Historic Tax Credits

Audubon Gentilly Charter School

July 1, 2020 by

Public education in New Orleans is today wholly entrusted to non-profit charter schools. Multiple networks of independent charter schools are supervised by the elected school board, which functions as the disinterested enforcer of academic standards, provider of resources best offered in a centralized fashion, and owner of school buildings. The resulting highly entrepreneurial environment has transformed educational outcomes throughout the city and afforded to successful charter school operators the opportunity to take over operation of additional schools.

Audubon Schools began as a traditionally-administered public elementary school in the city’s Uptown neighborhood. Almost fifty years ago, four teachers attending Montessori training at Tulane University resolved to find a public school home for this unique pedagogical approach, then and now mostly present in private Montessori schools. The teachers successfully petitioned the Orleans Parish School Board, which authorized “Audubon Montessori” in 1981. Five years later, the school started a French immersion track, which was formally sponsored by the French government in 1990 (The French Ministry of Education supports the program to this day). In the years leading up to Hurricane Katrina (2005), Audubon Montessori became widely referred to as a “public dream school” beloved by its parents (who affixed to their cars bumper stickers sporting this slogan). In the wake of Katrina, Audubon reopened as an independent charter school.

Under the leadership of Superintendent Henderson Lewis (2015-2022), the OPSB adopted a policy of encouraging successful charter school operators to grow by being awarded additional schools to administer. In Gentilly Terrace, an historic neighborhood of the city platted in 1909, the closure of the neighborhood’s charter elementary school was announced in 2016, a consequence of unimpressive academic results and dwindling enrollment. An unprecedented alliance of the Gentilly Terrace & Gardens Improvement Association, the leadership of Audubon Schools and the OPSB was formed to argue for the selection of Audubon as the new operator for Gentilly Terrace’s neighborhood elementary school. In the fall of 2018, Audubon Gentilly began operations, immediately ranking among the most sought-after public schools in the city.

Crescent Growth Capital was hired by Audubon Schools to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services, to subsidize the $2.7 million cost of readying the school building for its new operator. Gentilly Terrace School was constructed in 1914, to a design by architect E.A. Christy, and expanded in 1924. The wood-frame Craftsman style building boasts numerous flourishes which typify the Arts-and-Crafts movement, including scalloped rafter tails, decorative friezes and elaborate knee-brace brackets at the gable ends, A contributing element to the Gentilly Terrace National Register Historic District, the school received a rehabilitated ground floor and dramatically re-landscaped side yard play areas incorporating best practices in stormwater management.

Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a three-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over seventeen months. Part 3 approval was received on December 19, 2019, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent and tax credit sale proceeds delivered to Audubon Schools in July of 2020.

First United Apartments

March 6, 2020 by

Impressed with Crescent Growth Capital’s skillful, contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting capabilities on its St. John’s Masonic project, the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund again retained Crescent to serve as historic preservation consultant on an even more daunting effort: the redevelopment of the blighted, structurally-compromised First United Baptist Church in New Orleans’ Mid-City neighborhood.

Completed in 1940 for a congregation founded in 1907, the Central Baptist Church consisted of a sanctuary constructed in a striking Mayan Revival art deco style and an attached classroom annex. Its congregation dwindling, Central Baptist in 1993 agreed to merge with a young African-American congregation in search of a home, creating First United Baptist Church, the first instance in the nation of historically white and historically Black Southern Baptist congregations merging.

The new congregation successfully established itself but suffered a severe setback in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina-induced flooding, compounded by the sudden death of the church’s pastor, Marshall Truehill, Jr., in 2008. Plans to remediate and rededicate the facility fell by the wayside, and the sanctuary and its attached annex began to rapidly deteriorate.

Into the breach stepped the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund. Made aware by Crescent of First United’s location within the Mid-City National Register Historic District’s boundaries and period of significance, NORF made plans to acquire the former First United facility and redevelop it into twenty rental apartments. But would federal and state historic tax credits be possible, given the need to subdivide the sanctuary volume to accommodate fourteen of the planned twenty units?

Crescent quickly determined a way forward: the historic sanctuary, completed in 1940, had been downsized decades later by the Central Baptist congregation, as they no longer had need of such a large space. In effect, a “church within a church” had been constructed, with the perimeter of the historic sanctuary converted into more classroom and administrative space. The resulting sanctuary interior, Crescent argued in its HPCA, constituted a non-historic modification that had destroyed the integrity of the original interior. That the original sanctuary interior was no longer intact allowed for its subdivision, with a portion of the circa 1940 sanctuary volume expressed in a new atrium feature separating the sanctuary apartments from those in the annex. An original baptismal pool, installed in the rear wall of the sanctuary, was retained in place as a focal point for the atrium.

Meanwhile, the rear wall of the original classroom annex was suffering acute structural failure, and the entire annex had differentially settled and was pulling away from the sanctuary. Crescent’s HPCA detailed its reconstruction using salvaged decorative elements throughout the interior and ensuring its successful re-purposing as six apartments, with a subtle penthouse addition topping the reconstructed annex roof.

Crescent’s historic preservation consulting effort garnered NORF nearly $2.2 million in federal and state historic tax credits, constituting a significant subsidy for their $5.5 million First United Apartments project. Crescent also monetized the Louisiana state historic tax credits on behalf of the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund, conveying the tax credit sale proceeds to NORF’s principals in February of 2020.

For the third time in nearly as many years, Crescent Growth Capital’s historic preservation consulting work was honored by the Louisiana Landmarks Society, as First United Apartments was named a winner for Excellence in Historic Preservation in 2020.

