iStock illustration

An online marketplace for impact investors looking to put money into “smart growth” opportunity zones has launched featuring seven Massachusetts communities, including Boston and Salem.

Smart Growth America organized the National Opportunity Zones Marketplace to funnel investments towards walkable, mixed-use projects that do not contribute to “car-dependent sprawl,” it said in an announcement yesterday.

“Opportunity Zones can and should be a powerful tool to encourage more equitable development and give more people a fair shot at opportunity,” Christopher Coes, director of Smart Growth America’s LOCUS coalition of real estate investors and developers, said in a statement. “This new marketplace will be a powerful tool for helping communities that have a commitment to livability, affordability and walkability connect with like-minded developers and investors to partner on smart, equitable investment that can lift up everyone. We are excited to expand our work empowering communities in this way, and we deeply believe that the transparency offered by this new Marketplace is key to both building public trust and maximizing public benefits.”

The marketplace currently features six communities across the country – Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Seattle, Pittsburgh and Norfolk, Virginia – and seven Bay State communities which were part of a pilot program funded by the Barr Foundation now being expanded as part of the marketplace. Those towns and cities are: Boston, Barnstable, Salem, Fitchburg, Yarmouth, Greenfield and Montague.

“At its core, this new Marketplace is intended to be a national hub where social impact developers and investors from across the country can come to look for potential projects and places to park their patient capital and partner with cities to invest in equitable development,” an announcement from Smart Growth America states.