Final funding comes together for one of Tampa's most-anticipated development projects
By Margie Manning
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jun 7, 2017

Florida Community Loan Fund has provided the last part of the funding required for Armature Works, a historic building north of downtown Tampa that's being renovated into an events venue, food hall and co-working space for small businesses.

The funding comes from New Markets Tax Credits, a program that provides incentives for economic development through the use of tax credits that attract private investment to distressed communities, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Florida Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution, provided $20 million in tax credits for the 68,000-square-foot Armature Works, which is being developed by SoHo Capital and has a total project cost of $21 million.

Armature Works is one part of The Heights, a SoHo Capital project to develop 43 acres between downtown Tampa and Seminole Heights. At full buildout, The Heights is slated to include more than 1,500 residential units and 640,000 square feet of commercial space with a total value of $820 million.

A call to the SoHo Capital executives for comment is pending return.

Investors in the New Markets Tax Credits for Armature Works were USAmeriBank, a $4.2 billion-asset Clearwater-based bank that's been a longtime supporter of the project, and US Bancorp Community Development Corp., a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) and the nation's most active tax credit investor, said Nelson Black, chief lending officer for FCLF.

Armature Works is the Riverfront District of Tampa Heights, the city's oldest residential neighborhood, and is just the kind of project FCLF focuses on, Black said.

"This project has the potential to create quite a few jobs and to develop a moribund area of downtown that hasn't gotten quite the play the southern end of downtown has gotten,” Black said. "This is an opportunity to push development from the city center north.”

Overall, the project is expected to create 750 jobs, including 160 construction jobs and 597 permanent employment opportunities generated by small businesses and retail, a project description on FCLF's website says.

More than 300 units of affordable workforce housing are under construction on adjacent property, FCLF says.

New Markets Tax Credits are a financing vehicle that allow a borrower to have additional equity, above and beyond what they have borrowed, said Janet de Guehery, FCLF's communications and marketing manager. The credits are for projects that only qualify for a certain amount of commercial loan funding, but need more to be completed. The funding starts as a loan and eventually is converted into equity, she said.

FCLF is based in Orlando and finances projects around the state, but Black has long wanted to be more visible in downtown Tampa, where his office is located.

The organization previously used the tax credits to help finance Metropolitan Ministries' Miracle Place, which provides services for the homeless in Tampa, and for a 100-bed domestic violence shelter in St. Petersburg for CASA (Community Action Stops Abuse).

FCLF was awarded $65 million in New Markets Tax Credits a year ago, and had another $30 million left from a previous allocation, Black said.

After the Armature Works closing Tuesday, the organization still has about $60 million in available credits, Black and de Guehery said.

Margie Manning is Finance Editor of the Tampa Bay Business Journal. She covers the Money beat.