Chef Brown is one of the many Phoenix-area small business owners and residents supported by this group.

“We have half a dozen community partners that stretch from Promise AZ, a public advocate for immigrants to Arizona State University,” says RDF COO Mark Van Brunt. “This doesn’t work with outsiders coming in. We have trusted partners and some amazing results in terms of helping families at risk move forward.”

But they aren’t just investing funds in buildings and new real-estate projects. The group is using the initial investment to stabilize neighborhood economies through access to low-income housing, education, health care and financial services. Since 2014 they have leveraged the initial investment, bringing Adelante Phoenix! projects a total of $139 million in additional funding — an extraordinary leverage ratio of 24.7, according the Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

According to RDF, investments range from 222 new units of transit-oriented affordable housing along the Tempe-Mesa light rail to low-income Benedictine University student housing in Mesa to personal and small business loans, including DACA and DREAMER student loans, and even expanded charter school opportunities. Future plans include a new cultural epicenter along the forthcoming light rail extension into the often overlooked South Phoenix community.

“We have half a dozen community partners that stretch from Promise AZ, a public advocate for immigrants, to Arizona State University,” says RDF COO Mark Van Brunt. “This doesn't work with outsiders coming in. We have trusted partners and some amazing results in terms of helping families at risk move forward.”

A New "Alma" for South Pheonix

• Plaza De Las Culturas
• Tempe-Mesa Affordale Housing
• Espiritu Academy
• MariSol Credit Union

Adelante Phoenix! is investing in communities across Maricopa County, including Tempe, Mesa and South and Downtown Phoenix.

• 

Running concurrent initiatives in Mesa, Tempe and South Phoenix was a complicated feat, but the outcomes have been transformative. It enabled the public bodies in those cities to look at their communities from a different perspective giving residents hope, helping trigger the early expansion of the light rail into South Phoenix, where 28.5 percent of the population lives in poverty. This was an encouraging surprise to many as the original vision didn’t have the the light rail going south until 2034, but it is now planned to open in 2023.

Backed by a $2.5 million investment from JPMorgan Chase and an additional $1.2 million from RDF, the South Phoenix community rallied around the dream project of RDF’s CEO, Tommy Espinoza: La Plaza De Las Culturas. The “Plaza” project gave hope to the community and became an anchor that the City of Phoenix looked to when deciding on an early rail expansion southward. It is also the reason the U.S. Department of Transportation picked Phoenix as one of seven cities to receive a $1.6 million Ladders of Opportunity Transportation Empowerment grant, an initiative to improve communities through transit.

The Plaza is part of a broader effort to revitalize South Phoenix and its vision is bold: it is meant to be the “new Alma” (soul) of Phoenix, a place imbued with a respect for family, spirituality and human dignity. Community outreach has been a major focus of the early stages of the development and the resulting plan reflects that: Planned for Plaza de las Culturas’ center is an educational, cultural complex enveloped by small business, mixed-use housing and high performing schools, including a branch campus of Arizona State University, Robotic Technical College and a charter high school.

Construction will take shape soon on what had been an 80-acre abandoned gravel pit where, despite the development opportunities presented by the planned light rail extension, interest in investment was minimal at best.

$50,000 from JPMorgan Chase’s investment also helped expand one of the top charter high schools in South Phoenix, the Espiritu Academy, through the purchase of a YMCA that was being closed down. The school is fully utilized and now serves over 400 moderate- and low-income students.

Another revitalization strategy for the greater Phoenix area has been to increase the credit available to community residents and to owners of small businesses, many of which are located along the light-rail corridor.

As the light rail expands into South Phoenix over the next few years, Raza Development Fund, backed by JPMorgan Chase and other key investors, will create a cultural epicenter in South Phoenix called “Plaza De Las Culturas.” Serving as the gateway to South Phoenix, the 85-acre Plaza will boast new housing, office and retail space, a new branch campus of Arizona State University, a robotic technical college and a charter high school. The development team hopes to attract an anchor high-tech company that will add to the educational and job creation opportunities for the surrounding community.

Making even a micro of difference

The MariSol Federal Credit Union, located in the heart of downtown Phoenix, has been providing micro loans to small businesses and introducing new financial products through the Adelante Phoenix! investments. Together with Trellis, a mortgage counseling partner, MariSol is now also piloting the use of individual taxpayer identification instead of social security numbers to provide mortgages to non-citizen immigrants. This builds on JPMorgan Chase’s Small Business Forward strategy of increasing minority-owned business’ access to capital, helping to lay the foundation for more widespread prosperity.

MariSol’s small business loans may be minimal in dollar amount but not in impact. They have paid out over $280,000 in microbusiness loans, averaging about $10,000 per loan. Were it not for their first loan, many of the recipients would not have been able to grow their business and create new jobs. One such loan financed Chef Michael Brown’s food truck wrap. Another MariSol loan allowed a woman to purchase a van so she could expand her cleaning business; still another supported Jason Wasser of XO Confections, who creates distinctive chocolates using unusual ingredients like balsamic vinegar, bourbon and pistachios.

All totaled, Adelante Phoenix! has issued $816,000 in small business loans and $8.2 million in first time homebuyer and rehab loans, signature immigration loans, used vehicle loans, payday loan alternatives and student financing. “We make loans to people of modest means,” says Marisol CEO Robin Romano. “We try not to define anyone by their credit score.”

RDF partnered with MariSol because Tom Espinoza and his team knew that providing small business loans and financial assistance for families would be crucial in revitalizing Maricopa County’s poorer communities.

Communities are complex organisms and it’s hard to put a finger on what precisely determines their success. Capital matters, of course, but capital alone does not a community make.

“It’s been wonderful working with Robin,” says van Brunt. “We meet quarterly to see what we can do to meet the needs of the community, from getting mortgages within a state where that had been largely impossible, as you need two forms of citizenship verification, to scholarships and loans to Dreamer students through the credit union. We’ve been able to go across the spectrum of economic development activity and have really reached the populations we want to serve.”

Communities are complex organisms and it’s hard to put a finger on what precisely determines their success. Capital matters, of course, but capital alone does not a community make.

Investments like these really inspired people to believe there was hope in their communities, explains Espinoza, “They saw light rail come in, they even saw the governor’s push for additional capital for education. The governor will tell you it was a close call to provide capital in elementary schools, but the community was better informed and were motivated to come out and vote. “

Espinoza might be a few years from the opening of the Plaza, but in the meantime, Chef Michael Brown will be downtown every Friday serving his bites of Cajun-Tex-Mex fusion.

Allison Arieff is a POLITICO Focus contributing writer covering urban infrastructure and revitalization.