Opportunity falling in our lap

By: Bert Belanger//Guest Columnist//January 24, 2019

Again pinch-hitting for columnist David Chapman, I provide my take on a recent tax initiative that helps target parts of downtown Oklahoma City, already fertile ground, for outside capital investment.

Much has been written about the successes of OKC’s MAPS-driven public projects, as well as the growing list of public/private partnerships that continue to weave great placemaking into the city’s urban fabric. All of these have been products of home-grown initiative and resourcefulness, from MAPS itself, to OKC’s Murrah bombing recovery, to the new tax increment financing districts that dot the city and have spawned projects like the Skirvin, the Dell and Amazon campuses, the First National Center rebirth, and multiple senior wellness centers.

Into this context falls from the sky, actually from Washington D.C., a phenomenon called opportunity zones. The product of bipartisan effort that languished for years until it was attached as a last-minute rider to President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax bill, this broad, self-executing tax incentive could be Oklahoma City’s luckiest break. It creates target areas that overlap much of OKC’s urban core, as well as outlying tracts. See a cool interactive map at www.eig.org.

Until Dec. 31, 2026, investors who have taxable gains from other investments (think Amazon’s founder, when he sells stock to pay for, well, you know) have the unprecedented opportunity (hence, the name) to reinvest in an opportunity zone, defer tax on those profits, and build tax-free wealth for harvest after a decade-long holding period. A terrific prospectus for OKC’s opportunity zones and their potential was produced by the city and is available at www.theallianceokc.org/opportunityzones.

“Smack dab” in the middle of the Oklahoma City’s urban opportunity zones are the areas surrounding the state Capitol and the Health Sciences Center; through a combination of good leadership and blind luck, this area, dubbed by the Brookings Institution as the Innovation District, is poised for potentially exponential growth and development.

The devil is always in the details. For OKC’s opportunity zones, the practical key is “shovel-readiness” and execution. How can we take full advantage of O Zone benefits before the 12/31/2026 “hard stop” date? Here’s to hoping that we in Oklahoma’s business and development community can find users and projects that execute sooner, not later, in order to fully realize the benefits of opportunity zones in our state and its cities. The clock’s ticking.

Bert Belanger is a broker with Adept Commercial Real Estate and a real estate attorney with Riggs Abney (bbelanger@riggsabney.com)