SCORE Receives $50 Million New Markets Tax Credit Award for 9th Award

Southside Community Optimal Redevelopment Enterprise (SCORE) is thrilled to announce it has been awarded $50 million in New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) allocation from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund. This is SCORE’s ninth federal NMTC allocation award, bringing its total to $370 million. With SCORE’s previous eight awards, it has funded 55 businesses in impoverished communities, creating and retaining over 4,350 permanent jobs through a combination of industrial, healthcare, charter school, and grocery store investments. Past awards have supported projects such as mHUB in Chicago, Cristo Rey in Indianapolis, and Esperanza Brighton Park Campus in Chicago.

SCORE is a subsidiary of McCaffery Interests, Inc., a real estate development company with the mission to revitalize urban communities and foster sustainable growth. SCORE’s mission to provide capital to industrial, community facility (health and education), and grocery projects in highly distressed low-income areas marked by industrial flight in Illinois and Indiana. McCaffery Interests has invested more than $520 million and facilitated over $1 billion in urban revitalization projects with over 90% being in disadvantaged communities.

McCaffery also helps to oversee and operate the nonprofit emerging CDFI JOBS Fund. The JOBS Fund provides flexible loans and grants for training, educational programming, and other community benefit programs designed to support low-income areas throughout Illinois and Indiana.

The NMTC Program was established in 2001 to bring private investment into low-income communities by permitting investors to receive a tax credit against their federal income tax in exchange for making investments in projects in economically distressed communities. The credit totals 39 percent of the original investment amount and is claimed over seven years. Since the program’s inception, the NMTC program has helped support more than $66.6 billion in investment in low-income communities across the United States.

“The CDFI Fund’s award will provide us with the ability to finance projects that our highly distressed urban core neighborhoods so desperately need. SCORE will bring this vital resource to severely distressed communities so that they can build a future of sustainable economic growth by investing in projects that meet the community’s vision, inspire hope, and have the capacity to create lasting change,” said Daniel McCaffery, Chair of SCORE’s Governing Board.