A lasting impression

WHEDA program gives businesses a helping hand

By Janine Anderson

Rebecca Walker-Carr is watching her carpentry company grow thanks to WHEDA’s Emerging Business Program. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Walker-Carr

Rebecca Walker-Carr used to be a teacher.

Now she owns RWC Carpentry in Milwaukee.

There’s a pretty big gap between those two careers, and Walker-Carr credits a Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority program for giving her the safety net she needed to make the transition and get her new business off the ground.

Walker-Carr participates in WHEDA’s Emerging Business Program, which partnered her new business with mentor company Kingman Custom Contractors Inc., Delafield. By working with Kingman, Walker-Carr learned more about how the industry works and how to succeed within it.

“It has its ups and downs, but I can see bigger things happening in the future,” she said. “[Without the program] I think I’d still be struggling.”

The struggles started after Walker-Carr made the transition from teaching, which she did for years, to carpentry. Unable to find a job as an apprentice, she started RWC and made her way to the Emerging Business Program.

And now, her company is one of many minority-owned firms WHEDA has brought in to work on the Wesley Scott Center, a senior-living and community center in Milwaukee. The job is RWC Carpentry’s first on a project of that size. Walker-Carr often works on smaller residential remodels.

Walker-Carr’s experience is exactly what WHEDA was looking for when it started the Emerging Business Program several years ago. Instead of entering a neighborhood, putting up housing and leaving, WHEDA wanted to foster lasting change.

Over the past few years, the agency actively worked to foster economic growth in some of the state's poorest areas by building affordable housing, encouraging minority-owned businesses and employing local people during construction to give them valuable work experience.

“We have the ability to grow the economy,” said Antonio Riley, WHEDA’s executive director.

Riley said the programs WHEDA established are helping local economies by assisting businesses. WHEDA projects in several counties — including Milwaukee, Dane, Racine and Kenosha — require 25 percent minority participation.

Riley said the agency also helps diversify the developer pool. A co-developer program partners new minority-owned, development companies with established firms in a two-year process to get the new companies ready to tackle tax-credit development on their own.

Each year, WHEDA receives $10 million in federal tax credits, which have a net value of $100 million per year, Riley said. A few years ago, none of the tax credits went to minority firms.

Now, at least $20 million of that net is going to minority companies every year, and it’s helping minority-owned, development companies learn the business. For example, Madison-based Gorman & Co. Inc. is mentoring with RGH Holdings, Green Bay, through the co-developer program.

The two firms are approaching the end of their first year working together. Chris Laurent, senior development manager with Gorman & Co., said RGH spent its first year learning the process.

Next year, the two companies will partner on a development. And a year from now, RGH should be ready to tackle a project on its own.

“In the long term, because we work in challenged communities, it’s a way to build strong partners we can work with,” Laurent said.