Trey Whitfield School — The 400 students at the Trey Whitfield School in East New York, Brooklyn, continue to significantly outperform the average New York City student on state achievement tests.

The Doe Fund — Their 400-bed transitional residence in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn that NYCIF helped finance provides counseling and education to help homeless adults secure employment and independent housing.

Solar Energy Systems — Solar Energy Systems recently installed the largest residential solar panel system in New York City, a 54 kW system providing renewable energy to 1,120 apartment units in Kips Bay Towers.

Harbor Experience Companies — is providing vital transportation and pairing experienced captains with young adults from the Red Hook Houses, one of the largest public housing projects in the country, to create a new generation of maritime professionals.

Bioscience Companies — NYCIF’s investment capital and industry resources facilitated the relocation of Vivaldi Biosciences and NaniRx to New York City from California and New Jersey, respectively.

Vault — Former portfolio company Vault.com and CareerlinkNYC, a major initiative of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, recently partnered to provide job resources and retraining content to unemployed finance and technology professionals. Vault.com hired a net 40 New Yorkers in 2008.

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Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center

Small manufacturing businesses are an important source of meaningful employment for immigrant and minority workers, but are disproportionately affected by the lack of affordable real estate.

To assist this critical economic engine, NYCIF has provided $5.0 million of financing to the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC), a Brooklyn-based non-profit real estate developer dedicated to preserving and creating affordable manufacturing space for small and medium-sized industrial firms. GMDC’s tenants include woodworkers, makers of home furnishings, food manufacturers, garment companies, metal workers, and a variety of other artisanal trades, artists and designers. These industrial tenants typically employ a high percentage of residents from the surrounding community and provide their workers with livable wages and benefits.

Utilizing the Fund’s capital, GMDC successfully leveraged public and private funding to develop approximately 325,000 square feet of industrial space in five buildings throughout Brooklyn, helping to preserve more than 500 permanent jobs.

The most recent project was the redevelopment of a 72,000 square foot facility in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which had housed a furniture manufacturing company that had moved its operations to Asia. The refurbished facility, which opened in early 2009, will house approximately 20 small manufacturing companies employing more than 100 people, many of whom were displaced by the rezoning of the Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront from industrial to residential.

Royal Health Care

In 1996, two not-for-profit inner city hospitals, The Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center and The Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, established a new entrepreneurial venture, Royal Health Care (“Royal”), to focus on the managed care market. The hospitals had previously joined together to form Neighborhood Health Providers (“NHP”), a public programs HMO. These financially distressed community hospitals serve some of the poorest neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. Each institution was in need of additional sources of income to help finance ongoing hospital operations in an era of reduced public funding.

NYCIF’s $1.8 million loan funded Royal’s first year of operations and helped NHP meet mandated state reserve requirements. At the time of the investment, NYCIF was the only source of financing available because the hospitals did not qualify for conventional bank loans and were unable to attract venture capital funding. 

Royal provides customized administrative support for health plans’ operations such as customer service and claims processing. Royal and its affiliated companies currently generate annual revenues in excess of $750 million and employ over 500 people, of whom 430 work in New York.  Royal has also provided significant dividends to its parent hospitals, which have reinvested those funds into community health care in some of the city’s most underserved areas.

Jeffrey Krauss, an experienced venture capitalist, represented NYCIF on the Royal Board of Directors and provided expert strategic advice that was particularly valuable during the Company’s initial development phase.

Creditex

New York City’s entrepreneurial sector experienced tremendous growth in the late 1990s with the rise of Silicon Alley and establishment of numerous Internet-based startups. Through its sector groups and investments, NYCIF played a key role in making critical connections between some of these technology startups and large corporate investors.

In September 1999, the Fund helped organize a consortium of New York-based financial institutions to both invest and actively participate in a new electronic trading platform for the credit derivatives market. Creditex, Inc. was established by two Wall Street bankers, Sunil Hirani and John McEvoy, who identified a need for a common trading platform in credit derivatives to address the structural inefficiencies of that market.

By August 2008, when it was acquired for $513 million by IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. (ICE), Creditex employed 255 people, of whom 151 were in NYC, with the balance in London and Singapore. In March 2009, Creditex’ parent company ICE received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York State Banking Department to begin processing and clearing credit default swap (CDS) index transactions on a new regulated exchange, ICE US Trust LLC. This new exchange incorporates Creditex’ technology and has become a key part of national regulatory efforts to increase the transparency and accountability of the CDS market.

In addition to NYCIF’s investment dollars, Creditex benefited from the expertise and strategic guidance of NYCIF board representative John Chalsty. Mr. Chalsty, who was Chairman and CEO of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, brought more than a quarter of a century of experience in financial services to Creditex, where he served for a number of years as Chairman of its board.