Historic Tax Credits

New Orleans Museum of Art – Stern Auditorium

September 24, 2021 by

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) was established in 1910 in the wake of an endowment received from sugar planter Issac Delgado. Known as the “Issac Delgado Museum of Art” for its first six decades, the museum’s historic core consists of a Greek Neoclassical structure completed in 1911 to a design by Samuel Marx. In 1971 three wings were added, extending from the east, west and north elevations of the original museum and providing for more exhibit space, improved amenities, and a dedicated auditorium. The 1971 additions were executed in a minimalist style, devoid of ornament and clad in white concrete aggregate panels. The formerly quadrangular museum became T-shaped in plan at this point and was renamed “The New Orleans Museum of Art.” In 1993, the most recent set of additions were completed, executed in a restrained postmodern style, and resulting in the creation of two rectangular courtyards about the east-west axis of the museum.

The museum interior contains two significant spaces. The skylit, covered central courtyard, just inside the main entry, is original to the 1911 structure and is executed in a highly detailed Greek Neoclassical style modified by decorative flourishes inspired by subtropical flora. A postmodern style atrium three stories high and dating to 1993 spans the museum’s east-west axis and provides dramatic, centralized access to every programmatic component of the building.

The New Orleans Museum of Art today boasts a collection of almost 40,000 objects, with notable strengths in French and American art, photography, glass, and African and Japanese works. The preferred venue in the region for important touring exhibitions, NOMA in its early years hosted a retrospective on Pablo Picasso (1940) organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and welcomed, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, a survey of five centuries of French painting (1953), populated exclusively by works on loan from the Louvre. The museum’s 1971 expansion enabled the hosting of still more elaborate exhibitions, including those displaying treasures from the tomb of King Tut (1977) and artifacts addressing the life and times of Alexander the Great (1982), with the former exhibition welcoming nearly one million visitors in the course of its short run. The completion of the 1993 expansion permitted additional notable exhibitions, including one on the paintings of Claude Monet (1995) and, in honor of New Orleans’ 300th birthday, an exhibition (2018) displaying together for the first time since the 18th century many of the works collected by the city’s namesake, Philippe II, Duc d’Orleans. The most recent physical enlargement of NOMA’s footprint occurred with the debut in 2003 and expansion in 2019 of the outdoor Besthoff Sculpture Garden, installed around several lagoons adjacent to the museum.

Hired in late 2019 to provide contingent fee-based historic preservation consulting and tax credit monetization services for a $7.1 million rehabilitation of the museum’s Stern Auditorium, east courtyard, and café, Crescent Growth Capital’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared a six-element Historic Preservation Certification Application over an eighteen-month period. The project reconfigured the non-historic auditorium to increase the space’s flexibility and technological capacity, with three of its four walls serving as the new location for Enrique Alferez’ “Spirit of Communication” (1967), salvaged from its original installation within the escalator lobby of the now-demolished Times-Picayune building in New Orleans. The non-historic east courtyard (1993) was enclosed, though extensive glazing preserves its light-filled character. Part 3 approval was received on May 17, 2021, with credit monetization accomplished by Crescent in September. Tax credit sale proceeds of approximately $1 million were subsequently delivered to NOMA.

St. Ann Square

June 21, 2021 by

Sometimes a setback paves the way for a successful project. Affordable housing developer Providence Community Housing had approached Crescent Growth Capital to determine whether historic tax credit equity could subsidize its planned 53-unit, mixed-income Sacred Heart at St. Bernard housing development. The adaptive re-use of the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church (1955) was to be teamed with new construction of an adjacent, four-story building. Unfortunately, the prescribed subdivision of the intact, historic church interior into multiple individual units could not, despite several creative design iterations suggested by Crescent, be squared with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation. Providence ultimately completed the project, incorporating the former church and including Crescent’s suggested design refinements, but without an HTC subsidy.

Pleased with Crescent Growth Capital’s historic preservation consulting process, its disappointing outcome in that instance notwithstanding, Providence Community Housing was receptive when Crescent reached out in late 2017, in the wake of Providence receiving an award of $7.5 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credits. While Providence had not contemplated attempting to incorporate historic tax credit equity into the capital stack for the project in question, a housing development of 59 units for low-income seniors to be called St. Ann Square, Crescent suggested that both federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits could indeed be secured.

St. Ann Square presented considerable complexity from an historic preservation consulting standpoint. The project would combine a rehabilitation of the historic St. Ann Church and School building (1924) and adjacent 19^th century structures – themselves the subject of a federal HPCA process which concluded successfully in 2002 – with the addition of two historic “shotgun” style dwellings sharing the square and the erection of a two-story, newly-constructed apartment building. The multiple historic buildings shared little to no functional relationship during their period of significance – all were contributing elements to the Esplanade Ridge National Register Historic District – which necessitated authoring six individual federal and state HPCAs.

Accordingly, Crescent’s in-house historic preservation specialist prepared and submitted no fewer than thirty-seven elements to six federal Historic Preservation Certification Applications over a three-and-a-half year period, also submitting Louisiana State HPCAs in conjunction with the federal application parts. Skillful navigation of the Secretary’s Standards was required, with particular work going into windows, exterior cladding, and the faithful conservation of remaining character-defining elements and intact interior spatial organization.

Part 3 approval for the final building was received on June 15, 2021, at which point some $4 million in federal and state historic tax credit equity had been generated to subsidize the completed $16.5 million St. Ann Square project.

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.

Historic Tax Credits

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