to a new community meeting room, consultation and study rooms with monitors, computer and instruction labs, and access to physical materials and virtual resources that ultimately make this library facility a community hub for economic, education and social well-being.

In this way, this project will prototype a new library model that combines free public access to technology and services for learning, training, making, entertaining, and gathering. It will also prototype a new kind of intergovernmental collaboration. As indicated above, the facility will integrate local, county, regional and state services for workforce, education, social services, citizenship, and libraries. Services provided free to the public here will support OneStop workforce services; small business development support; social service and government agency connections; early childhood development; parent engagement; student support such as homework help; English language, High School Equivalency, and literacy instruction; public computer, Internet and Wifi access; community and cultural events; and job training and certification programs related to the early childhood education sector.

This project will create an estimated 7 positions, while retaining another 15 existing positions. Full-time Mesquite library employees will receive a full set of benefits, including health insurance and retirement (Nevada PERS), which is valued at roughly 30% of salary. Full- and part-time employees are covered by Worker’s Comp.

North Texas Food Bank

September 6, 2017 by

Established in 1982 by Jo Curtis, Ambassador Kathryn Hall, Lorraine Griffin Kircher and Liz Minyard, the North Texas Food Bank (“NTFB”) addresses the critical issue of hunger by providing food-insecure North Texans with edible surplus food and grocery items otherwise destined for landfills.

Today, NTFB leads the fight against hunger by distributing donated, purchased and prepared food to 439,000 unduplicated individuals annually through a network of more than 200 Partner Agencies and 1,000 feeding sites in 13 North Texas counties, including: Collin, Dallas, Delta, Denton, Ellis, Fannin, Grayson, Hopkins, Hunt, Kaufman, Lamar, Navarro and Rockwall. 61% of NTFB clients are minority, 82% of client households earn less than $20,000 annually and a staggering 83.4% of NTFB clients are food insecure – meaning they would otherwise have no alternative source of food. Furthermore, food insecurity affects the elderly to a disproportionate degree, given their fixed incomes and higher medical costs, in fact, every month 31.5% of NTFB clients must make a choice between food and medical care. Established in 1982 by Jo Curtis, Ambassador Kathryn Hall, Lorraine Griffin Kircher and Liz Minyard, the North Texas Food Bank addresses the critical issue of hunger by providing food-insecure North Texans with edible surplus food and grocery items otherwise destined for landfills.

Hunger continues to be a growing problem across the United States, and North Texas is no different. Based on Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap 2014 report, the estimated current annual need in North Texas is approximately 92 million nutritious meals. Since recently completing a three-year strategic plan, ReThink Hunger, NTFB is operating at maximum capacity with its current facilities and unable to meet the remaining need for an additional 30 million nutritious meals annually.

According to Feeding America, one in six people in NTFB’s 13-county service area (856,060 total) is at risk for hunger and hunger-related health issues, and the number of food-insecure individuals continues to rise. The populations most affected are families living below the poverty line, the working poor, seniors on a fixed income, adults with disabilities and children.

As part of its $55 million Stop Hunger Build Hope Capital Campaign, NTFB developed a plan for a new Northern Distribution Center in Collin County. The proposed 200,000 square foot facility is expected to house 60,000 square feet of dry warehouse space, 70,000 square feet of refrigerated warehouse space, 12,000 square feet of office space, seven refrigerated docks, 11 dry docks, a Community Garden, and a 28,000 square foot volunteer center with the capacity to accommodate up to 400 volunteers per day.

In September, 2017, Crescent Growth Capital facilitated a $24M NMTC financing to help fund the $27.4M construction cost of the new Northern Distribution Center, using allocation provided by Texas Mezzanine Fund and Pacesetter, with a NMTC investment provided by US Bank. The approximately $4.4M in net NMTC subsidy directly reduced the amount of capital campaign funds required to complete this particular project, as well as affording the non-profit some flexibility for the other Stop Hunger Build Hope Capital Campaign projects.

East Last Vegas Library

July 26, 2017 by

The Las Vegas-Clark County Library District (“LVCCLD”) currently serves 1.5 million people over 8,000 square miles—an area larger than the state of Connecticut. Despite its broad reach throughout the Las Vegas area, in early 2016, the LVCCLD issued a new strategic plan, “Vision 2020,” aimed at modernizing its libraries to adapt to the new digital world.

