Goldman Sachs Doubles Projects In Opportunity Zones

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(Bloomberg) Few banks have been as aggressive as Goldman Sachs Group in pursuing new tax breaks available to investors in low-income areas designated as Opportunity Zones. On Tuesday, an executive at the firm suggested that its portfolio of projects eligible for the incentives has doubled since last summer.

Margaret Anadu, head of Goldman’s Urban Investment Group, said on stage at a Forbes summit that her firm has structured eight deals to take advantage of the incentives. That’s twice the number it said it had backed by last August.

The investments are in states including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland, she said later on the sidelines of the event. Another, in Illinois, is in the works.

Goldman’s Urban Investment Group has been investing in distressed communities for almost two decades. The Opportunity Zone incentives were tucked into President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul. Since then, a fierce debate has broken out about whether the perks will end up being a handout to the wealthy or mainly benefit areas already on the upswing. Part of that perception has been stoked by early projects in the zones, including boutique hotels and luxury housing that developers were going to build anyway.

Anadu predicted that investors would start to focus on smaller, more community-minded projects once they work through that initial wave of activity. “We just need to get through it,” she said broadly of investment in the zones.

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