Port Covington: Opportunity Zone for the Wealthy

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Here's one from my backyard:

A Trump tax cut meant to help poor areas could pay off for Kevin Plank and Goldman Sachs thanks to misaligned maps

Under Interstate 395 into downtown Baltimore lies what might be the most valuable parking lot in America.

The little sliver of land will allow Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank, one of Maryland’s richest men, and the New York investment bank Goldman Sachs to claim what could amount to millions in tax breaks for Port Covington, their nearby development project.

They have President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul law to thank. The new law has a provision to grant lucrative tax breaks to encourage new investment in poor areas around the country, called “opportunity zones,” carefully selected by each state’s governor.

Port Covington, an ambitious development featuring offices, a hotel, apartments, and shopping, is not in a census tract that is poor.

Port Covington is Under Armor CEO Kevin Plank's project to build a sort-of mini city in southern Baltimore. He's already gotten some substantial tax breaks to for the project and he's now in line to get a ton more thanks to a combination of Trump's tax cuts and some favorable attitudes in the governor's office and the Treasury Dept regarding minor technical discrepancies on some of the maps that are used to determine eligibility that would otherwise have rendered the project ineligible. The area where these maps overlap isn't even residential - it's the corner of a parking lot behind the football stadium, underneath the highway, in between a bunch of industrial and office buildings.

These opportunity zone breaks are supposed to incentivize investment in poor communities, not line the pockets of developers already working on projects in areas abutting middle-income and affluent areas.