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Chase Partners with TRF to Finance Charter Schools
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This spring JPMorgan Chase announced a $325 million initiative to provide financing to high-performing charter schools. As part of this initiative, Chase is partnering with TRF to create a New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing pool. This commitment by Chase to the growth of charter schools expands TRF’s ability to finance strong schools, even in today’s challenging credit environment. Loans are available to finance real estate projects for high-performing, established charter schools that are acquiring, renovating or expanding their facilities. Charter schools that are replicating or expanding to additional locations are also eligible for financing. Facility projects must be NMTC eligible. To date, TRF has provided $184 million in financing to 64 schools serving over 30,000 students, with the majority of these students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.
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Last year, TRF financed a new facility for the Learning Communities Charter School.The NMTC transaction included a leverage loan and equity investment from Chase. With the new NMTC pool, TRF and Chase will be financing more high quality schools like Learning Communities.
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TRF Finances New Supermarket-Anchored Retail Plaza
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TRF recently provided $10.3 million in New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing to a supermarket-anchored retail plaza located in a severely distressed neighborhood in Darby Borough, Pennsylvania. Known as the Darby Town Center, the shopping plaza will feature eight leasable commercial retail spaces including a 17,000 square foot Save-A-Lot anchor supermarket. The Save-A-Lot grocery store is expected to provide savings of up to 40% compared to conventional grocery stores and includes a full selection of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables in addition to meat, fish and bakery items. The Save-A-Lot will bring 75 jobs, drawing many employees from the local community, where the current unemployment rate is more than 1.5 times the national average. In addition to the supermarket, project will also bring another 110 retail jobs and 150 construction jobs. US Bank is the NMTC equity investor and Beneficial Bank is the leverage lender for this project. To date, TRF has provided over $95 million in financing to 95 fresh food access projects in underserved neighborhoods. TRF has also successfully deployed more than $189 million in NMTC financing to major projects in low-income communities.
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Identifying Areas with Need for Supermarkets
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As TRF has continued to work on improving access to supermarkets in underserved communities, we have devoted significant resources to understanding access to healthy, fresh foods, particularly in low-income areas. TRF's Low Access Grocery Areas (LAA) analyses is designed to identify areas where access to full service supermarkets is limited. While many current efforts to identify underserved areas are based primarily on distances, TRF’s methodology also takes into account an area's population density and car ownership rate - two factors that significantly influence how far households can be expected to travel to shop for food. TRF has applied this methodology to the entire U.S., which has provided results with two distinct benefits: 1) understand the problem at a macro level (national, state, city) and 2) target solutions at the community level. In addition to identifying LAAs, TRF has also examined the demand for groceries that is unmet by the local area stores. These analyses, when combined with a study of the local grocery market structure and share, can help guide both investors and potential supermarket operators on the most viable markets for supermarkets. To learn more about TRF's work in this area, email PolicySolutions@TRFund.com.
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Map of Philadelphia's Access Scores. Click to enlarge map.
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TRF Celebrates 25 Years and $1 Billion in Community Investment
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Last month, more than 250 friends and supporters joined TRF to mark two important milestones at an event held in North Philadelphia, at two TRF-financed venues. The first part of the event was TRF’s 5th Lecture on Economic Markets and Public Purpose, featuring former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros. The lecture took place at the Pearl Theater, part of a retail center known as Avenue North that TRF financed. TRF also used the opportunity to honor long-time Philadelphia home builder, Lee Casper, with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Guests then celebrated with TRF across the street on the Roofdeck of The Fresh Grocer at Progress Plaza, another TRF investment. TRF’s financing helped renovate Progress Plaza, the nation’s oldest African-American shopping center, and bring the anchor supermarket to the retail center, ending a decade-long vacancy.
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At 85, Casper is an active volunteer with TRF, serving on TRF’s Board of Directors and on its Real Estate Loan Committee. Casper has volunteered with TRF for two decades, sharing his expertise on building quality homes with TRF’s housing lending and development teams. Click to view a video of the award presentation. |
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PolicyMap Widgets Take Off |
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Among PolicyMap's many tools is its widget - which allows others to incorporate customizable instances of interactive PolicyMap maps on their website. These widgets come with dynamic features such as the ability to zoom into or pan across a map, click on an area to view underlying data or toggle between additional data layers and points of data. Foreclosure-Response.org, an online guide to foreclosure prevention and neighborhood stabilization, has recently begun offering such widgets on its site to help visualize some of the important data the site provides. Using PolicyMap, the site offers interactive maps on LISC's foreclosure needs scores, HMDA high-cost purchase loan data, and HMDA market conditions data. Foreclosure-Response.org is a partnership of the Center for Housing Policy, KnowledgePlex, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and the Urban Institute. Learn more about getting your own PolicyMap widget and about some of the free widgets currently available.
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A map of HMDA high cost purchase loan data. When no local data on foreclosures are available, high-cost home purchase loans can be an indicator for the concentration of foreclosures. The darker areas indicate places with the highest concentrations of high cost loans. Click to view the widget.
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TRF CEO in the Spotlight
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TRF's president and CEO, Jeremy Nowak was invited to discuss economic and community development issues with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Reinventing Older Communities conference in May. Mr. Nowak was recently named deputy chairman of the Philadelphia Fed. Watch the video of the discussion. Mr. Nowak's keynote address at the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF)'s 8th Annual Forum received a standing ovation. He focused on the challenges and opportunities that may be ahead for sustainable agriculture and food systems funders and practitioners.
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