Bronx
Charter School for the Arts ("BCSA") has been designed to be an elementary
school with a rich and rigorous curriculum and instruction in the traditional
academic areas, serving the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx Borough in
New York City. While the Hunts Point neighborhood and surrounding communities
have been experiencing a prolonged period of growth characterized by new and
renovated housing, growing business and a thriving arts community, academic
outcomes in neighborhood public schools are seriously lagging.The school is centered around arts education, which includes studies of the cultural roles and significance of the arts, instruction in the practice of visual and performing arts, and the development of the ability to use art as a language to access, process, and express. Music, drama, dance, visual arts, and crafts will be taught as individual subjects and integrated throughout all traditional subject areas.
RDF facilitated
financing participation by four lenders providing $4,500,000 million in financing
to support the acquisition and conversion of a 24,000 square foot former food
warehouse into a state-of-the-art charter school facility. This unique and precedent
setting transaction consisted of Bank of America as primary lender in the amount
of $3.3 million, with RDF and others providing subordinate debt and operating
capital during the construction period. RDF also used $430,000 of US Department
of Education Facility Financing Demonstration Grant funds to guarantee primary
debt service.