Incentives

Sub Categories: Incentives

Advancing Places: HUD Financing Opportunities

HUD’s Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program provides Community Development Block Grant recipients with the ability to leverage their annual grant allocation to access low-cost, flexible financing for economic development, housing, public facility and infrastructure projects. Organizations can use these funds to support central business districts, retail/office manufacturing, small business financing, mixed-use properties and business retention as a few examples

Advancing Places: How To Fight Blight

Learn how every downtown faces the challenge of vacant and blighted commercial buildings. These problems often appear intractable and frankly beyond the reach of an urban place management organization. Learn how two cities decided to step up and tackle this problem head-on with a data-driven approach using both carrots (incentive outreach) and sticks (litigation). Hear about what worked well and what didn’t.

Advancing Places: Real Estate Tools and Incentives for Investment and Attraction

For professionals in urban place management and economic development, there is a need to understand the different types of real estate tools and incentives to attract investment and businesses to your district. This session will outline the basics of tax increment financing (TIF), rebates, historic tax credits, new market tax credits, opportunity zones and various type of grants.

Advancing Places: Economic Development Foundations

Successful economic development approaches can sustain a healthy, diverse and prosperous district economy. This session will explore major trends in economic development and see which approaches local leaders and officials are utilizing in their organizations. Panelists will explore the various stages of the economic development process and explore the myriad of practices associated with successful district economies. Regardless of your experience, walk away with an updated toolbox of financing tools and economic programs to strengthen your district through development agreements, tax credit programs, revolving loan programs and redevelopment initiatives.

Public-Private Land Acquisition Strategies

Land acquisition costs often make or break residential development projects. Therefore, creative strategies that combine private and public funds to acquire targeted properties can help achieve a community’s redevelopment goals, while adding critical housing stock. Oftentimes, urban place management organizations have a unique position that can connect landowners, developers and agencies with access to funding to make these projects work.

Economic Development 101 for Downtown Organizations

A presentation on the fundamentals of downtown economic development, its importance, and the difficulties a downtown organization might face in planning for economic development. This presentation is meant for districts looking to get started with economic development programs.

Fanshawe College Downtown Campus

In 2007, negotiations began between the City of London, Ontario and Fanshawe College to offer a significant amount of financial incentive to purchase and retrofit heritage buildings in the core. Fanshawe College agreed to bring 1,000 students into the downtown and phase one resulted in a retrofitted building on Main Street. The college also purchased a second building, but lacked funding to complete the move. The BIA stepped in to fundraise on their behalf and meet the university halfway.

Downtown Albany Residential Development Initiative

The City of Albany began the Downtown Residential Development Initiative in 2002 with the purpose of increasing mixed-use development and adding residential units in its downtown. This was a strategic recommendation of the City of Albany’s economic development strategy “Capitalize Albany” first released in 1996. The strategy identified downtown diversification as a critical element of the City’s overall economic health and revitalization.

Top Issues Council: How We Do Economic Development

Downtowns, as areas of rapid growth, have become key tools in the economic development arsenal. They have created the places where entrepreneurs and businesses want to work. This document chronicles and reports on the intersection of downtown management and economic development. Today, economic development has become a staple program of downtown organizations, and the variety of approaches to downtown economic development is immense, reflecting differences in downtowns and their communities.

Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Advisory Panel: Strategy for Housing Growth

IDA’s Advisory Panels are a time-tested way to explore new ideas, solve difficult problems, and rally the board, staff and community around priority projects or topics. This panel was asked to identify the challenges and obstacles for building new housing in downtown, as well as identify resources and tools available for creating new housing. The report details the panel’s findings and recommendations.

How We Do Economic Development: Best Practices and Trends from IDA’s Ecnonomic Development Top Issue Council

IDA’s Economic Development Top Issues Council has been working throughout 2018 to compile research on how downtown organizations engage and practice economic development. See how your downtown stacks up. Learn about cutting edge programs and policies that downtown organizations are using to advance their economic development agendas. Find out about the top trends and issues facing downtowns in the area of economic development.

The Economic and Cultural Impact of Downtown University and College Campuses

Are you maximizing the potential of your downtown’s town/gown relationship? Across North America, downtowns and higher education are forging partnerships by embedding classrooms and campuses in the downtown core, producing an enhanced college experience for students and increased economic vitality for downtowns. This webinar’s presenters share their experiences with their own town/gown relationships.