In the past year, activity around local food systems increased dramatically. Government has been involved in supporting food systems for decades, but primarily through programs adopted at the federal level to both promote food production and protect the health of consumers. But having government wor … Read more

“Remote work is here to stay,” says a 2022 Forbes article. Research by McKinsey & Company released in June 2022 reveals that 58 percent of Americans reported having the opportunity to work from home “at least one day a week,” and 35 percent had the option to work from home “five days a week.” Ac … Read more

Income inequality is not a new issue for CED professionals. In November 2011, the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco devoted an issue of its publication, Community Investments,to how income inequality was impacting community development. A Federal Reserve Board governor is quoted in the report, … 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

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

Summer 2014 saw increased attention paid to the issue of housing affordability in America with reports by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the New York Times highlighting the squeeze low and middle income households face from ever-incr … Read more

In response to pressure from the state’s new data centers, Duke Energy recently filed a pilot program with the North Carolina Utilities Commission requesting approval to directly sell renewable energy to “new” industrial customers in the state. This pilot program seems directly targeted to the new d … Read more

Mezzanine financing, or mezz debt, can play a critical role in the funding of a community economic development project and has other advantages discussed in this post, but what exactly is it, and how does it work? Financing the renovation of historic buildings is far more complicated than new constr … Read more

Over the last fifteen years, North Carolina has used hefty incentive packages to get several high profile corporate and industrial facilities to locate in the state.  The projects include many prominent companies such as FedEx, Dell, Google, and Apple.  I discuss the evolution of incentives in North … Read more

Municipal water systems across the state serve a wide range of customers. In the industry, retail water customers are typically classified as residential and non-residential –  the bulk of which are referred to as CII (commercial, institutional, industrial) customers. Each year, the UNC School of Go … Read more