The City of Wilmington, North Carolina, hired the Development Finance Initiative (DFI) in 2013 to conduct a pre-development process for the Water Street Parking Deck. The parking deck is an aging public parking facility prominently located in the city’s historic downtown on the Cape Fear riverfront. … Read more

Earlier this month, a post on CED in NC provided an overview of the redevelopment of Victorian-era psychiatric facilities.  Many historic psychiatric institutions throughout the country have closed, leaving large, architecturally significant buildings on vast campuses behind. The redevelopment of th … Read more

Shuttered psychiatric facilities provide endless material for macabre imaginations. However, for creative communities and developers, these historic facilities also inspire ideas for uses like recreation, housing, healthcare, education, or retail. Many states built grand psychiatric facilities in th … Read more

North Carolina local governments have a new partner in their economic development efforts. Session Law 2014-18 authorizes the North Carolina Department of Commerce to enter into a contract with a nonprofit entity in order to carry out many of the Department’s economic development recruiting and mark … Read more

Imagine a county wondering what to do with its old courthouse that is sitting vacant in the middle of downtown.  Perhaps the county wants to use part of the building as the commissioners’ meeting room, but the rest of the courthouse would sit unused, literally gathering dust, because the county does … Read more

Despite the tepid economic recovery, many communities and regions in the U.S. are having some degree of success with their job creation efforts.  Inquiring minds probably would like to know what magic formula these places are using.  What exactly are they doing and how?  What factors account for the … Read more

The historic theater on Main Street sat empty for thirty years. Once the central gathering place and crown jewel of Main Street, the property collected cobwebs as town leaders waited for a private developer to come along with a plan to bring the building back into productive use. Eventually, public … Read more