Community Real Estate Development | Retail Properties

Investing in vibrant community spaces

We build and revitalize properties that create useful community spaces — places for people to work, create, gather, do business, access vital services, and more.

Live-work-create campuses

like the 45-acre Revolution Mill project in Greensboro, North Carolina.

High-quality office, retail and community spaces

for small businesses, nonprofits, and community institutions, like the Beacon Point commercial development in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Historic revitalization projects

like our renovation of the W.G. Pearson Center in Durham, North Carolina.

Community facilities and investing in places

In 1991, Self-Help began to develop and manage commercial real estate with a focus on historic revitalization. Our development work includes office, residential and retail space in scores of locations across the U.S.

Our aim is to support growing communities by working with local partners to provide places for community members to gather, celebrate and work. Much of this work includes restoration of historic buildings, keeping downtown areas the lively — and beautiful — places they were intended to be.

Engaging with communities, partners and tenants

We focus on inclusive and equitable development supporting community interests. We strive to further community interests and to build long-term relationships with our partners and tenants. We work closely with community partners to ensure that our projects meet the needs of our communities and help expand the capacity of nonprofits, small businesses, and other mission-forward and community-serving institutions.

Consistent with Self-Help’s overall mission, we are particularly focused on serving individuals and organizations led by and supporting people of color, women, rural residents, and low-wealth communities.

We work closely with partners and bring particular expertise in historic buildings, urban infill new construction, utilization of federal and state tax credit programs, and more.

Successful projects usually result from exploring and understanding community assets and opportunities, building on-the-ground partnerships, finding mission- and financial-anchor tenants, and structuring creative financing to bring the project vision to life.

Revolution Mill, in Greensboro, North Carolina, was first constructed in 1898. Self-Help acquired the property in 2012 and set to work creating a live-work-create campus that could become an anchor institution for the neighborhood. Today, Revolution Mill features:

600,000 square feet of commercial space
150 mixed-income apartments, creative studios, galleries and public community amenities
A additional 145,000-square-foot historic building that includes 33 mixed-income residential units and a diverse mix of commercial tenants, entrepreneurs, and a new restaurant.

Durham, NC

The W.G. Pearson Center is a former public school that we acquired in partnership with local nonprofit Student U, which serves middle and high schoolers who will be first-generation college students. We renovated the historic campus using Historic Tax Credits and New Markets Tax Credits, as well as a local public-private partnership. The building provides 57,000 square feet of affordable space for Student U (primary tenant) and several other youth-serving nonprofits who are Student U’s subtenants.

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