With the tagline “We don’t library like we used to,” LVCCLD’s Vision 2020 plan aims to give the District the flexibility to adapt quickly to a changing digital landscape by implementing new layouts, technologies, methods of communication, and models of service in all its existing and new libraries. They recognized that, on the one hand, libraries are being urged to go national and international as a platform for digital content creation and exchange. On the other, libraries are urged to be a bridge for local social, economic and education connections that are critical to well-being and to be local hubs for learning, creativity and community engagement.

Vision 2020 has become a guide for deploying library assets – virtual and physical – in ways that advance and amplify the talent and vitality of the region, making even more people successful, happy and engaged in learning, discovery, achievement. In an area that is coping with a plethora of post-recession challenges such as affordable access to food, housing, clothing, employment and education, the new LVCCLD library will address each of these issues by focusing on the four pillars of the Vision 2020 model: Limitless Learning, Business & Career Services, Government & Social Services and Culture & Community.

The new 40,000 sf East Las Vegas Library will be the model for all Vision 2020 libraries going forward. The building’s open layout will give the Library the flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of the community, while providing a wide array of resources and services including traditional and digital literacy programming, parenting support, early childhood development services, school readiness, K-12 academic support, out-of-school learning, making, STEAM activities, entrepreneurship, career pathways, employment search and training, access to computers and Wifi hotspots, English language and citizenship instruction, digital media production, and space for cultural performances and community celebrations. The concept for the new facility is the result of a long and collaborative partnership between LVCCLD and the surrounding community: a series of community outreach meetings yielded a number of new library features which were incorporated into the design. These new features, unfortunately, increased the project budget from $18M to $22.6M, leaving a $4.6M funding gap with no readily available source of funding.

In July, 2017, CGC and the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District Foundation closed on a $17M NMTC financing, utilizing NMTC allocation provided by the City of Las Vegas through its CDE, Las Vegas Community Investment Corporation, and NMTC equity provided by Capital One. The NMTC subsidy generated by this financing was sufficient to close funding gap and round out the development budget for the new East Las Vegas Library branch. The new facility is expected to create up to 400 construction and 8 new, permanent FTE positions, while retaining the existing 38 employees.

Boys & Girls Club of San Antonio – May’s Family Clubhouse

January 5, 2017 by

The Boys Clubs opened in San Antonio in 1939, in a small facility on Dolorosa Street. Over the years the clubs grew in stature, membership and facilities, so much that in 1963, Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez presented then President John F. Kennedy with a gavel and handmade box created by the members in their woodworking shop. In 1976, girls were invited to become members and the name of the clubs was officially changed in 1991 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio.

Through the decades the programming and facilities have improved but the mission has remained the same. Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio’s mission is to enhance the educational, social, and moral development of San Antonio’s youth ages 6-18, especially those most disadvantaged by providing a fun, safe place full of age appropriate activities and opportunities. Through the professional staff, thriving facilities, dynamic volunteers, and strong links to the community, the clubs provide professionally designed youth development programs.

Today, BGCSA serves more than 9,200 Club members annually, ages 6 – 18, and operates seven branch locations in the city of San Antonio. Membership is open to all children in San Antonio for nominal annual membership dues ($50). No child is turned away due to an inability to pay. The majority of the club’s membership is comprised of minority children (95%), from single parent / grandparent families (62%) and receives some form of federal assistance (75%). The clubs’ impact is undeniable: 99% of members stayed in school and successfully progress to the next grade level, 100% of graduating teen members pursued higher education 71% made notable progress in character development and 99% improved their grades in basic skills courses (math, science, reading).

At the venerable age of 75, the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio reached a crossroads: aging facilities had becoming inadequate for the needs of the organization, and an expansion was necessary to maximize the Club’s impact on San Antonio’s at-risk youth population. In early 2015, the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio decided to launch an $8.8 million capital campaign to build the May’s Family Clubhouse in the Lone Star neighborhood.

On January 5, 2017, Crescent Growth Capital worked with the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Antonio to close a $7,267,118 NMTC financing for the new May’s Family Clubhouse, utilizing NMTC allocation provided by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, NMTC equity investment provided by Capital One, and a capital campaign bridge loan provided by Frost Bank.

The May’s Family Clubhouse is located in a neighborhood that offers youths few opportunities for success, and as a result, the neighborhood has suffered: the Lone Star neighborhood has the highest juvenile crime rate in San Antonio, and nearly double the City’s average child abuse and teen pregnancy rates. The proposed branch at 829 Nogalitos is anticipated to have 650 members and daily attendance of about 225 youths, utilizing a state-of-the-art facility that features a learning center, multi-media centers, an art studio, a teen center, a teaching kitchen and a game room. The May’s Family Clubhouse will also be situated at the trail head for the San Pedro Creek development.

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