In this series, Bisnow highlights people and companies pushing the commercial real estate industry forward in myriad ways. Click here to read Q&As with all the innovators Bisnow has interviewed so far.
Officials from multifamily and student housing developer Jackson Dearborn Partners say they have found the key to quickly raising the equity needed to break ground on projects in federal opportunity zones. Instead of spending months dialing for dollars and tapping into established networks of institutional investors and family offices, the company uses CrowdStreet, an online commercial real estate investing platform.
Designed to steer $100B a year into a vast stretch of areas that cities and state governments consider underserved, the opportunity zone program was created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Governors designated thousands of low- to moderate-income census tracts, along with a handful of more affluent tracts, as opportunity zones, and investors who fund projects