Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | July 4, 2022 27 FOCUS: NONPROFITS OCTOBER 20TH AT FARMINGTON GARDENS C-Suite Awards honor the top-performing C-level executives in Greater Hartford who hail from the for-profit, nonprofit and governmental sectors. DEADLINE TO NOMINATE IS JULY 29TH Chief Executive Officer • Chief Financial Officer • Chief Operating Officer Chief Technology/Information/Security Officer • Chief Marketing Officer FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: www.hartfordbusiness.com/hbj-events/c-suite-awards-2022 Sponsored by minds?" she said. "And if that's not gentrification, then okay, that's what we're about." Taking control For other local nonprofits, getting into real estate has been about trying to close gaps in their core mission. Chrysalis Center completed its first housing development 12 years ago, and it's done roughly one project every year since, including apartments in Willimantic and New Britain, and most recently the Clover Gardens development in Hartford. The center provides services and supportive housing to vulnerable groups including adults with mental illness, dealing with substance use and returning from incarceration. CEO Sharon Castelli says getting into development was about having more control. "Going out and finding folks that you serve with housing, it's pretty substandard," said Castelli. "Either the rents are too high, or if the rents are reasonable, very often the units are not really fit for living. This way we can control our housing." Chrysalis now has three separate operations – the original social services nonprofit, a development arm, and a real estate holding corporation. Castelli says 12 years in, she has a good handle on the development world, but in the early days she relied heavily on consultants. "I would caution social service providers not to go it alone," she said, "to make sure that they have the experts that can help them through. It is a different occupation if you will." Follow the money Both Hands On Hartford and Community Solutions say one of the biggest stumbling blocks to getting involved in development is funding. Haggerty says her organization was used to tapping the low-income housing tax credit as a simple funding tool for affordable housing An outside view of the historic Swift Factory in Hartford's North End. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED projects. However, the money for something like the Swift Factory redevelopment had to come from a painstakingly assembled patchwork of public and private sources – one of the reasons the project has taken so long to get off the ground. "When you look at the sources of financing, it looks like an electrical circuit board," she laughed. "I think one of the opportunities for government leaders is to make it easier to put the kinds of resources together that would enable something like Swift." This type of nonprofit involvement in real estate development and neighborhood revitalization is much more typical in big cities like New York or San Francisco, and is still relatively rare in Connecticut. Haggerty believes the recent advent of federal American Rescue Plan dollars may spur more interest in developing additional expertise in the nonprofit sector. "There's a little bit of a mismatch in some communities between the level of opportunity now with federal recovery dollars and the capacity of the not-for-profit development community," she said. "You want to use these unusual, one-time financing opportunities to lock in some permanent civic infrastructure, as opposed to commercial development." Sharon Castelli

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