In September, IFF closed 11 loans totaling almost $19.2 million for community-driven projects in the Midwest. We’ve included below a roundup with information about several of the organizations that received the loans and what they’re doing with the capital. To learn more about IFF’s lending, visit our Capital Solutions page.
Clearbrook
IFF closed a $350,000 loan that will enable Clearbrook to purchase a facility in Woodstock, IL, where the organization will provide community day programming for adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Clearbrook’s acquisition of the 5,000-square-foot facility will reduce travel for individuals in the community in need of services, shorten the waitlist for Clearbrook’s programming by enabling the organization to serve 20 new people annually, and create five FTE positions. IFF’s loan is being combined with funding from the McHenry County Mental Health Board and agency cash to facilitate the acquisition and modest renovations to the building.
Clearbrook was founded in the 1950s by parents in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago in response to the unmet educational needs of their disabled children, and today serves more than 8,000 children and adults annually across 160+ communities in the Chicago area. Since 2014, Clearbrook has received eight additional loans from IFF totaling $2.8 million.
Neighborhood Service Organization
IFF closed a $6 million loan for Neighborhood Service Organization (NSO) that will provide bridge financing for the construction of a 21,900-square-foot facility in Detroit, MI. The Detroit Healthy Housing Center (DHHC) is an entity of NSO’s Healthy Housing Campus, a comprehensive site with an all-inclusive service model for individuals experiencing homelessness. The DHHC will provide low-barrier emergency shelter to 56 adults and offer transformative health and social services for its residents, a 15-bed medical respite for homeless individuals to receive continuing care post-hospitalization, a fully integrated healthcare clinic, and other on-site wraparound services, including job readiness training. The healthcare clinic will be accessible to the community for primary care, behavioral health, dental services, and a pharmacy. It’s the first facility of its kind and will deliver solutions not only for the homeless, but for the entire Detroit community. The campus and its programs are designed to deliver whole-person care and promote a healthy transition to the next step toward housing stability and sustainability.
DHHC is the second phase of a campus development to centralize a continuum of services in the community to end homelessness. Along with IFF, the DHHC project is being funded by a Community Development Block Grant, agency cash, and a capital campaign. The first phase of the campus development known as NSO Clay Apartments offers 42 units of permanent supportive housing and was completed in 2020.
Roots & Vine Produce and Cafe
IFF closed a $189,000 loan that will enable Roots & Vine Produce and Cafe to purchase and renovate a facility that will be repurposed as a small grocery store and community cafe in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, IL. Roots & Vine currently operates out of a mobile grocery bus and rents a 300-square-foot dry and cold storage space to sustain its work to increase access to healthy foods in a part of the city that’s a food desert, and the new, 1,700-square-foot brick and mortar location will complement the organization’s existing operations. Roots & Vine’s founder, Ena Jones is also the founder of Green Table Talk, a nonprofit organization which provides distribution logistics support to farmers and hosts food demos, workshops, and classes to promote healthy foods. The new facility will support Green Table Talk’s work while advancing several priorities identified in the City of Chicago’s Food Equity Agenda.
RecycleForce
IFF closed two loans totaling $7.489 million for RecycleForce as part of a New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) deal that enabled the social enterprise to acquire a parcel of land at the site of the former Sherman Park industrial complex in Indianapolis, IN, and construct a new, 102,500-square-foot headquarters facility. Since 2006, the organization has safely recycled more than 65 million pounds of electronics while providing job training to thousands of citizens returning from incarceration. Its new facility will provide RecycleForce with almost 38,000 additional square feet of space to support its operations, facilitate the creation of 50 permanent jobs, and anchor the redevelopment of a 50-acre plot of land that has been without any consistent business activity since the mid-1990s when the now demolished RCA factory on the site closed. IFF also provided a $650,000 pre-development loan for the project in 2019, with additional sources of funding coming from Partners for the Common Good (NMTC source loan), Indianapolis Redevelopment CDE (NMTC allocatee), and Valley National Bank (NMTC investor).
Tags: : Capital Solutions, Healthy Foods, Housing, Loan Round-ups, Universal Access, Workforce Development