Riverside Plaza, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of the largest housing projects in the United States. It was designed by the late architectural icon Ralph Rapson and built between 1971 and 1973 as Phase 1 of a seven-phase, 12,500-unit project that was part of a HUD pilot urban redevelopment program called New Town, In Town. After the completion of Phase 1, HUD abandoned the New Town, In Town concept and Riverside Plaza is only one of two existing today. Presently, Riverside Plaza consists of 1,303 rental units, a charter school, a grocery store, a daycare, a tenants’ association, a cultural center, and an 800-car parking garage for a total of 1.4 million square feet. More than 5,000 people call Riverside Plaza their home.

On January 6, 2011, Sherman Associates closed on one of the largest and most complex Tax Credit rehabilitation projects in our nation’s history, and began the substantial rehabilitation of the complex: a two-year, $132 million acquisition rehabilitation. The financing for the project includes more than 16 different types of funding from both public and private sources, including city, county, state and federal funding, and Low Income and Historic Tax Credits. During the financing process, Riverside Plaza was placed on the National Register of Historic Places less than 40 years after it was constructed and received one of the first—and to-date the largest—allocations of State Historic Credits in Minnesota.

Speaker: George Sherman, Principal, Sherman Associates