HUD Secretary Praises Museum Plaza Financing Plan

US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan says he supports the efforts to use a HUD-approved loan to finance construction of the Museum Plaza project.The ambitious development has been stalled for years. Last summer, city officials and the project's developers announced plans to use money from HUD to get construction moving.Some critics have questioned whether it's appropriate to use HUD money for the project, but Secretary Shaun Donovan praised the strategy. “This is a project that has applied to use a very innovative technique with HUD funds," Donovan says "basically what the city has done is to say we’re gonna take some of our grant and we’re going to use it essentially as a guarantee against bringing hundreds of millions of dollars of private capital for revitalization.”HUD has not yet ruled on the loan. The developers of the project still need to secure $140.5 million in additional financing before they can submit the final paperwork for the loan.