Zions Bank has been an active purchaser of Housing Authority Bonds as various entities are trying to deal with the affordable housing crisis in various parts of our state. The Bank worked with the Housing Authority of Salt Lake County, Housing Authority of Salt Lake City, as well as Moab City to help finance some of their affordable housing needs. Recently Zions Bank purchased a $2,000,000 Housing Assistance Management Enterprise “HAME” Multi-Family Housing Loan to help construct 108 affordable housing units in downtown Salt Lake City. The units will be built at 1749 S State Street where the current Capitol Motel sits.  The Motel will be torn down and the new units will take its place.  HAME is the nonprofit financing arm of the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City. This project is part of the Blue Ribbon Initiative and has tremendous support from local leaders for being built in order to “clean up” State Street and to provide more affordable housing in addition to some temporary transition housing.

Timber Lakes is a 1,450-lot cabin area east of Heber City, in Wasatch County, Utah. The bonds were initially issued as an 8.125% Special Assessment Bond used for improvements to the Timber Lakes culinary water system. Timber Lakes did an advanced refunding with Zions Bank ($4.352 million Water Revenue Refunding Bonds) using a Cinderella Bond structure that made the bonds taxable until the 2021 call date. Net water revenues in addition to the special assessment revenues were pledged to obtain a much lower interest rate as a water revenue bond. After the call date, the Cinderella Bonds convert to a tax-exempt fixed rate for the remaining life of the bonds. Final NPV savings realized by Timber Lakes SSD were $641,081 or $63,328 per year.

Morgan School District purchased six school buses through the Zions Bank equipment lease program. The equipment lease acts as a capital purchase mechanism allowing the District to own the buses after they have made their last payment. Spreading the costs of the buses over five years allowed the District to avoid a large upfront cost and help strengthen their cash balances.

Zions was selected to purchase $3.56 million in Sewer Revenue Refunding Bonds from the City of Moscow, producing net present value savings of over 8%.

Capital City Development Corp. (CCDC), Boise’s urban renewal agency, selected Zions Bank among six bank bidders for the purchase of its $13 million Redevelopment Bond (tax increment). Although CCDC had not initially intended to also complete a refunding at the time it solicited bids, the terms from Zions were favorable enough to allow CCDC to request that an additional $5.145 million be issued to refund prior bonds. Zions Bank increased its commitment and purchased the full $18.145 million.

After struggling for several years to find a bank purchaser for its general obligation bonds due to an unusual legal structure, Zions worked with the District over several weeks to fully understand the credit before being selected to purchase $1,979,736 over a 15-year term.