Elizabeth Davidson of Kresge’s Social Investment Practice recently visited Edmondson Village Shopping Center in Baltimore, the first acquisition of the Chicago TREND Fund. She spoke with us about why Kresge invested, how the deal was built and what she found on the ground.

Chicago TREND was founded in 2016 as a certified benefit corporation, launched with support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust. Its early work was analytical: using market data and predictive modeling to identify neighborhoods on the cusp of change, then supplying the pro forma development services, transaction facilitation and deal structuring that community-driven retail projects typically lack.

Along the way the firm kept finding the same thing: a pipeline of projects that never reached their potential, not for want of demand but due to lack of development capacity, predevelopment capital and retailer relationships. TREND then moved from advising to owning. Through its affiliated nonprofit, Trend CDC, it partnered with the Chicago Community Loan Fund to finance the acquisition and redevelopment of nine shopping centers by local Black developers, a program successful enough to raise another $10 million for a second cohort.

A $500,000 investment from Living Cities, partially funded by Kresge, let TREND acquire two centers outright. At Wallbrook Junction in Baltimore, it went further still, bringing local residents onto the cap table alongside it.

“At Edmondson Village, 200 people are more than customers. They are stakeholders whose ownership changes how we make leasing decisions and handle property management.” — Lyneir Richardson, founder and CEO, Chicago TREND

Q: What drew Kresge to TREND? What problem was this investment trying to solve?

A: Kresge invested in Chicago TREND because it represented something we hadn’t seen elsewhere: a genuine model for closing the racial wealth gap in commercial real estate. When we made our $2 million program-related investment in 2022, fewer than 2% of development firms in the country were Black-led, and TREND’s approach — acquiring overlooked shopping centers and structuring 10-49% community ownership into every deal, with local, majority-Black investors able to buy in for as little as $1,000 — offered a scalable way to put both wealth and governance directly into the hands of the residents these corridors serve. It was a bet on an unproven structure and on a team, led by Lyneir Richardson, with the real estate expertise to make it work.

Four years later, that bet has paid off in the way we hoped it would: TREND now owns and manages six shopping centers across Chicago, Baltimore, and Columbus, has brought in 462 community investors (70% Black, 44% women, more than half from low- and moderate-income neighborhoods), delivered its first cash distributions, and exited its Chatham Plaza investment at a 5x equity multiple and 22% IRR for community co-owners. What began as an inaugural, first-of-its-kind investment in our portfolio has become a proof point that community ownership and strong financial returns aren’t in tension, and TREND is now scaling that model toward $250 million in assets under management.  

Q: How did Kresge structure the deal to solve for that?

A: We structured our investment as a $2 million program-related investment into the Chicago TREND Real Estate Fund, taking a limited partner position alongside a seat on the fund’s board. Unlike a conventional real estate deal, the capital stack makes room for the community ownership that is the whole point of the model: each shopping center carries a minimum of 10% and up to 49% local resident ownership, with Chicago TREND Corporation, a certified B-Corp, serving as general partner and Trend CDC managing community investor engagement on the ground. Our capital sits as preferred equity earning a 5% return, paid quarterly once properties are deployed and stabilized, with any cash flow beyond that split 50/50 between community investors and the GP and CDC, intentionally putting philanthropic capital and local ownership on equal footing rather than asking community investors to take the residual risk. 

Q: What did the site look like when Kresge first underwrote the deal vs. now?

A: Edmondson Village Shopping Center, TREND’s first acquisition under the Fund in August 2023, is a strong early proof point for what this model can do. Edmondson Village opened in 1947 as one of Baltimore’s first major retail destinations. Over the past 30 years, demographic shifts and disinvestment led to property decline, with many storefronts closed. The historic Baltimore center was acquired alongside 200 community investors, and in the three years since, it has moved from stabilization into visible transformation: ten new leases have been signed, including a national grocery chain, primary care, child care, and food retail, bringing the mix of everyday goods and services the surrounding neighborhood had been going without. Capital improvements are well underway; roof, lighting, signage, and site security upgrades are complete, and site work for a new grocery store foundation is 70% finished, with vertical construction on the new buildings now visible from the street. Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland is in predevelopment on a 34,000-square-foot headquarters at the site that will bring more than 100 jobs to the community. In March, Governor Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joined 250 community investors, retailers, and neighbors to celebrate the progress, with Mayor Scott capturing what makes this deal different: “In 2023, a Black mayor and a Black councilman had to get Black residents in a Black neighborhood in a majority Black city to say that a Black person could own this property. Now, there’s not just one Black owner but many.” 

Q: Did you hear any community feedback about the project?

A: On our way back from visiting Edmondson, we started chatting with our Uber driver, who observed that the center used to be “almost abandoned.” He had heard the community invested in it, and he was thrilled to see it becoming a vibrant, safe space again. That’s the part due diligence doesn’t capture.

Q: What has to be true for this model to scale?

A: For this model to scale, three things have to keep happening at once. First, the fund has to keep proving it can generate real financial returns, not just social ones — the Chatham Plaza exit at a 5x multiple and 22% IRR, and Roseland’s first cash distribution to community investors, are exactly the kind of track record that lets philanthropic capital eventually step back and be replaced by more traditional, institutional money, which was always the design intent behind Kresge’s investment. Second, TREND has to build the operating infrastructure to manage that growth without losing what makes it distinctive. Third, the capital stack itself has to keep diversifying — local CDFI debt, new institutional LPs, and corporate grant and investment support so that no single funder, including Kresge, remains a single point of failure. If TREND can keep doing all of that while still closing 10-49% of each deal to local, majority-Black ownership, it will have done more than grow a fund; it will have built a replicable template other cities and other GPs can pick up, which is the real measure of whether this scales. TREND has an ambitious goal of reaching 1,000 community investors and $100 million in assets under management, and we believe the team is well positioned to do so.  

“Our strategy of intentionally inviting local people to invest alongside larger funders has advantages. We benefit by getting more willing and more robust state and city government financial support, faster permits and approvals, and neighbors invested in protecting the assets in the TREND Fund. I am proud to prove that we can strengthen neighborhoods while generating meaningful financial returns for investors.” — Lyneir Richardson, founder and CEO, Chicago TREND