Innovative Finance Funding: Case Studies
Two Clients,
Two Corridors,
Two IFAC Awards
TGC Supports Harris County Precinct 4 and Doña Ana County Secure U.S. DOT Innovative Finance Funding
Nearly $2 million in Expert Services awards will enable both counties to test public-private delivery of long-planned regional corridors
HOUSTON, TX — When the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Build America Bureau released its list of Innovative Finance and Asset Concession (IFAC) Program awardees in the summer of 2026, two of the 45 projects selected nationwide belonged to TGC clients. Harris County Precinct 4 received $999,000 for the North Westgreen Boulevard corridor in west Harris County, and Doña Ana County, New Mexico received $1,000,000 for the High Mesa Corridor Development Project. Both are Expert Services awards, the IFAC category that funds pre-development work on a specific project rather than general capacity building.
The two awards total nearly $2 million out of a $46.97 million national round spread across 27 states. The Doña Ana County award is the only IFAC selection in New Mexico, and Harris County’s is one of three in Texas. Each came out of a working relationship where TGC already knew the client’s capital program, its staff, and the corridor in question before the Notice of Funding Opportunity was published.
What IFAC Funds, and Why It Fit
Created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, IFAC helps state and local agencies explore innovative financing, value capture, and public-private partnership (P3) approaches for transportation projects that would be eligible for Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) credit assistance. The program is small by federal standards, but it is aimed squarely at the question that stalls most large corridor projects: not whether the road is needed, but how to pay for it and who should deliver it.
That question is one that TGC has explored for most of its 46 years.
“TGC has a long history of being a trailblazer in innovative finance, going back to the early public-private partnership efforts involving all levels of government – local, state, and federal – along with the private sector to deliver, operate, and maintain livable and sustainable communities,” said Jim Webb, AICP, President and CEO of The Goodman Corporation. “We are thrilled to play a role in this iteration of the IFAC Program to help our clients identify novel ways to develop infrastructure systems critical for mobility, goods movement, and economic development.”
Harris County Precinct 4: North Westgreen Boulevard
TGC has supported Harris County Precinct 4 for several years under an on-call professional services contract and a staff augmentation engagement with the Precinct’s Planning and Community Development group. That work has included plan review and needs-based analysis for the Precinct’s capital program, a systematic review of the Precinct’s CIP list against available federal, state, regional, and philanthropic funding sources, and a steady stream of grant applications. Since 2024, applications TGC has prepared for Precinct 4 have secured more than $15 million in awards, including $11.3 million from the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program for Burnett Bayland Park, $2 million from the Reconnecting Communities program for the Inner Katy corridor, H-GAC Livable Centers funding for Park Row, and most recently a $750,000 Community Development Block Grant award for Reginald Moore Park alongside the IFAC award.
North Westgreen Boulevard surfaced through that CIP and funding review. The corridor has been on the City of Houston’s Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan for more than 15 years and was a headline recommendation of Precinct 4’s All in 4 Katy East Plan, yet it remains fragmented, with cross-sections ranging from a four-lane boulevard to a two-lane rural road. What made it an IFAC candidate rather than a conventional construction grant candidate was the delivery question: the northernmost segment through Bridgeland had already been built through a partnership with the master developer, and the Precinct wanted to know whether that model could be extended to the rest of the corridor.
The award will fund 30 percent corridor design with drainage and traffic studies for a nearly seven-mile stretch between FM 529 and IH-10, a benefit-cost analysis prepared to USDOT guidance, NEPA documentation, and a comprehensive evaluation of P3 and value capture options. That evaluation will engage developers, municipal utility districts, and commercial property owners on right-of-way, in-kind improvements, and cost sharing, and will test tools including TIRZs, special assessment districts, impact fee credits, and Chapter 381 agreements. The result will be a replicable framework the County can apply to other corridors in one of the fastest-growing counties in the country.
North Westgreen Boulevard Project Map
High Mesa Corridor Proposed Alignment and co-location with existing assets
Doña Ana County: High Mesa Corridor
TGC’s work in Doña Ana County runs through a partnership with Incite Network, a strategy and grants firm based in Sunland Park, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. The two firms first teamed in 2019, when TGC prepared the benefit-cost analysis for the County’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) application to carry Industrial Avenue over the Union Pacific tracks at Santa Teresa. That application was funded at $1.3 million in 2020, and it set the pattern for everything since: Incite leads client relationships and stakeholder engagement; TGC brings the technical analysis, benefit-cost modeling, environmental review, and financial strategy.
Over the following six years the team has taken Doña Ana County through a series of federal discretionary programs, including a $2 million Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) planning grant for a countywide transportation resilience plan, a Grade Crossing Elimination application, a Charging and Fueling Infrastructure application, and the $61.8 million Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant award announced in January 2025 for the Mesa Grande Drive Extension in Las Cruces. Along the way TGC has served as a subconsultant to Incite on the County’s grant and strategic planning services contract. By the time the IFAC opportunity arrived, the team had a working knowledge of the County’s staff, its port-driven growth at Santa Teresa, and the four-decade history of the High Mesa Corridor idea.
The proposed 33-mile roadway runs from the Union Pacific Intermodal Terminal at Santa Teresa to Interstate 10 near Corralitos Road west of Las Cruces. NMDOT’s 2017 West Mesa Corridor Study settled on the preferred alignment but put the cost above $300 million, well beyond what County and State resources could carry. Truck traffic through the Santa Teresa Port of Entry has since outrun the study’s 2040 projections, and much of that freight moves today over narrow farm and residential roads in the Mesilla Valley. The corridor is also envisioned as a utility spine for water, broadband, and power to serve more than five million square feet of planned industrial development around the port.
In September 2025 the team framed High Mesa for the Build America Bureau as a phased asset – starting as a multimodal county road and growing into a freight highway with frontage roads – with a financial feasibility and P3 evaluation that examines right-of-way and in-kind contributions from industrial landowners, developer-led construction with phased public reimbursement, and tolling, subscription, and hybrid concession models that New Mexico has not historically used. The award will fund that analysis along with schematic design and preliminary engineering and a stakeholder steering committee drawn from the aerospace and defense, advanced manufacturing, and agro-processing sectors.
“TGC has a long history of being a trailblazer in innovative finance, going back to the early public-private partnership efforts involving all levels of government – local, state, and federal – along with the private sector to deliver, operate, and maintain livable and sustainable communities. We are thrilled to play a role in this iteration of the IFAC Program to help our clients identify novel ways to develop infrastructure systems critical for mobility, goods movement, and economic development.”
What Comes Next
Each IFAC award is structured as a cooperative agreement with the Build America Bureau. Both counties are now working through agreement execution and the procurement of the expert services teams that will carry out the funded scopes. For TGC, the two awards are less an endpoint than a midpoint in relationships that have already produced a pipeline of funded projects, and the firm looks forward to helping both clients turn long-standing corridor plans into investment-ready projects.
About The Goodman Corporation
The Goodman Corporation connects capital to communities through innovative planning, engineering, and funding solutions, providing support from concept to ribbon cutting while navigating complex institutional, political, and technical challenges. Since 1980, TGC has secured more than $2 billion in funding and delivered over $3 billion in projects for public- and private-sector clients from offices in Houston and Austin.
For additional information or questions, contact TGC to learn more about our services, our team, and our mission to connect capital to communities across Texas and beyond.