Northern Initiatives Stories and Data

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Northern Initiatives Stories

A. Alfred Taubman Center

Detroit,
Michigan

Capital Impact Partners

Capital Impact Partners helped finance the $145 million renovation of the former Argonaut Building into the College for Creative Studies’ A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education. The 760,000 sq. ft. project created a second CCS campus while housing a charter school, creative businesses, and other organizations.

Foremost Farms Greenville

Greenville,
Michigan

Coastal Enterprises, Inc. / CEI Capital Management

CEI Capital Management provided New Markets Tax Credit financing for Foremost Farms’ dairy-processing facility in Greenville, creating new manufacturing capacity closer to the cooperative’s Michigan member farms. The investment supports rural dairy producers, improves supply-chain efficiency, and provides stable manufacturing employment.

Hot Sam’s

Detroit,
Michigan

Detroit Development Fund

Detroit Development Fund financing supported Hot Sam’s, Detroit’s longstanding men’s clothing retailer, as its owners worked to preserve and grow the historic downtown business. The financing helped maintain a locally owned retail institution whose roots in the city date to 1921.

Motor City Brewing Works

Detroit,
Michigan

Detroit Development Fund

Detroit Development Fund supplied nontraditional financing that helped Motor City Brewing Works survive its early years when banks would not finance the microbrewery. The Midtown business became Detroit’s longest-operating craft brewery and operates a brewery and restaurant at Second and Canfield.

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Map of Northern Initiatives CDFI Branches and Stories

Thank you to our partners at Inclusive and CDBA for sharing data on CDFI Bank and CDFI Credit Union branch locations. In addition, about 100 of our CDFI Stories come from OFN’s story database.

Northern Initiatives Investment Map

CDFI Investment Map

Mapped CDFI investment data (2005-2023), via the CDFI Coalition's partnership with CDFI Friendly America.

CDFI Advocacy App

Want more state data? Check out CDFI Friendly America's mobile-friendly CDFI Advocacy App for impacts from 2005-2023.

Northern Initiatives Fact Sheet

CDFIs are crucial to affordable housing.

Braden Wiener, Opportunity Resource Fund, Grand Rapids, MI

CDFIs stand in the gap for communities that have long been overlooked, offering the tools, capital, and support that empower people to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. From revitalizing main streets to helping families buy their first homes, CDFIs turn potential into progress. With timely and full support from the Treasury Department, these institutions can continue delivering measurable impact, fueling self-reliance, entrepreneurship, and generational change in America’s most underinvested communities

Kevin FItzgerald, Opportunity Resource Fund, East Lansing, MI

I have watched how CDFIs support small business owners and home owners where banks and credit unions could not. The amount banks charge is often above what people can pay, CDFIs that are nonprofits even the playing field for them by investing in the people and not company profits.

Romy Fitschen, Lansing, MI

I support CDFIs because I’ve witnessed the economic development they bring to an underserved community and the people that inhabit these areas.

Taney Turner, ELGA Credit Union, Grand Blanc, MI