Volume 3, Issue 2

The National Trust Community Partners Program

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's Community Partners (CP) program assists preservation organizations, local governments, developers, and community development corporations in revitalizing historic properties and communities. Its services include debt and equity financing, technical assistance, and real estate consulting services. CP also undertakes public policy initiatives to improve historic preservation's usefulness as a community development tool.

CP's work is accomplished through a number of interrelated programs including the Community Partners Network, Inner-City Ventures Fund, Heritage Property Services, and Bank of America Historic Tax Credit Fund.

Community Partners Network is a partnership between CP and 15 local organizations working in low-income historic neighborhoods. These partnerships are part of a national demonstration of CP's preservation-based community development model. This model integrates historic preservation tools with traditional community development planning to create a grassroots, development-friendly approach to historic preservation. CP provides its Network partners with a variety of services including organizational development and program design support to build real estate development capacity. For example, CP worked closely with Macon Heritage Foundation to design homeownership programs in the Huguenin Heights and Tatnall Square historic communities. Macon Heritage uses a $450,000 line of credit provided by CP to acquire and stabilize vacant properties.

National Trust Loan Funds offers loans, lines of credit, and guaranties for historic rehabilitation projects through two revolving funds, the Inner-City Ventures Fund and the National Preservation Loan Fund. The Inner-City Ventures Fund is used exclusively to finance affordable housing and economic development projects that serve the needs of low-income households and neighborhoods. The Thurgood Marshall Center, in Washington, DC's historic African-American community of Shaw, utilized a $250,000 loan as part of its permanent financing to rehabilitate the nation's first black YMCA as social service agency office space, a community center, and a heritage museum.

Heritage Property Services (HPS) is a historic real estate consulting service specializing in the syndication of state and federal tax credits for historic property rehabilitation. HPS provides for-profit, nonprofit, and local government developers of historic properties with the consulting assistance and equity capital they need to complete financial packages for projects that meet local economic development and community revitalization needs. Southern Dallas Development Corporation used HPS's services to plan the renovation of Jefferson Towers, a historic eight-story commercial office building in the Latino community of Oak Cliff.

Bank of America Historic Tax Credit Fund is a unique partnership with Bank of America that invests in projects eligible for the federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits. The fund is managed by the National Trust Community Investment Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary of the National Trust. The fund is unique in that it provides equity to developers of smaller historic tax credit projects that qualify for as little as $500,000 in historic tax credit equity. The fund's first investment was for approximately $1 million in the Dalton Building in Rock Hill, SC, a mixed-use housing and office property that had been a blighting influence on the town's Main Street.