A previous blog post discussed the role of Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs, in North Carolina. CDFIs are typically smaller financial institutions that engage in mission-driven lending intended to expand access to capital in low-wealth and underserved communities in order to fo … Read more

State and local governments are getting smarter about how they use financial and tax incentives to support economic development. As incentive deals face greater scrutiny, public officials can take a number of steps to ensure that they are: 1) getting the best returns on the investment of public doll … Read more

In the early 1900s, an estimated 15 million acres of agricultural land in the U.S. was owned by African Americans. Just a fraction of that land – about 1.5 million acres – is still black-owned and used for agriculture today. Each year, about 30,000 more acres are lost, driven primarily by a lack of … Read more

$12 million in one hour: That’s not a report of the ticket sales for the Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s Greensboro show last week. That is how much the City of Denver raised directly from the citizens of Colorado for the final phase of its Better Denver capital campaign. This past August, the Ci … Read more

Universities can help promote economic development in a variety of ways. As Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter notes in an article, universities contribute to regional competitiveness by supporting key industry clusters. According to Porter, universities themselves are part of a growin … Read more

Greentown, USA wants to join some of its large older city peers such as Washington and Philadelphia that are rebranding themselves as Green Environmental Cities. Greentown wants to become the greenest small town in the country and would like to encourage property owners across their town to plant mo … Read more

A previous CED blog post analyzed securities law as it relates to crowdfunding, in which businesses use mass marketing and web-based platforms to raise investment capital from many investors in small amounts, with each investor becoming a share owner in the business. Another post described a differe … Read more

Securities laws rarely provide the introductory hook writers dream about, but they do represent a substantial challenge that many real estate developers must address. Over the last two years, the United States Congress and North Carolina State House each proposed crowdfunding legislation that lessen … Read more

Foreign business attraction is in the news this week, with North Carolina Department of Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker returning from a recruitment trip to Japan aimed at bringing an automaker or other manufacturer to build a new plant in North Carolina. As part of this effort, the state has alrea … Read more

The tax status of real or personal property owned or used by charitable non-profit organizations can get complicated when there are multiple private and public entities involved with the property.  Is property exempt if is owned by a non-profit organization and leased to other non-profits? What if i … Read more