St. Aloysius Awarded $19.5M in Tax Credit Financing for Renovations

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

Finance Fund, Consortium America and U.S. Bank have agreed to award the St. Aloysius Orphanage $19.5 million in financing. The provision will help renovate and expand St. Aloysius Orphanage and allow it to enhance its ability to serve disadvantaged youth and their families.

The public-private collaboration includes the use of Ohio historic tax credits and federal new market tax credits (NMTC), which are intended to spur economic development in low-income communities. Finance Fund, an Ohio non-profit financial intermediary, and Consortium America, a nationally certified community development entity managed and controlled by real estate developer Trammell Crow Co., have committed $19 million of NMTC allocation authority to finance the project, which should generate $7.4 million of tax credits over a seven-year period. U.S. Bank served as lender and NMTC equity investor.

St. Aloysius is located on a seven-acre site in Bond Hill, a suburban neighborhood of Cincinnati. The campus includes five buildings, among them its main building, created in 1856, and the Glad House, both of which will undergo restoration. The administrative building will receive a new roof as well as major interior improvements and upgrades to handicap accessibility. Renovation of the Glad House will include the addition of 12,000 square feet of classroom space.

St. Aloysius Orphanage was founded as a traditional orphanage in response to the cholera epidemic in the early 1800s. Now focused on helping families with children who have mental and behavioral health problems, it is currently the only organization to provide multiservice foster and residential care, mental health case management and therapy for children in the Cincinnati area.

St. Aloysius currently serves 600 children; the renovations should allow it to serve an additional 200 children. The project will also enable St. Aloysius to add 25 employees to the 160 it currently employs within two years of its anticipated 2013 completion. It will also create 200 construction jobs and preserve a National Park Service historic site.