Enterprise Community Development launched a joint venture with Harrison Development after it furnished an investment of nearly $3M in the second phase of the builder's Upton Gateway project in West Baltimore.

It is the second partnership that Enterprise Community Development, an Enterprise Community Partners affiliate, has formed through its Let’s Build Accelerator, a program it created to better support minority developers primarily by providing project capital.

“As a partner in our Let’s Build Accelerator, Harrison Development will gain access to resources of particular importance to BIPOC developers, especially capital and development capacity, along with Enterprise’s deep bench of talent and resources, as a co-developer and financial partner," Enterprise Community Development Vice President of Real Estate Shelynda Brown said in a statement. "This collaboration produces just what is needed: crucial homeownership opportunities for residents that deeply need them."

Harrison Development President and CEO Dean Harrison, who once lived in the West Baltimore neighborhood, said in the release he is "grateful for the opportunity" to partner with Enterprise as part of the program.

Harrison Development plans to erect 38 row homes for mixed-income residents along Edmondson and Harlem avenues in the Upton community. A neighborhood, according to Live Baltimore, that is "known as one of Baltimore's earliest African-American middle class neighborhoods and is celebrated for its well-preserved architectural detail and ties to famous African-Americans in history, including Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Mitchell."

Plans call for rehabbing abandoned row homes into what Enterprise called "modern" and "stylish" for-sale homes. Harrison Development already started work on the second phase of Upton Gateway. Enterprise expects the development period to last 16 to 18 months.

Enterprise's first Let's Build Accelerator partnership was with Durrani Development to build 86 affordable units at the $47M Alabama Avenue Apartments in D.C.

As part of that partnership, Enterprise helped Durrani secure $23.1M in tax-exempt bonds from the D.C. Housing Finance Agency and a nearly $13M loan from the D.C. Housing Production Trust Fund, along with almost $10M in debt from R4 Capital with tax credits and equity via R4 Equity.