Plaza Saltillo Joint Development Project

In 1990, Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Capital Metro) in Austin, Texas bought a 13-acre tract with a rail line bisecting it. FTA helped Capital Metro acquire the property with a grant of $475,000. In 2012, Capital Metro relocated the rail line with another FTA grant of $4.3 million to unlock the site's value for develoment. After soliciting proposals to develop the site, Capital Metro chose the Endeavor Real Estate Group’s development proposal because it best responded to the solicitation’s goals and provided the greatest long-term value to Capital Metro and the local community.

The joint development project, located just west of the Plaza Saltillo MetroRail station, will include 800 housing units, 110,000 square feet of retail, an office building, and more than 1.4 acres of open space. The project is expected to generate at least 600 new transit riders per day. Endeavor is investing $40 million in private funding to build out this mixed-use district. Capital Metro will retain ownership of the site and ground lease it to the developer for 99 years. In exchange, Endeavor will pay Capital Metro cumulatively more than $160 million, which represents a return on FTA’s original investment of more than 34-fold.

Kansas City Streetcar Transportation Development District

In Kansas City, Missouri, a new two-mile-long streetcar line has injected nearly $2 billion into the city’s economy since 2012, when voters approved a local tax package to support the streetcar service. The taxes, including property and parking assessments, and one-cent sales tax, are levied in the Kansas City Downtown Transportation Development District around the streetcar corridor. The local taxing district funded the $102 million capital construction cost. The U.S. Department of Transportation also funded construction of the streetcar with a $20 million TIGER grant and $17 million in other DOT funds. The local taxing district entirely funds the streetcar’s ongoing operations and maintenance costs

Since the project was approved in 2012, city officials have recorded 40 major development projects along the streetcar route, including a $300 million, 800-room hotel and convention center, a $121 million project to convert a 30-story office building to apartments, and the $37 million renovation of a vacated theater that will house an 85,000-square-foot community center. Streetcar service began in May 2016. Total ridership in 2017 was more than 2 million. In 2017, Kansas City voters approved a new transportation development district to fund an extension of the streetcar 3.75 miles.