New name and bold new goals for NuZone

The Lincoln Heights Community Improvement Corporation (LHCIC) has changed its name to the NuZone Community Improvement Corporation (NCIC), but will continue to build on its six years of economic development success.

The name change signifies their bold goals to reach out beyond just the village boundaries.

NCIC has partnered with Business Management Services, LLC to provide support, fiscal management and land development services to churches and other non-profit organizations in the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Clermont and Warren.

The new partnership will assist in guiding an economic development project from site acquisition, feasibility studies, and financing all the way through construction and completion.

While large commercial development firms can easily pluck "the low hanging fruit", NCIC executive director Al Kanters stresses the need for non-profit community improvement corporations to take on projects that involve greater challenges and less profit potential, like affordable housing or brownfields redevelopment.

"CICs and CDCs have access to grants, tax credits and low interest loans that for profit developers cannot access that can make such projects financially feasible," Kanters said.  "CICs and CDCs also play an important role in engaging the community in its redevelopment efforts, helping to create a shared vision tapping the tremendous resource of volunteerism."

Development has not come easily to Lincoln Heights, but the LHCIC was responsible for many recent successes:
 

• Recruiting four new businesses, creating 50 jobs
• Cleanup of a brownfield site in the Anthony Wayne Industrial Park for commercial redevelopment
• Site acquisition for the new Lincoln Heights Elementary School
• The construction of the Jackson Homes Project, seven new single-family homes in the Martin Luther King Estates subdivision
• Land banking of multiple tax-delinquent and abandoned properties
• An environmental assessment of all commercially-developable property in the village

Kanters says that the NCIC will stay active in that area.

Writer: Kevin LeMaster
Source: Al Kanters, NuZone Community Improvement Corporation