NICI Grantee Spotlight: TREND CDC
February 27, 2025
When Chicago TREND Corporation was founded as a for-profit social enterprise in 2016, the company had a clear mission to build wealth for minority entrepreneurs and families by revitalizing commercial corridors in neglected communities. Within a few years of operation, it was clear that TREND’s data-driven approach to strengthening neighborhoods through commercial real estate investments and acquisitions paved the way for complimentary programmatic opportunities that could bolster community revitalization.
In 2019, Chicago TREND's nonprofit arm, TREND Community Development Corporation (TREND CDC), was established to support TREND’s mission through community engagement and investor education. TREND CDC’s focuses include climate-positive improvements, recognizing that climate resiliency goes hand in hand with economic development. With NICI’s support, TREND CDC is now moving forward with a pilot solar panel project at Butterfield Plaza in Olympia Fields.
NICI spoke with Emma González Roberts, Chief Operating Officer of TREND CDC, and Tay Craig, Chicago TREND’s Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Acquisition and Asset Management, about how the solar panel pilot project at Butterfield Plaza will build climate resiliency into TREND’s shopping center strategy and investments in economic development in the Southland.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
1. What is TREND Community Development Corporation’s (CDC) approach to community economic development projects?
Tay: Chicago TREND’s core mission is to focus on strengthening neighborhoods and building wealth. We deploy three approaches to address that: Through acquisitions, we're able to implement an inclusive ownership strategy through a crowdfunding platform called Small Change that allows community members to donate as little as $1,000 towards owning a portion of a shopping center. Once we acquire the property, we typically hire a minority-owned property management firm and leasing agent. We try to focus on services that are needed in the community and partner with nonprofit organizations to provide those services. We use our local brokers to do that. And the third and key thing that sets TREND apart is that we really focus on providing Black-owned businesses the opportunity to lease storefronts. For a lot of small businesses, they have a really good idea, but their credit might not be the best or they need help with developing a business plan. So, we work with those potential tenants to develop business plans and help provide resources for capital so that they can rent spaces at our shopping centers.
Emma: TREND CDC works hand-in-hand with the approaches Tay mentioned across five areas that we support through grants: Investor engagement education, small business support, climate positive improvements, crime prevention (something that a lot of the communities our shopping centers are located in struggle with), and broader community engagement including partnership events and being a good neighbor to other businesses and institutions in the neighborhoods that we work in.
2. Tell us about the history behind Butterfield Plaza, the initiatives taking place there, and the hopes/goals of the solar panel installation pilot supported by the NICI Impact Grant.
Emma: Butterfield Plaza, the first shopping center TREND acquired in 2020, kicked off TREND’s inclusive shopping center strategy. The Olympia Fields mayor and head of economic development knew Chicago TREND CEO Lyneir Richardson. They reached out during COVID and asked if TREND would be interested in redeveloping the shopping center and taking over the leasing. TREND’s strong suit was very focused on economic development and small business support — but TREND had done it with individual storefronts as opposed to a strip mall setting. So TREND acquired it with FIN Business, LLC and TREND CDC, and did that initial work of bringing in new tenants. When Olympia Fields reached out, Butterfield Plaza was only 40% occupied. Currently, it’s 91% occupied. The anchor tenant is Rich Township Education, which is focused on assisting people with disabilities.
TREND CDC submitted the grant to NICI to support a solar pilot as part of our interest in pursuing climate-positive projects across our portfolio. Inclusive economic development goes hand-in-hand with climate resiliency, but it's not something that we've really done so far. Butterfield Plaza was our very first shopping center where we tried so many things for the first time, so we thought, “Can we try something climate-related here?”
Tay: We're hoping the solar panel installation will create an opportunity for us to gather information, increase our knowledge, and develop lessons learned so that we can use this pilot program as a basis to expand across the portfolio. And, hopefully, we're able to attract socially conscious tenants and investors.
Emma: We're super grateful to NICI for being a supporter. It’s the second grant we've received from them. The first was actually to explore other acquisition opportunities in the South suburbs. They've been really supportive of our model.
3. How do projects like the planned solar panel assessment and installation at Butterfield Plaza address issues around historical racial inequities in wealth creation and property/business- ownership?
Tay: A lot of our tenants are small business owners, and renting a space is not just paying the monthly rent. At the shopping centers, there’s a list of operational costs that are shared between the tenants: Common area lighting, parking lot sweeping, and snow removal. Our feasibility study (conducted with Elevate) concluded that the solar pilot in Butterfield Plaza would be able to reduce our electricity load by 100%. It's a win-win. We reduce operational costs, the tenants see those savings, and those savings can then be reinvested in other avenues such as marketing or other capital improvements within the space.
There’s also some ancillary services that are going to benefit and drive economic growth. For example, in order for us to put these panels on the roof, we have to do some roof replacement intervals to support the weight of the panels. So we’re in the process of awarding the work for roof replacement to a small, local Black-owned roofing company.
Emma: The idea is that we'll take these learnings from the solar project here and apply them to other shopping centers and we'll be able to have these inclusively-owned shopping centers also contribute to climate resiliency. We know that climate resiliency is a huge racial equity issue in the South suburbs. We're proud to be making a small positive change there.