And NMTCs can help fund any non-residential project, Jacobs adds. Jacobs has done deals that created hotels, health clinics, headquarters buildings, steel plants, hospitals, retail strip centers and factories.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, in 2008 developer Tim Dixon created Milwaukee's Iron Horse Hotel by renovating a century-old warehouse building near the Harley-Davidson Museum, and used both historic tax credits and New Market Tax Credits to help finance the project. “That essentially made that neighborhood,” Jacobs says.

One of his highest-profile deals was for the high-tech Method soap factory in the historic Pullman district on Chicago's South Side. Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives finished the “green” factory in 2015, and financed it with NMTCs, along with a variety of other state and city incentives. “Their resources were not unlimited,” he says, “and they needed to fill a hole in their capital stack.”

“It's a fabulous program,” he adds. The investment brought in by tax credits can frequently tip the balance toward getting a new development off the ground, or allowing the construction of a somewhat larger project. “Developers should always explore it whenever they do a project, and find out whether any incentives are available.”

But like everything else that concerns the federal government, there is at least some uncertainty due to the change in administrations and the possibility of major tax reform. Still, Jacobs says the program has won extensions with support from both parties, and legislation has been proposed to make NMTC permanent. “Everyone is cautiously optimistic that this program has bipartisan support.”

CHICAGO—Last November, the US Treasury Dept. allocated $7 billion in New Markets Tax Credits, by far the largest amount ever given out since the program, which promotes business and real estate investment in low-income and distressed communities, began in 2000. But experts say many businesses that would benefit from participating in the program never even look into it, partly because they can't see themselves investing in a distressed community.

“You would be surprised at what kind of projects qualify,” Darryl Jacobs of Ginsberg Jacobs LLC, tells GlobeSt.com. He is one of the country's leading NMTC experts, with a portfolio of projects spanning multiple markets and sectors, and says many areas considered the hottest markets in Chicago meet the program's requirements. “Virtually every industrial area in Chicago qualifies, and it's a pity some people don't know it's available to them.”

The program provides a tax credit that equals 39%, paid out over seven years, of the amount invested in a certified Community Development Entity, which in turn creates a project in what the government considers a low-income community. But that means a census tract that either has a poverty rate of at least 20%, or, if it's an urban tract, the median family income does not exceed 80% of the greater of statewide MFI or the metropolitan area MFI.

“The whole Fulton Market area, which is now completely gentrified, still qualifies,” he says. And that neighborhood, the new home of Google, is hardly the only hot location that the program could potentially cover. Some point to Goose Island as a new trendy office location, but it also had a poverty rate of 37%, census data show. In fact, most of the CBD is surrounded by neighborhoods that qualify for the program.

And NMTCs can help fund any non-residential project, Jacobs adds. Jacobs has done deals that created hotels, health clinics, headquarters buildings, steel plants, hospitals, retail strip centers and factories.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, in 2008 developer Tim Dixon created Milwaukee's Iron Horse Hotel by renovating a century-old warehouse building near the Harley-Davidson Museum, and used both historic tax credits and New Market Tax Credits to help finance the project. “That essentially made that neighborhood,” Jacobs says.

One of his highest-profile deals was for the high-tech Method soap factory in the historic Pullman district on Chicago's South Side. Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives finished the “green” factory in 2015, and financed it with NMTCs, along with a variety of other state and city incentives. “Their resources were not unlimited,” he says, “and they needed to fill a hole in their capital stack.”

“It's a fabulous program,” he adds. The investment brought in by tax credits can frequently tip the balance toward getting a new development off the ground, or allowing the construction of a somewhat larger project. “Developers should always explore it whenever they do a project, and find out whether any incentives are available.”

But like everything else that concerns the federal government, there is at least some uncertainty due to the change in administrations and the possibility of major tax reform. Still, Jacobs says the program has won extensions with support from both parties, and legislation has been proposed to make NMTC permanent. “Everyone is cautiously optimistic that this program has bipartisan support.”