The county-supervised trust, which oversees a federal-backed noncontiguous empowerment zone in Miami-Dade County, is near to finalizing negotiations with an unnamed financial institution to create a revolving loan program for the newly created EZ Fund Association Inc., Bryan K. Finnie, the trust's president and chief executive officer, tells GlobeSt.com.
"The trend for banks and financial institutions is to make investments in urban areas via the for-profit subsidiary route," Finnie says. "It allows us to compete aggressively in the nonprofit marketplace as well as the for-profit marketplace."
Although just a year old, the empowerment trust has amassed a portfolio of about $122 million in assets. It has leveraged about $41 million in federal, state and county tax dollars with $81 million in private financing.
"We're using our resources, our bonding capacity, for equity investments and transactions," Finnie says.
To kick off the new venture, the trust's board of directors is giving the new venture management control over the development of the Poinciana Industrial Center, 30 acres of undeveloped public land at Northwest 79th Street and Northwest 23rd Avenue.
The industrial site is infrastructure-ready, and the property reportedly meets all environmental thresholds as a rehabilitated Brownfields site.
"We'll be naming the developer of the property within the next 30 to 60 days," Finnie says.
Poinciana, however, is just the first step in a strategy to create affordable development opportunities and new jobs in some of Miami-Dade's most needy communities. The trust and the new subsidiary service an area that covers parts of Allapattah, Florida City, Homestead, Liberty City, Little Havana, Melrose, Overtown, Wynwood, areas around Miami International Airport and portions of the Miami Central Business District and the Port of Miami.
The trust hasn't released the name of the subsidiary's new board of directors, though Finnie will serve as its president and CEO. Board members will include a mixture of community members and private bankers.
"We are an organization that makes strategic investments in our neighborhoods," Finnie says. "We always try to structure these investments whereby people indigenous to the communities will participate in our economic growth strategies. We're clearly taking a business approach to this."
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