Opportunity Alabama

Opal provides technical assistance programming to three major stakeholder groups - communities, property owners or developers, and investors - who want to do something catalytic and locally meaningful within the context of the built environment.communities: through our community growth accelerator program, we work with a team of local leaders (main street directors, chambers of commerce, economic developers, etc.) To identify a catalytic real estate project or economic development initiative that can deliver results for the community based on the three metrics of speed to market, cost, and community impact. Then, we work with local stakeholders to accelerate the execution process. Our focus is local and place-based, so each community's results are unique to their needs and opportunities at the time of the engagement. We have helped multiple place-based projects in underserved communities break ground. We have also helped plan and secure grant funding for lmi housing, historic revitalization, and economic development initiatives.

Lending & investment: opal has built an infrastructure to raise and invest private funds into the pipeline of investment opportunities we identify. A substantial amount of this work is undertaken by our wholly-owned subsidiary, opal investments (an Alabama benefit corporation). The rest is undertaken by opal community capital, a flexible source of capital critical to ensuring that the deals that come through pdap ultimately have a complete capital stack. We envision occ to be a critical source of follow-on funding for projects and businesses that received technical assistance through our cga and pdap programs. Occ's primary mission is to provide loan and other investment products for real estate and businesses in order to promote economic development and close access to capital gaps in low-income communities, in economically distressed communities, and/or within disadvantaged populations (including, but not limited to, minority- and women-owned businesses, residents of low-income areas, etc.). We have applied to have occ recognized as a community development financial institution by the us dept of treasury. Over time, we may ultimately create additional direct investment subsidiaries of opal as our pipeline of such opportunities expands.

Property owners and developers: our property development assistance program (pdap) helps property owners and emerging developers in underserved markets take a community-supported project from concept to construction. We help project teams navigate pre-development planning, budgeting, market analysis, pro forma creation. We then help projects secure all the incentives possible to enhance their ability to receive investment and break ground. Through pdap, we are building a pipeline of projects that are bringing vacant buildings back into service and supporting meaningful new construction while supporting local businesses, creating and improving housing, supporting reuse and/or redirection of downtown areas and central business districts, and more. Opal accepts applications to pdap twice per year and preference is given to applications led by minority and/or woman-owned development teams and non-profit or community development organizations.