ShoreBank Corporation and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) recently announced the creation of an initiative designed to help fuel retail and commercial development in underserved.... ShoreBank Corporation and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) recently announced the creation of an initiative designed to help fuel retail and commercial development in underserved urban neighborhoods. LISC will operate the new service, LISC MetroEdge, out of its Chicago office.


LISC has identified business and economic growth as critical elements in neighborhood revitalization, and sees the research MetroEdge provides as a significant tool to help municipalities and neighborhood groups attract retailers and other businesses to communities they might have otherwise overlooked.

MetroEdge is designed to fill the information gap in inner-city markets by combining the collection and analysis of national and local data with the construction of new metrics to gauge market potential in urban areas. ShoreBank Corporation launched MetroEdge in 1998 on the assumption that mainstream businesses were seriously underestimating the consumer, asset and market potential of inner-city neighborhoods. In recent years, MetroEdge has seen increased demand for its services from the nonprofit and government sectors.

For the last 25 years LISC has provided nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) with loans, grants and business expertise to help them build affordable housing, child care centers, schools, recreational facilities and the other buildings and programs that make neighborhoods desirable places to live, work and do business. During that time, LISC has developed strong relationships with those neighborhood groups and their respective municipalities, many of whom are in the market for MetroEdge's services.

Beginning January 6, 2006, LISC MetroEdge will be based in LISC's Chicago office at 1 N. LaSalle St. In the coming year it will work among the 16 neighborhoods in LISC/Chicago¡¯s New Communities Program (NCP) ¨C an ambitious initiative designed to strengthen communities through planning, organizing and human development. LISC MetroEdge will develop market profiles in these neighborhoods. In four of the communities, it will complete comprehensive retail scans, analyzing concentrated buying power, service sector gaps, income diversity, the amount and type of private and public investment, and "float" by retail category (the amount of unmet retail opportunity in a geographic area). Other NCP communities will receive similar analyses in subsequent years.

In addition, it is expected that LISC MetroEdge will begin work in one community outside of Chicago in 2006. Nationally, LISC will incorporate LISC MetroEdge's market research abilities and community consulting expertise to sharpen its new focus on community economic development and to work in concert with LISC's new Research and Assessment unit, which is designed to quantify community development efforts.