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Partners Southeast has purchased a medical services building on North Boulevard for $2.53 million from Arthur Tolar’s company 4550 North Boulevard LLC.

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Originally published by Baton Rouge Business Report

The north Baton Rouge community anchored by the Ardendale urban village is among four national finalists up for a $30 million U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development grant.

On Feb. 20, HUD officials will visit the site—which includes the East Fairfield, Smiley Heights and Melrose East neighborhoods—to get a better understanding of Baton Rouge’s transformation plan for the community, which is being reimagined as an “urban creative village.”

“They’ll already see significant investment from the private sector,” says J. Daniels, director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority. “We want to highlight those different instances, like the Career and Technical Education Center and the Automotive Collision Training Center.”

The $30 million would go toward gap financing for housing, funding assistance for neighborhood organizations like 100 Black Men and the YWCA, and development of an early childhood center, Daniels says. Some money would also be used to create loan funds for businesses that relocate to the area.

It’s likely Baton Rouge, as one of just four finalists, will receive a grant: Congress allocated $145 million for the Fiscal Year 2018 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grants and those are maxed out at $30 million per community.

Baton Rouge was narrowed down from 32 applicants. Other finalists include the housing authorities and cities of Omaha, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; and Norfolk, Virginia.

EBRPHA, along with the City of Baton Rouge and the East Baton Rouge Redevelopment Authority, are working with more than 60 neighborhood, local, state and federal partners to restore vibrancy in the historically blighted area.

The $30 million grant would be leveraged to spur an estimated $335.5 million in further investment, Daniels says.

HUD will announce grant winners in March.

Originally published by U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD)

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has identified four applicants as finalists to compete for FY2018 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grants to transform public and/or other HUD-assisted housing, as well as the surrounding neighborhood.  The entities below, selected from a pool of 32 applicants, will compete for individual grants of up to $30 million.  HUD anticipates announcing awards in March 2019.

Finalists – Lead Applicant / Co-Applicant(s) (if applicable)

• City of Omaha, Nebraska / Omaha Housing Authority

• Housing Authority of East Baton Rouge / City of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

• Newport News Redevelopment and Housing Authority / City of Newport News, Virginia

• Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority / City of Norfolk, Virginia 

Next Steps for Finalists:

In the coming weeks, a HUD team will visit the targeted housing and neighborhoods to meet with the applicants and partners to get a clear understanding of their individual Transformation Plans.  The HUD teams will ensure the applicants are committed and capable of implementing the neighborhood transformation as described in their application.  Therefore, being selected as a finalist is not an indication of a grant award.

Site visits are part of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant application review process to determine which of the finalists are most competitive.  Opening the site visits to the public or revealing the location of the targeted housing or neighborhood at this stage is not permitted under the statute governing HUD’s process to award competitive grants.  Following the visits, HUD may request that applicants respond to technical clarification questions.

How Finalists Were Selected:

These finalists were ranked on how well their vision, capacity, and need addressed Choice Neighborhoods’ three core goals:

• Housing: Replace distressed public and assisted housing with high-quality mixed-income housing that is well-managed and responsive to the needs of the surrounding neighborhood;

• People: Improve outcomes of households living in the target housing related to employment and income, health, and children’s education; and

• Neighborhood: Create the conditions necessary for public and private reinvestment in distressed neighborhoods to offer the kinds of amenities and assets, including safety, good schools, and commercial activity, that are important to families’ choices about their community.

Finalists were determined based upon information submitted to HUD by the application deadline of September 17, 2018.  HUD has conducted a two-tier process for reviewing FY2018 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation applications: (1) application screening and (2) preliminary rating and ranking.  In the application screening stages, HUD screened each application to determine that it met the NOFA’s key eligibility criteria, did not contain technical deficiencies, and met all threshold criteria (listed in Section III.C).  Applications that passed the application screening stage moved to the rating and ranking stage.  The preliminary rating and ranking tier involves two stages of rating review.  A Stage 1 rating review was conducted in which HUD evaluated the applications based on the Capacity and Need rating factors.  Applications that scored sufficient points in the Stage 1 rating review moved to Stage 2 rating review, where HUD evaluated applications based on the Strategy (Neighborhood, Housing, and People) and Soundness of Approach rating factors.  The applicants that were selected as finalists met all of the NOFA’s eligibility criteria, demonstrated strong capacity, and have developed a transformation that addresses the three core goals of Choice Neighborhoods.

Applications Not Selected for Funding:

HUD has notified the 28 applications that were not selected for funding.  Such applications were either (1) void or ineligible submissions, (2) did not meet threshold criteria in Section III.C of the NOFA, or (3) did not score sufficient points to be selected as a finalist.

If an application did not meet all threshold criteria, HUD has provided a detailed letter to the Lead Applicant and Co-Applicant fully describing the threshold criteria and failure(s).  As the application was not rated, this letter constitutes the debriefing.  For applications that were rated (either only in Stage 1 or both Stage 1 and 2), HUD has provided the applicants with a copy of the score earned for each rating factor that was reviewed.  HUD will offer debriefings for these applications as soon as the competition concludes, beginning no later than April 2019.

Originally published by Baton Rouge Business Report

Four months into its funding search, officials hoping to transform the former site of the Earl K. Long Hospital are in the middle of securing partnerships with three prospective anchor tenants.

In September, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome and East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority Acting CEO J. Wesley Daniels—who, along with State Sen. Regina Barrow, are working on the redevelopment initiative—told Daily Report they were beginning a funding search that would take approximately 120 days.

But the trio hasn’t met since then. Instead, the EBRPHA and Partners Southeast have taken the lead on the project, which Daniels estimates could cost anywhere from $6 million to $9 million. The housing authority is acting as the transaction facilitator, while Partners Southeast is working on the financing.

The partners—which Daniels declines to name, but notes represent institutions of “education, economic development and health and wellness”—would eventually anchor the 15-acre site on Airline Highway.

“We’re still in discussions with them right now,” he says. “They all have different funding and grant cycles, so we’re making sure we’re cued up with those.”

As envisioned, the development would include a health center, day care center, educational center, job training facility, restaurants and housing, among other features.

He’s also been talking with different financial institutions, figuring out the best ways to leverage the area’s recent Opportunity Zone designation to attract investors. The development should also lend itself to New Market Tax Credit opportunities, he says.

As for Partners Southeast getting a developer to sign onto the project as a joint venture partner?

“That’s a secondary priority,” Daniels says. “Our main priority is getting these partners who will represent the anchor. We want to remain committed to the spirit of what the community has expressed.”