With governors racing to file Opportunity Zone 2.0 maps by September 28, Brett Theodos and Brady Meixell of the Urban Institute told the National League of Cities that municipalities should stop treating designation as a prize for either the hottest neighborhood or the most distressed one. Using Ohio — the only state with public OZ investment data — they note that only one in three of the state's 328 OZ 1.0 tracts saw a dollar of investment from 2020–2024, and half of all investment went to just nine tracts. The 'Goldilocks' tracts are places that both need capital and can plausibly attract it once the incentive is attached. Local leaders still have a seat: some states are formally asking municipalities to recommend tracts; elsewhere, city staff can lobby the governor's office with ACS socioeconomic trends plus a parcel-level pipeline of actually developable sites. The incentive is as-of-right inside a designated tract, so the land-use mix of the chosen census tracts is the lever localities actually control.
Original reporting by Daniel Cho for Opportunity Zone Invest, an independent OZ 2.0 research site. Facts are drawn from the primary sources cited above per our editorial standards. Nothing here is tax, legal, or investment advice.
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