For the third time in five years, the
Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) has been awarded a multimillion-dollar allocation in New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) from the U.S Treasury Department’s
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund.
PIDC received a total of $110 million in NMTC allocations in 2009 and 2012; the latest award will add an extra $38 million to the organization’s coffers.
Created by Congress in late 2000, the goal of the NMTC program is to bring private investment dollars to low-income and distressed neighborhoods by providing developers with federal tax credits. The application process is competitive -- only 87 organizations received allocations from the most recent round, which totaled $3.5 billion in NMTC awards.
Ultimately, the hope is that the allocations will stimulate a level of private investment even greater than the initial credit. Here in Philadelphia, that goal is being met. A total of $239 million in private sector investment resulted from the $110 million previously allocated via PIDC. And that’s to say nothing of the 950 jobs created thanks to those projects.
The mixed-use
Oxford Mills apartment-and-office facility in Fishtown, for instance -- which was the subject of a 2013
New York Times feature -- was a recipient of PIDC’s previous allocations. So too was the
NewCourtland LIFE Center, a senior health and wellness center that sits on a long-vacant former brownfield site.
As for what will come of PIDC’s 2013 award, Marketing and Communications Director Jessica Calter says it’s a bit too early to tell.
"We do have a pipeline of projects to utilize our $38 million allocation," she says. "But at this point I can’t talk about any specifics."
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jessica Calter, PIDC