Deep Dive: Deployment of High Demand Community Infrastructure Projects

Announcement of New EDA Grant: The Economic Development Administration (EDA) awarded a grant to the Milken Institute and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) to launch a pre-development training and project accelerator.

• The initiative targets small, rural, and underserved communities lacking the technical assistance or capital to make infrastructure projects "shovel-ready."
• Components include a technical assistance workshop series on pre-development basics and a dedicated module for high-demand projects like broadband and water systems.
• The grant will fund the expansion of the National Pre-Development Caucus, a monthly convening series for stakeholders to share best practices.
• Registration for the expanded caucus and future trainings is open, with sessions scheduled to begin later this spring.

Panelist Insights on Deployment Models and Opportunities:

• Bill Lee (Trust for Public Lands): Launched the "Equitable Communities Fund" to connect marginalized communities and 125+ grassroots groups with federal funding for park and green infrastructure projects.
  • Uses the "Park Score" tool to identify investment gaps across 14,000 U.S. cities to ensure funds target areas where 100 million Americans lack park access.
  • Advocates for using data to bypass traditional grant-writing advantages held by sophisticated organizations.
• Michelle Moore (Groundswell): Focuses on the "Justice 40" policy goal, ensuring 40% of climate infrastructure benefits reach underserved communities.
  • Highlights the "cost to get money" problem, where match requirements and lack of capacity prevent community-led organizations from accessing federal grants.
  • Proposes "zero percent match" requirements and compensating community participants for their time and planning input as essential for equity.
  • Is working with 52 "shovel-worthy" projects ranging from stormwater management to urban agriculture.
• Rob Day (Spring Lane Capital): Addresses the financing gap between early-stage entrepreneurs and traditional Wall Street infrastructure capital, specifically the first 2–3 years of deployment.
  • Cites "Atlas Organics" as a success story where pre-development capital and technical assistance enabled a dorm-room startup to scale from one to eight locations and secure $200 million in follow-on expansion capital.
  • Emphasizes that financing must be paired with technical assistance to underwrite projects for traditional providers.
  • Calls for more locally-based institutional-grade developers to create wealth within communities rather than relying on outside developers.
• Donnell (Block Power): Leading the first U.S. city (Ithaca, NY) committed to decarbonizing all 6,000 buildings within 5–7 years.
  • Targets immediate accountability by tying the 10-0 city council vote to a specific term of office, rather than distant 2040/2050 goals.
  • Estimates the project cost at $700–$800 million, leveraging partnerships with Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Google.
  • Quantifies the cost of inaction, including public health impacts (asthma from gas stoves) and stranded fossil fuel infrastructure, to drive stakeholder engagement.
• Matt Peterson (LA Cleantech Incubator): Piloting a non-dilutive debt fund to help early-stage entrepreneurs bridge cash flow gaps between federal grants and customer payments.
  • Launching a pilot EV car-share program exclusively for housing authority residents, designed around community needs rather than top-down mandates.
  • Proposes legislation to prioritize DC fast-charging at housing authority locations nationwide.
  • Advocates for "sandbox" environments where cities provide $20,000–$100,000+ grants to pilot and iterate solutions without sole-source procurement hurdles.
• Patrick Myers (State of Colorado): Describes the challenge of deploying one-time funds (like ARPA) without creating long-term dependency.
  • Colorado utilized a "recovery officer" model, embedding staff in agencies to ensure compliance and transformational outcomes for $3.8 billion in federal funds.
  • Coordinates state and local funding to avoid overwhelming local capacity, focusing on projects too large for formula grants alone.
  • Emphasizes the need to identify community-specific needs through direct engagement rather than relying on generic state metrics.

Strategic Frameworks for Overcoming Barriers:

• Pre-Development Capacity: Multiple panelists identified the lack of pre-development funding and expertise as the primary bottleneck for underserved communities; new EDA and federal initiatives aim to address this specifically.
• Procurement and Private-Public Collaboration: David Guilford (Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners) noted the need to break large projects into "stage gates" to allow smaller private firms to participate without the uncertainty of entire contract outcomes.
• Market Creation: Adam Fried (Bloomberg Associates) highlighted the role of local governments in creating markets (e.g., building performance standards, credit trading) to signal certainty to the private sector, though equity must be embedded in the design, not added later.
• Valuation of Community Time: Michelle Moore and Rob Day stressed that traditional grant designs often fail to compensate community leaders for their time, suggesting stipends and paid participation as necessary structural changes.
• Data-Driven Targeting: Bill Lee and Patrick Myers advocate for using granular data to direct funds to communities historically excluded from the grant-writing pipeline.

Forward-Looking Statements and Commitments:

• The Ithaca, NY project aims to serve as a replicable blueprint; if 10–20 more cities adopt this model, the resulting data set could guide global urban sustainability efforts.
• Matt Peterson plans to introduce federal legislation to scale the housing authority EV car-share model and fast-charging prioritization nationwide.
• The EDA-Milken-RCAP partnership intends to use the recorded panel sessions as training materials for the upcoming National Pre-Development Caucus.
• Patrick Myers indicated that Colorado will continue to prioritize local feedback loops to determine the most transformative uses of future infrastructure funds.

Emerging Trends in Infrastructure Finance:

• A shift from "build-only" models to "pre-development + finance" packages is becoming essential for scaling small-to-mid-sized projects.
• Traditional financiers are beginning to acknowledge and finance pre-development expenses, moving away from purely alternative financing models for renewables and broadband.
• There is a growing consensus that "shovel-ready" projects must originate from within the community to ensure equitable outcomes and local wealth creation.
• Housing authorities are emerging as critical partners for private sector deployment, particularly for renewable energy and transportation solutions in underserved areas.