Stonehenge Capital combines financing with community development

In the fall of 2016, developers in Birmingham, Alabama, completed a $70 million renovation of the Pizitz Building, a historic department store in the heart of downtown that had been vacant and blighted for nearly 30 years.

As Business Report details in its recent feature, the overhaul that transformed the nearly century-old building wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Baton Rouge-based Stonehenge Capital.
The financial services firm helped finance the project using a couple of government incentives—the federal New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program, and federal and state historic building tax credits—that enabled the developer to get the cash it needed up front on favorable terms.

“This building was vacant and an eyesore in downtown Birmingham for 30 years,” says Gordon “Skeet” Leblanc, a managing director and founding partner at Stonehenge. “Now, it’s come back and has helped the entire neighborhood. It’s sort of a perfect example of what we do.”

That a Baton Rouge firm would be making significant development projects possible in markets outside Louisiana might surprise some.
But that’s what Stonehenge Capital does. Since its founding nearly 20 years ago, it has evolved from a traditional private equity and venture capital firm—though it still does plenty of that, too—into a nationally renowned expert in tax credit programs, which it uses to invest in everything from job-creating plant expansions in low-income communities to historic renovations of blighted structures like the Pizitz.

In the years since, it has helped finance hundreds of projects around the U.S.—and in Baton Rouge—and now manages more than $3 billion worth of investments across its three business lines—community development, which is made possible primarily through the NMTC program; tax credit services, which deals with historic building, renewable energy and entertainment industry  tax credits; and traditional private equity and venture capital.
“We say we operate at the nexus of finance and community development,” Stonehenge Capital President and founder Tom Adamek says. “Everything we do, whether it’s historic tax credits, rehabbing historic buildings or new markets, there is always going to be that combination of community development and structured finance.”

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