Detroit's Next Wave: New Partnership Fuels Emerging Developers

DETROIT, MI – May 14, 2026 – A new partnership is set to provide critical support for emerging real estate developers in Detroit, aiming to accelerate equitable growth across the city’s neighborhoods. URGE Group, a Detroit-based development and investment firm with a deep history in community-focused projects, has selected Broadstreet Impact Services to provide a suite of fund administration and loan servicing solutions. The collaboration is designed to fortify URGE Group’s place-based investment strategy, which centers on empowering local, often minority-owned, development firms and fostering economic opportunity in under-resourced communities.

This move signals a strategic deepening of URGE Group's capacity to manage and deploy capital effectively, particularly for its most impactful initiatives. For a city undergoing a complex and often uneven revitalization, the alliance highlights a growing understanding that sustainable urban renewal requires not just capital, but also the sophisticated financial infrastructure to support developers rooted in the communities they serve.

The Blueprint for Impact

At its core, the partnership pairs URGE Group’s on-the-ground development expertise with Broadstreet’s specialized financial infrastructure. Broadstreet, a national impact financial services company, will deliver essential back-office services including fund accounting, treasury management, loan servicing, and audit support. These functions, while not glamorous, are the bedrock of institutional-grade investment management, enabling firms like URGE Group to operate more efficiently, maintain compliance, and attract a wider range of mission-aligned investors.

“We're thrilled to partner with the talented team at URGE Group,” said Chris Rakers, Broadstreet Managing Director for fund administration. “Their reputation as a trusted partner in community-centered development make them a great fit for Broadstreet, and we're excited to scale with them as they continue to grow and raise capital for new fund strategies.”

The synergy was a key factor for URGE Group. Roderick Hardamon, the firm's CEO and Founder, emphasized the importance of a partner that understood both the rigor of financial services and the nuances of mission-driven work. “Broadstreet brings a rare combination of institutional-grade fund administration infrastructure and a genuine commitment to partnering with mission-driven managers,” Hardamon stated. “That alignment matters to us.”

This collaboration provides a blueprint for scaling impact. By outsourcing the complex administrative workload, URGE Group can sharpen its focus on its primary mission: identifying promising projects, mentoring emerging developers, and structuring innovative capital strategies to rebuild neighborhood wealth.

Fueling the Engine: The EBIARA Fund

A central component of URGE Group's strategy is the EBIARA Fund, an initiative that makes this new partnership particularly potent. Originally launched in 2022 as a partnership between URGE Imprint, the economic growth nonprofit Invest Detroit, and with $10 million in seed funding from The Kresge Foundation, EBIARA was created to address a critical gap in the market. Unlike traditional project-based loans, the fund provides early-stage operating capital directly to minority-owned development firms, helping them build capacity, hire talent, and create a pipeline of projects.

This model is designed to combat a systemic barrier where promising developers are stuck in a cycle of small, one-off projects, unable to accumulate the wealth and operational runway needed to scale. Since its inception, projects backed by EBIARA portfolio companies have helped stimulate over $240 million in development activity across Detroit neighborhoods. In April 2026, URGE Group formally acquired EBIARA Fund I, fully integrating the platform into its family of companies to expand its reach.

Broadstreet’s services will now provide the robust administrative backbone for the EBIARA Fund. This ensures that as the fund grows, its operations remain transparent, efficient, and accountable, allowing Hardamon’s team to concentrate on the hands-on work of deploying capital and providing technical assistance to its cohort of developers.

Reshaping Detroit's Development Landscape

The URGE-Broadstreet partnership does not exist in a vacuum. It enters a Detroit development landscape marked by both immense opportunity and persistent disparity. While billions have been invested in the city's greater downtown area, many neighborhoods continue to grapple with disinvestment. For emerging developers, particularly people of color, challenges like access to capital, competition from larger firms, and navigating city processes remain significant hurdles.

In response, a powerful ecosystem of support has been growing. Initiatives like Capital Impact Partners' Equitable Development Initiative and the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund have been working to level the playing field. The EBIARA Fund, now strengthened by Broadstreet's administrative power, is a leading example of this movement. It directly confronts the capital access problem by investing in the firms themselves, a strategy aimed at creating long-term, scalable economic advancement rather than just funding individual buildings.

By providing the tools for smaller, local firms to grow, the partnership helps ensure that the people rebuilding Detroit’s neighborhoods reflect the communities themselves, keeping wealth and decision-making power at the local level.

A Convergence of Proven Impact

This alliance brings together two organizations with significant track records in their respective fields. Since its founding in 2012, URGE Group has backed over $300 million in development activity throughout Detroit. The firm estimates its projects have directly benefited 57,000 people, led to the development of more than 800 homes, and created over 3,000 jobs. Its portfolio includes complex, community-centric projects like the proposed revitalization of the abandoned Higginbotham School into mixed-income housing.

Broadstreet, for its part, brings national scale and specialized expertise. With its roots in managing New Markets Tax Credit allocations for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the firm has nearly two decades of experience in community investment. Today, its platform supports 51 multi-asset funds and administers $2.7 billion in capital. Recent investments in technology and a successful SOC 1 audit underscore its commitment to providing institutional-quality service to the impact investing sector.

The partnership is more than a business agreement; it is a strategic fusion of hyper-local development acumen with national financial expertise. As URGE Group leverages Broadstreet’s infrastructure, it gains the operational freedom to expand its mission, ensuring that as Detroit continues its revitalization, the benefits are shared more equitably than ever before.