icon Blueprint for December

New Markets in a New Marketplace

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3 min read

Hey, all you folks out there oozing over OZones: remember New Markets Tax Credits? You know, the ones that over the 18 years since the program’s inception have supported the development of health centers, schools, early learning centers, food markets, tech plants, innovation centers and a lot of other improvements to distressed communities – impactful additions that trigger change and further creative development. Jeez, with all the conversations and presentations, tongue-licking and tax-delaying on Opportunity Zones, NMTCs must feel like the boyfriend you used to have, or Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” or Carmelo Anthony. At one time everyone wanted me. But now?

Okay, NMTC. We still want you to feel needed and appreciated. In fact, this is our annual issue devoted to you and we’re not going to ditch you just because there’s a new kid on the block. Instead, we’re going to dance with the one that brung us. The market you’re in is changing – and for the better. America has always been obsessed with the new. So Opportunity Zones are going to be the desired prom date for a while. But the new eventually becomes less new. And so we decided to look at some of the good work you, dearest NMTC, continue to do (despite your age), while at the same time continuing to learn about the potential of that new OZ kid in the neighborhood, and also surmise about how the two of you might complement each other.

In the following pages, you will find three inspiring stories about the evolution of projects that are providing significant boosts to their communities (as well as our national community) and that most likely would not have seen the light of day without NMTCs. Mark Fogarty looks at the extensive services offered at the Salvation Army Freedom Center in Chicago, Scott Beyer visits the versatile Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh and Mark Olshaker talks with the Mosaic Company team about their re-imagining of the Golaski Labs in Philadelphia, a project that unites NMTCs with Opportunity Funds – and also includes crowd funding.

We are always interested in where and how innovative ideas originated and so we are honored this month to have an interview with one of the trio of folks who originally conceived the Opportunity Zone program and brought it to the Senators (Cory Booker and Tim Scott) who sponsored the bill. In this month’s Talking Heads, Darryl Hicks talks with Steve Glickman now of Develop, LLC, who provides the clearest view I have heard yet about the motivation and goals for the program.

Now that a first pass of OZ regulations have been offered by the IRS, in our monthly Land of OZ feature, attorneys Jerome Breed and Carenia Burlingame of Miles & Stockbridge speculate on how this program might interact with existing tax credit programs. And, of course, we could not possibly close out our forum on the new marketplace without input from our guru, David A. Smith, on the roles that will be played going forward by both the Opportunity Zone and New Markets Tax Credits programs.

Perhaps our Amrican infatuation with the new is because it kindles our imaginations about possibilities in the future that we never could have conceived of before. It transports us into a whole new world. Sit back and just imagine.

Happy holidays,
Marty Bell, Editor