Format City Case
Client Drexel Nowak Finance Lab Date Spring 2024
Length 31 Pages
Date Spring 2024
Length 31 Pages
This City Case explores the first four years of the Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT), a neighborhood trust started in 2019 with the mission to acquire and redevelop real estate on Kensington Avenue, a disinvested commercial corridor in a low-income Philadelphia neighborhood and place it into long-term community control to preserve affordability while building neighborhood power and wealth. The KCT has an innovative Perpetual Purpose Trust governance structure that seeks to decommodify commercial and residential assets by taking them out of the speculative market and placing them under long-term community control. The proposed structure of the Perpetual Purpose Trust borrows elements of a Business Improvement District (BID), a Community Land Trust (CLT), and a nonprofit Community Development Corporation (CDC), but seeks to create something more. Its goal is to create an entity controlled by community members while providing agreed upon returns to value-aligned investors. As of Spring 2024, the KCT has raised $2.5million in grants and $10.85 million in loans at interest rates between 0-2 percent with a 30-year amortization term. Its investors are primarily philanthropic organizations rather than market based investors.