Economic Development Project Manager

About the role

The City of Spartanburg and Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM) will partner with FUSE to embed an Executive Fellow with housing development expertise who will assess priority development sites, build project-level financial models, and engage mission-aligned developers and capital partners to advance Spartanburg’s place-based housing goals.

Responsibilities

• Conduct an in-depth discovery phase to develop a comprehensive understanding of Spartanburg’s housing development landscape.
  • Lead a structured listening tour with key stakeholders, including City leadership, the Spartanburg Housing Authority, Northside Development Group, the Highland leadership team, A Place to Call Home, local philanthropic funders, banking partners, and SAM leadership and community engagement staff.
  • Review the city’s emerging state of housing report, existing site inventories, the current opportunity zone landscape, and relevant state and federal financing programs available within the South Carolina context, including low-income housing tax credits and Community Reinvestment Act tools.
  • Research best practices from peer cities that have successfully built housing development pipelines in growing markets.
• Develop and begin executing a structured housing development pipeline strategy.
  • Conduct site-by-site assessments of the city’s highest-priority development opportunities, starting with Highland and extending to other identified locations, to evaluate feasibility, ownership structures, zoning, and development potential.
  • Build initial financial models, including preliminary sources and uses analyses and cash flow projections, to illustrate achievable deal structures and the capital needed to advance them.
  • Identify and engage mission-aligned developers with experience in mixed-income and affordable housing, facilitating introductions and building relationships with city leadership.
  • Support the development of a local investment case, helping to communicate a clear, data-informed picture of Spartanburg’s housing opportunities to policymakers, foundation boards, and banking partners such as Fifth Third Bank, which has expressed interest in expanding its community investment in the region.
• Work closely with SAM to connect the housing pipeline to SAM’s family engagement data and cradle-to-career indicators, ensuring that priority sites are aligned with the neighborhoods where housing investment will most directly support children’s stability and outcomes.
• By the conclusion of the fellowship, the City of Spartanburg will have a concrete, actionable housing development pipeline, with site-level assessments, preliminary financial models, and identified developer and capital partners for its highest-priority opportunities.
• Establish clear ownership of the pipeline function and identify sustainable structures to carry this work forward, ensuring that the technical frameworks and relationships built during the fellowship remain an active resource for the City beyond the fellowship period.

Qualifications

• Synthesizes complex information into clear and concise recommendations and action-oriented implementation plans.
• Develops and effectively implements both strategic and operational project management plans.
• Generates innovative, data-driven, and result-oriented solutions to complex challenges.
• Responds quickly to changing ideas, responsibilities, expectations, trends, strategies, and other processes.
• Communicates effectively verbally and in writing and excels in active listening and conversing.
• Fosters collaboration across multiple constituencies to support more effective decision-making.
• Establishes and maintains strong relationships with diverse stakeholders, both inside and outside of government, particularly community-based relationships.
• Embraces differing viewpoints and implements strategies to find common ground.
• Demonstrates confidence and professional diplomacy while effectively interacting with individuals at all levels of various organizations.

Benefits

This amount is not representative of market-rate salaries for the experienced professionals in our program but is intended as compensation for a year of public service.

Pay

Salary: Executive Fellows are FUSE employees and receive an annual salary of $95,000. Fellows can also access various health, dental, and vision insurance benefits.

Schedule

Fellows will be embedded within the City of Spartanburg’s City Manager’s Office, reporting directly to the Project Supervisor and receiving strategic guidance from the Executive Sponsor.