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.

St. John’s Masonic Apartments (Opelousas Apartments)

August 7, 2017 by

Freemasonry occupies a storied place in American history, representing an influential subset of the body politic: fraternal social organizations independent of any political or religious authority. St. John’s Masonic Temple, located within the Algiers Point National Register Historic District in New Orleans, documents that neighborhood’s participation in the surge of Masonic Temple construction that occurred throughout the United States in the 1920s. Its completion in 1926 coincided with other Masonic initiatives throughout the city, including the erection of the impressive, twenty-story Grand Lodge of Louisiana headquarters at 333 St. Charles Avenue (now a hotel).

St. John’s both evidences Freemasonry’s impact upon New Orleans and serves as an excellent example of the spare, art deco-influenced neoclassicism of the 1920s. Here, Sam Stone’s design is notable for the intricate brickwork of differing bonds executed for decorative effect, a principal element of the handsomely-finished exterior that is, overall, almost completely unaltered from its original appearance.

By the time the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund acquired the building in 2014, its use as the gathering place for a fraternal organization was decades in the past. The Masons vacated 620 Opelousas after World War II; it subsequently served as a neighborhood post office for many years. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the building was acquired for conversion into multifamily housing, but the development stalled after the completion of much interior demolition, the insertion of new wooden framing and MEP elements, and the addition of interior steel stairs.

NORF hired Crescent Growth Capital to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services, in support of its $3.6 million redevelopment of St. John’s Masonic into ten market-rate apartments.

Crescent’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a four-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over a thirty-month period, submitting Louisiana State HPCAs in conjunction with the federal application parts. Part 3 approval was received on April 28, 2017, with state historic tax credit monetization accomplished by Crescent and tax credit sale proceeds delivered to NORF in July.

For the second time in nearly as many years, Crescent Growth Capital’s historic preservation consulting work was honored by the Louisiana Landmarks Society, as Opelousas Apartments received an Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation in 2019.

National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor

July 29, 2016 by

French Ursuline nuns first arrived in New Orleans in 1727. The Ursulines established a convent and founded Ursuline Academy, the oldest continuously-operating school for young women in the territory of the modern-day United States. With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, New Orleans became part of the culturally Protestant American nation. It was unclear to the Ursulines whether their institution would be welcome within the young republic, and they appealed to their French metropole for assistance. With France in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, the Louisiana Ursulines were told only a direct appeal to the pope – with scant chance of success – might bring them aid. A direct appeal was issued, accompanied by a promise to the Virgin Mary that she would be honored in New Orleans under the title of Our Lady of Prompt Succor should the pope quickly return a favorable response to the Ursulines’ plea. The Ursulines’ request for assistance was granted by Pope Pius VII on April 29, 1809, just over a month after the letter of appeal had been mailed. The grateful Ursulines had commissioned a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus; this was conveyed to Louisiana, arriving in 1810, along with several additional Ursuline postulants for the convent and school. The Catholic Church attributes several miracles to Our Lady of Prompt Succor, most famously the victory over the British of the American army under General Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans (1815).

When Ursuline Academy relocated to its present campus in 1912, the Ursulines determined to construct a purpose-built shrine to Our Lady of Prompt Succor. In the wake of a successful fundraising campaign, the Gothic Revival National Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor was dedicated in 1924.

The shrine is L-shaped (in plan) and clad in brick with limestone trim. The principal façade presents as a narrow, single bay, dominated by a tall stained glass window trimmed in limestone and divided into three vertical elements by two stepped stone piers springing from a protruding entrance portico. The front-gabled portico, clad entirely in limestone, rises to a decorative peak. An archivolt spans the recessed main entrance, with entry into the shrine afforded via carved wooden doors. Empty statuary niches capped with peaked canopies anchor the outside of the portico, and stepped brick piers flank the outside edge of the front elevation. Blind porticos executed in limestone rise from the steps, with empty statuary niches above. The other four principal elevations are dominated by large stained-glass window installations, trimmed in limestone and separated from one another by protruding, stepped brick-clad piers with limestone caps. A copper-clad spire rises from the roof at the intersection of the legs of the “L.” A one-story wing extends from the north elevation, while an octagonal turret is nestled in the crook of the “L”.

The Gothic Revival interior consists of two principal spaces, the two arms of the “L”. The first extends from the main entrance and features galleried side aisles, while the second is a column-less space. Extensive interior ornamentation is executed in limestone and brick.

The construction of the shrine within the Uptown-University neighborhood fits squarely within that area’s development history, as its completion was preceded by Tulane University’s move to its present campus, the nearby arrival of the Jesuit order, in 1912, with the establishment of Loyola University’s current location, and the subsequent construction of numerous additional public and private institutional facilities. The shrine not only contributes to the architectural fabric of the Uptown-University district; it also a key component of the historic Ursuline Academy State Street campus and underlines the prevalence of educational and cultural uses found within the Uptown-University Cultural District, a concentration unique in the state.

In recent years Crescent Growth Capital has repeatedly helped Ursuline Academy leverage its capital projects fundraising to generate tax credit subsidies, and in March 2013, Crescent was approached by the Ursuline Sisters to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and historic tax credit monetization services in support of a $2.2 million rehabilitation of the shrine.

Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a three-element Louisiana State Historic Preservation Certification Application over thirty-one months. Part 3 approval was received on May 17, 2016, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent and tax credit sale proceeds delivered to the Sisters of Ursula in July.

Historic Tax Credits

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