Historic Tax Credits

St. Augustine High School – Rigaud Wellness Center

August 13, 2025 by

New Orleans’ large population of African American Roman Catholics is yet another unusual characteristic distinguishing the Crescent City from other places in America. Catholics constitute a plurality of the city’s and region’s population, and their predominance has profoundly affected Greater New Orleans’ educational system. Historically far more affordable than most independent private day schools operating in the United States, New Orleans’ Catholic schools long educated great numbers of students hailing from all backgrounds, with working class pupils always comprising a large proportion of the total student body.

And yet as late as the mid-20^th century, an all-boys Catholic high school education was not available to young Black men of New Orleans. The founding of St. Augustine High School in 1951 extended to African American high school-aged young men of the city an opportunity for single-sex Catholic education that had long been afforded their white co-religionists.

“St. Aug” quickly developed a reputation for both academic and athletic excellence. In the past seventy years, the school has grown into one of the nation’s premier incubators of Black talent, with the nearly 10,000 graduates of its college preparatory curriculum having regularly notched accomplishments like earning admission to Ivy League institutions, rising to executive positions within Fortune 500 companies nationwide, and serving as political and community leaders in both New Orleans and across the country. Countless professional athletes are alumni, and the school’s famed marching band has for decades been a highlight of the Mardi Gras season.

The present-day campus consists of three components: the original classroom building (1951), a 1971 addition consisting of a gymnasium, locker rooms, a band rehearsal room, and offices for athletic staff and music instructors, and a 2005 addition consisting of a library, computer labs, a cafeteria dining hall, a chapel and residences for school faculty. The 1951 classroom building epitomizes the thoughtful spatial composition and judicious mixing of materials that underpinned successful essays in Midcentury Modern exterior design. Subsequent additions to the campus – the 1971 gymnasium and the 2005 building – have succeeded at keeping the 1951 building primary amidst the ensemble.

However, by 2020 the school’s facilities were in need of comprehensive modernization. In 2021, St. Augustine initiated its Strategic Facilities Plan to guide a $25 million effort to upgrade the school’s academic and athletic infrastructure.

Executing the plan without imperiling other priorities wasn’t easy. St. Augustine strives to admit young men on a need-blind basis, which is a stretch given the socioeconomic makeup of the student body. More than seven in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, over one in three students qualify for federal Department of Education grants to pay for half their tuition, and more than seven in ten students receive some sort of need-based tuition aid. Resources redirected to supporting the facilities plan could not be easily replaced with tuition increases. A final hurdle appeared when construction contractors repairing Hurricane Ida damage failed to properly secure combustible materials in the gymnasium. On Thanksgiving Day 2021 a fire erupted, causing heavy damage to the school’s multipurpose 1971 gymnasium building.

In need of innovative funding options, St. Augustine hired Crescent Growth Capital in 2023 to source and structure New Markets Tax Credit and Louisiana State Historic Tax Credit equity to help fund the conversion of the 1971 gymnasium into the Rigaud Health and Wellness Center. Crescent Growth Capital structured a financing incorporating Federal and Louisiana State New Markets Tax Credits, achieving financial closing in July 2024.

Meanwhile, Crescent’s in-house historic preservation consulting capabilities were deployed to prepare a three-element Historic Preservation Certification Application, with the only condition attached to Part 2 approval being a change in the specified color of some exterior metal cladding. Part 3 approval was received in May 2025, and the resulting historic tax credits were monetized in August. Crescent realized over $3.6 million in net subsidy for St. Augustine’s $13.6 million project.

St. Joseph Abbey & Seminary College

February 20, 2025 by

The Catholic Benedictine Order dates to the late 5^th century A.D. Called upon by New Orleans Archbishop Francis Janssens to found a seminary capable of supporting the development of a clergy native to the region, the Benedictines established St. Joseph Preparatory Seminary in 1891. The institution’s initial site near Pontchatoula eventually proved to be unsatisfactory, so St. Joseph relocated in 1902 to a 1,200-acre tract near Covington, LA. Located on the Northshore, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, St. Joseph remains there to this day.

The earliest surviving buildings on the campus date to 1909, when a large, three-story monastery/seminary and a detached one-story refectory (dining hall) were completed to a design by Benedictine Father Gregory Uhlenbrock, who had trained as an architect in his native Germany. New Orleans architect Theodore Brune designed the Romanesque-style abbey church, completed in 1932; stunning interior murals were added in the late 1940s to these historic buildings, executed by Benedictine Father Gregory DeWit, with the assistance of Swiss native Milo Piuz.

The continued growth of the seminary in the postwar period prompted the construction of an entirely new complex, a multi-building Miesian effort designed by the New Orleans architecture firm Lawrence and Saunders and inaugurated in 1960. The firm also designed a retreat house for laypersons, completed in 1964. In 1969 the seminary received accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools, and St. Joseph Abbey and Seminary College came into being.

On the night of March 11, 2016, St. Joseph’s fine campus was inundated by over two feet of floodwaters when the Bogue Falaya River overflowed its banks, flooding fourteen buildings. In the wake of this disaster, Crescent Growth Capital was hired to pursue Louisiana Historic Tax Credits on behalf of the abbey.

Over the next nine years, Crescent deployed both in-house historic preservation consulting and tax credit monetization capabilities to subsidize the rehabilitation of seven of the nine principal buildings on campus, including pre-World War II examples (monastery, refectory, abbey church) and Midcentury Modern designs (Benet, Savio and Vianney Halls, Retreat House).

Upon its accomplishing, in February 2025, the fourth tax credit monetization and delivery of sale proceeds to St. Joseph, Crescent had successfully leveraged over $28 million of Qualified Rehabilitation Expenditures to generate nearly $5.7 million in tax-free sale proceeds for St. Joseph Abbey and Seminary College.

Kern’s Bakery (Kern’s Food Hall)

July 9, 2024 by

Born in Germany in 1836, Peter Kern emigrated to the United States and settled in Knoxville during the Civil War. By the third quarter of the 19^th century, Kern’s Bakery was established in downtown Knoxville, growing steadily in subsequent decades to become an established, beloved regional bakery. Acquired in 1989 by Sara Lee, the now-discontinued Kern’s brand remains a touchstone in the memories of Knoxvillians.

Sara Lee operated the principal Kern’s facility on Chapman Highway until 2012. For nearly a decade, plans gestated to redevelop the shuttered property, a prominent Knoxville landmark. In 2017, the historic bakery, constructed incrementally from 1931, was successfully listed on the National Register of Historic Places, though further development stalled after some exterior rehabilitation work was completed.

In 2019, Kern’s Bakery was acquired by a team led by Atlanta-based Mallory & Evans who envisioned a $32 million project that would convert the former Kern’s Bakery industrial facility into a mixed-use destination retail and food hall development to anchor the booming South Knoxville riverfront.

Hired to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and tax credit arranging services, Crescent Growth Capital structured a financing incorporating Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits, PACE funding, a TIF grant from Knoxville city government, bridge financing for the historic tax credit equity, and construction and senior loans. Crescent closed on the project’s financing in February of 2022 and then structured and closed, in December 2023, a financing to take out the PACE funding component.

Crescent’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a five-element Historic Preservation Certification Application (including multiple Part 2 amendments) over a three-year period. Part 3 approval of the HPCA was received on July 1, 2024, by which point Kern’s Food Hall had debuted, delighting Knoxvillians who still cherished memories of Peter Kern’s community business.

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.

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.

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.

Historic Tax Credits

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