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Houston First Corp. and Buffalo Bayou Partnership are embarking on a $5.3 million renovation of one of Houston's historic buildings. The 100-year-old Sunset Coffee building is the site where August Chapman and John Kirby Allen came ashore and established the town of Houston in 1836.

Gov. Rick Perry announced athenahealth Inc. is expanding its Austin operations, creating 607 jobs and a projected capital investment of more than $13 million. The state is providing $5 million through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) to close the deal on this expansion and job creation.

On June 14, 2013, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a 25 percent state historic tax credit (HTC). With this new HTC, Texas joins more than 30 states that offer state-level HTCs. A proposed regulation for the Texas HTC is being drafted and could be taken to the Texas Historical Commission board as early as the second quarter of 2014, depending on public input.

The Bond Buyer reports that states will be allowed to issue 5.2% more of private activity bonds in 2014, freeing money for projects that would otherwise be ineligible for tax-exempt financing. Included are graphics demonstrating the volume cap changes from 2013 to 2014 by state.

Interested in bringing your organization to the forefront of hundreds of economic development finance professionals in the state? Consider sponsoring the CDFA Texas Financing Roundtable in 2014.

April 8, 2014 - Austin, Texas
Join CDFA for the first-ever Texas Financing Roundtable Conference on April 8, 2014 as we focus on "Maximizing Development Finance in the Lone Star State." This one-day event will feature a number of economic development finance experts and leaders from around the state discussing new development finance tools, authorities, resources and approaches, and how these methods can move Texas' economy forward.

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The Center for Neighborhood Technology put out this report on the growing effort among planners, real estate professionals, and economists to identify not only the economic benefits of alternative transportation modes in and of themselves, but also the impact that they have on housing prices and value retention. The real estate mantra of "location, location, location" is more important than ever.

The Attorney General reports whether economic development award recipients have met the terms and conditions, including any applicable performance metrics, issued by the ODSA. This is their report to the General Assembly in which they compare the expectations of the award agreements to the results delivered by the recipients in the 2012 calendar year.

The three pillars of economic development (education and workforce development, business development and community development) are described here along with rural-specific planning initiatives support by the University of Texas San Antonio Institute for Economic Development and speaker Gil Gonzalez, director of the Rural Business Program.

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