Guest Commentary: The Opportunity Zone Firehose
Guest Commentary: The Opportunity Zone Firehose
The director of Drexel'southward Nowak Metro Finance Lab on how Trump'south tax cut might actually salvage American cities
Nov. 07, 2018
With election fever rightly seizing the land, I have spent the by several weeks visiting six separate cities — Albuquerque, Cleveland, Dayton, Madison, New Orleans and Winston-Salem. This whirlwind travel has given me a chance to bout dozens of Opportunity Zones and get an on the footing experience for market status, practitioner energy, investment possibilities and social challenges.
Here are a few observations, which reinforce a paper Evan Weiss and I recently co-authored that provided a roadmap for cities hoping to realize the full economical and social touch on of Opportunity Zones.
The Ability of Ballast Institutions: Every urban center I visited demonstrated the ability of anchor institutions like universities, hospitals and corporations to spur innovative (and potentially inclusive) growth through smart investment, co-location and intensified collaboration. Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem has been the driving force behind the Innovation Quarter at the periphery of downtown. The University of Dayton (and the Entrepreneurs Center) have committed to become the anchor tenants of the Arcade, the historic complex that forms the heart of Dayton's downtown. The Academy of New Mexico's role in Introduce ABQ, American Family Insurance's new Spark building in Madison, the cluster of bookish and medical institutions in New Orleans' Bio District and the remaking of Cleveland's Euclid Avenue as a HealthLine (linking Instance Western, the Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Country University) are signs of the new anchor-led, urban center-centered collaborative lodge.
These projects, and the thinking well-nigh how to restore industrial sites like Madison's closed Oscar Meyer plant, stir the blood and remind united states what we love about cities — their distinctive history, unequalled beauty, remarkable authenticity and powerful diversity.
The Power of Governance: As Jeremy Nowak and I observed in The New Localism, most U.S. cities lack 21st century institutions with the capacity and capital to drive smart, inclusive growth and development at calibration. Yet some of the cities we visited are experimenting with institutional models that could provide replicable lessons. In Winston-Salem, for example, Wake Wood Baptist Medical Center is the private driver backside an Innovation Quarter that is both remaking historic power plants, tobacco facilities and rails lines while innovating on new medical products. In New Orleans, by contrast, a state authorized Bio Commune armed with delegated powers from the legislature, is finding new energy in the cluster of new hospitals and the medical schools of LSU, Tulane and Xavier. Cleveland feels ripe for a new burst of institutional innovation, whether it's effectually the Opportunity Corridor (with its potential for a public asset corporation modeled after Hamburg's HafenCity) or around Midtown (with its potential for an Innovation District modeled later on St. Louis' Cortex Commune.)
The Power of Transformative Investments: A decade ago, Julie Wagner and I wrote a slice entitled "Transformative Investments: Remaking American Cities for a New Century". We were inspired at the time by the rising embrace of "cityness" with complex projects that literally remapped and re-centered cities, triggering new social and economical possibilities.
During my recent sojourn I saw first-mitt a number of transformative projects that are either underway or at an advanced stage of the cartoon board. Dayton's Mayor Nan Whaley introduced me to the Arcade project, a renovation of a plough of the 20th century consumer and cultural hub in the historic heart of the downtown that has remain shuttered for decades. Former Albuquerque Mayor RJ Berry took me on a Lord's day afternoon tour first of the new Albuquerque Rapid Transit (Art) corridor, then (with David Campbell, the city's planning manager), the incomparable Track Yard. And Andy Kopplin, the CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation and Leigh Ferguson of the Downtown Development District took me effectually the Spirit of Clemency District in New Orleans, boasting ane of the near striking Art Deco monuments in the state.
This is financial engineering of the positive kind, a production of creative capital stacks that ultimately makes the impossible possible.
My windshield tours also showed me the concrete banner of catalytic federal investments through the Hope VI program and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, resulting in neighborhoods of choice that are attractive to households with a range of incomes and a plethora of opportunities.
These projects, and the thinking most how to restore industrial sites similar Madison's closed Oscar Meyer constitute, stir the claret and remind us what we love about cities — their distinctive history, incomparable dazzler, remarkable authenticity and powerful variety. They are symbols of grandeur and ambition, of thinking large at the local level when so much of national and state discourse reduces usa to the pocket-size. They inspire us, lift united states of america, movement the states and hogtie us to practice "grand things" in the tradition of our communities.
At a more than prosaic level, these are complex, multi-layered deals that require persistence, passion, delivery to place and an almost messianic vision and sense of larger purpose. It is not surprising that urban visionaries similar Bill Streuver, Richard Baron and Pres Kabakoff are involved in some of these transactions. They go where sane people rarely tred. This is financial engineering science of the positive kind, a product of creative capital stacks that ultimately makes the incommunicable possible.
In sum, I take witnessed the incredible health and spirit of this land, sometimes animated and amplified by smart federal tools and innovative state activity. Merely imagine if cities and communities had consequent, respectful partners in Congress and united states.
Bruce Katz is the director of the new Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, created to assist cities design new institutions and mechanisms that harness public, private and civic majuscule for transformative investment. He is one of the featured speakers at The Denizen's Ideas Nosotros Should Steal Festival on Nov. 30th.
Photo via Bruce Katz 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-the-opportunity-zone-firehose/
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