Northern Kentucky Catalytic Development Fund key to urban growth

The shaky national economy has made it tougher to raise capital for the Northern Kentucky Catalytic Development Fund, but Executive Director Jeanne Schroer said that may have been a blessing in disguise.

The fund, which has a $10-million kickoff goal, will offer gap funding for residential, small retail and multi-use projects in the urban centers of Northern Kentucky. Launched in September 2008, it's just over halfway to meeting that number, with $6.5 million. But with the economy showing signs of strengthening, Schroer believes it will reach $10 million by year's end, with better planning and processes in place than if they money had been raised sooner.

"If we had raised the money earlier, it wouldn't have been a great time to begin new projects. This (lag) has given us the time we need as an organization to put our structures in place to do a good job identifying projects and defining lending criteria. In retrospect it has been a good thing," Schroer said. The fund will primarily go toward residential projects, but will also consider mixed-used and neighborhood retail, Schroer said. "We'll also look at something like converting a historic structure into an office building."

Schroer said she's "fairly confident" in reaching the $10 million goal by the end of the year. If so, project financing will begin in early 2012.

The fund got it latest and largest single contribution with a recent $2 million commitment from PNC Bank. Previous commitments came from  Corporex ($1 million), Bank of Kentucky ($1 million), Duke Energy ($1 million), Central Bank ($1 million) and the Haile/US Bank Foundation ($500K). Those large commitments show that the corporate community believes in the strengthening the region's urban core including Covington, Newport, Dayton and Bellevue, Schroer said.

"They are making the commitment to the fund for a number of different reasons. All of them recognize our region needs a vibrant core to be economically competitive. I also believe they have a lot of faith in Northern Kentucky's potential to be a big part of the urban renaissance of our downtowns," she said.

The fund was an initiative of the Urban Renaissance Action Team of the Northern Kentucky's Vision 2015 regional planning effort. Plans are to leverage those dollars to raise more than $100 million for development.

Writer: Feoshia Henderson for Soapbox