KeyBank presents $200K grant to the Community Development Corporation of Utah

The KeyBank Foundation presented a check for $200,000 to the Community Development Corporation of Utah during an Aug. 5 ceremony at America First Field. It was part of the bank’s 200th anniversary celebration taking place in each of KeyBank’s 27 markets. 

The CDC of Utah helps the community by empowering people on the path to financial security, housing stability, and access to affordable homes through its KEYS (Knowledge, Equity and Your Success) program. 

Chris Gorman, KeyCorp chairman and CEO, said Salt Lake City “is a big part of KeyBank’s future. We’ve got a great team on the ground here, and Salt Lake has actually been named our Market of the Year twice since 2018. There’s a lot of growth opportunities here.”

KeyBank’s bicentennial grant program is designed to strengthen Community Development Financial Institutions, known as CDFIs, for the role they play in advancing affordable housing and small-business development.

“I think Utah has the best business ecosystem of any market we travel to,” Gorman said. “There’s a lot of people in Utah who have been immensely successful and willing to fund these young businesses. For the people in our business who are helping other people raise capital and helping people create value, this is a really good environment.”

“I grew up here, moved away and came back,” said Drew Yergensen, Utah market president for KeyBank. “You can point to the Olympics, the success of some of these entrepreneurs the last 10 years, and you see people who are willing to invest here. What’s interesting is that since the pandemic, people have wanted to move here. All of a sudden, more and more people are expanding their careers by moving back to Utah and setting up shop here. So I think we’ve got a lot of positive trends. KeyBank has really put a lot of investment behind it.”

He added that many of those successful Utahns are behind the Olympic movement, saying that seeing the investment in infrastructure and the private-public partnerships that are formulating is exciting.

Speaking about addressing the issue of affordable housing, Gorman said KeyBank is “the No. 2 market participant in the United States in affordable housing. It’s one of the great challenges facing our country. The good news is there’s bipartisan support for affordable housing. It makes a lot of sense for developers to be engaged in it. The CDFIs are a piece of it, but what Key is doing more broadly is very impactful.

“The home affordability equation is something that everybody is focused on,” he added. “The average first-time homebuyer is 38 years old. Home prices are rising, but there’s not a lot on the market. It’s a challenge, and affordability is something that we want to be a part of the solution.”

He said that unlike some other markets, Salt Lake is among the fastest-growing. “As we look forward to the next 10-20 years, which we like to do, I think that opportunity to outgrow the United States average genuinely exists. It’s a good state to do business, there’s a lot of capital, people with a lot of great ideas.”

The CDC has programs to address the housing issue,” Yergensen said. “We’re giving them more money to help them with the resources to reach different parts of the community that they’re not reaching. A grant can help them do that.”

The KeyBank Foundation has committed $5.4 million to the grants program.