Carver Bank Allocates NMTCs to Finance the Savannah Food Bank

We are proud to continue our long-standing relationship with Carver State Bank, one of only 21 black-owned banks in the country, headquartered in Savannah, Georgia.

Holley & Pearson-Farrer had the opportunity to serve as local counsel to the bank and its holding company and subsidiaries in a recent New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) sub-allocation of $4.9 million to finance the development and construction of a food distribution business in southern Georgia. The project is anticipated to consist of an approximately 153,000-square-foot food bank facility and related improvements in Savannah. The new food bank will address the food insecurity needs of the sponsor’s 21-county service area and will replace an aging 75,000-square-foot facility that is located in an area vulnerable to flooding.

The sponsor’s primary food distribution programs are targeted at three vulnerable populations: students, seniors and rural residents. The sponsor plans to target students with an afterschool program providing an evening meal along with tutoring and homework assistance, a summer feeding program and a school food pantry. Seniors’ needs will be addressed with a brown bag program delivering food to low-income seniors. And the sponsor will aim to bring an emergency food relief program to rural residents to increase their access to fresh food. At stabilization, the project is expected to serve 259,000 individuals annually, 100% of whom are expected to be low-income and 63% of whom are expected to be people of color.

The Carver companies regularly provide investment capital for low-income communities and low-income persons by lending money to certain qualified low-income community businesses, resulting in the recapture of federal NMTCs. NMTCs incentivize investment in low-income communities. Under the NMTC program, the U.S. Department of the Treasury competitively allocates NMTC authority to intermediaries like Carver which choose investment projects, and investors receive a credit against their federal income tax obligations.