Forbes: An Unlikely Alliance —Key Figures in the Opportunity Zone Landscape
Kathryn Tokle
The public figures brought together by interest and excitement in Opportunity Zones make for a diverse lot. There’s David Robinson, the ten-time NBA All-Star and Founder of Admiral Capital, and “T. I.” Harris, the rapper and entrepreneur, alongside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Other notable attendees who spoke to the Sorenson Impact Center at the Forbes Opportunity Zones Summit in Newark this May included JD Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and Shamina Singh, Founder and President of the Center for Inclusive Growth and a Mastercard Executive Vice President, among others. Despite their diverse backgrounds, these individuals all spoke to a common theme: the potential for Opportunity Zones to unite communities and empower them to shape their own future. As stated by Mayor Garcetti, “If this is a platform for us to be more engaged with each other, to learn that indigenous knowledge but also empower those local people, then Opportunity Zones will be worth it.”
The public figures brought together by interest and excitement in Opportunity Zones make for a diverse lot. There’s David Robinson, the ten-time NBA All-Star and Founder of Admiral Capital, and “T. I.” Harris, the rapper and entrepreneur, alongside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Dr. Rajiv Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. Other notable attendees who spoke to the Sorenson Impact Center at the Forbes Opportunity Zones Summit in Newark this May included JD Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and Shamina Singh, Founder and President of the Center for Inclusive Growth and a Mastercard Executive Vice President, among others. Despite their diverse backgrounds, these individuals all spoke to a common theme: the potential for Opportunity Zones to unite communities and empower them to shape their own future. As stated by Mayor Garcetti, “If this is a platform for us to be more engaged with each other, to learn that indigenous knowledge but also empower those local people, then Opportunity Zones will be worth it.”
The Entrepreneurial spirit
Recognition of America’s entrepreneurial spirit predates the birth of Silicon Valley by hundreds of years, and ingenuity and innovation are not confined to a small number of metro areas. By enabling the provision of capital to distressed communities without imposing a plethora of limiting regulations on its use, Opportunity Zones create the space to develop and test new solutions for economic development and prioritize projects that are tailored to their unique circumstances. For instance, the Expanding Mobility project in Cleveland, Ohio, plans to address the challenge of limited mobility options in low and moderate income neighborhoods by implementing a turnkey share network of electric vehicles. This platform (which was developed in collaboration with community stakeholders) would reduce transportation costs for local residents and expand access to jobs and healthcare. Another proposed project, Symply Data Centers in Piney Flats, Tennessee, aims to ameliorate the cost and waste of traditional data centers by using solar power for electricity and siphoning byproduct heat into commercial greenhouses. These examples serve to illustrate Ms. Singh’s statement: “It’s bringing out the entrepreneurial spirit of local people, of businesses, of communities.”
Seizing the moment
Perhaps the most important potential outcome from the Opportunity Zone initiative is community empowerment. “To fill the voids that exist and have existed for decades… that’s not going to happen sitting around asking the government to do it. We have to become the change we hope to see,” says Mr. Harris. Indeed, many communities designated as Opportunity Zones have been working in unity and with an entrepreneurial approach to develop proposals that will attract investors and steer them towards projects which foster equitable economic growth. Consider, for example, the Lac du Flambeau Business Development Corporation’s Opportunity Zone Summit, which brought together state, county, tribal and municipal leaders and developers and investors earlier this year. The event featured discussions around a prospectus for several Lac du Flambeau project areas, the likelihood of securing investments and the types of investors to target, how local governments can become “investor ready,” and the use of “investment enhancer tools” like New Market Tax Credits. This example demonstrates how communities are assuming leadership in the Opportunity Zones space, focusing development on projects that can benefit their members as much as investors. And in a political era defined by partisan gridlock, community empowerment is more crucial than ever.
Just a simple, potential offering of capital has wrought a fascinating change in some of America’s distressed communities. They’ve begun to act like startup companies, with stakeholders united in a common goal, empowered to pitch their creative ideas to investors who may provide a round of funding. Regardless of the exact funding outcome for each community, greater unity and empowerment will prove to be beneficial. Such “collective impact” is increasingly viewed as a more effective model for achieving social change in complex circumstances, and Opportunity Zones have the potential to create it. Alex Flachsbart, Founder and CEO of Opportunity Alabama, has observed that the process of building an OZ marketing document provides an excuse to bring stakeholders together for a “substantive, ongoing conversation” about making their community stronger and more successful over the next decade.
This is the ultimate potential of Opportunity Zones. Long after the legislative provision has sunk into the sunset, the coalitions and collaborations they’ve catalyzed will live on, building a better, brighter future for everyone within their communities.
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