A pair of investment fund managers came to Butler on Wednesday to pitch to a room of about 30 government and business leaders regarding Butler County's one-and-only opportunity zone.

The men, Michael Butler and his father, Jim Butler, want to facilitate tax incentivized investment into the opportunity zone, an area where investors can spend their money in lieu of paying federal capital gains taxes.

They lauded the open-ended nature of the zone's tax benefits, saying that county residents and leaders ought to figure out how best to use the designation.

“You can create the solutions you need yourself; you just have to then attract that equity capital with the tax benefits to then come in and provide that infusion of capital,” Jim Butler said.

Opportunity zones owe their existence to 2017's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Along with a litany of tax reductions, the federal law carved out an avenue for investors to avoid capital gains taxes while spending money on projects in officially designated pieces of land known as opportunity zones.

The zones are generally positioned in low-income census tracts, although there are few limits on what the projects must entail. Across the nation, the tax incentive has been employed for everything from workforce housing to luxury hotels.

In June 2018, Gov. Tom Wolf finalized a list of designated opportunity zones in Pennsylvania.

Butler County's zone covers most of Main Street in downtown Butler as well as a portion of the town stretching from Main Street east, roughly covering the blocks around East Jefferson Street. There are about 8,800 such zones nationwide and about 300 in Pennsylvania.

U.S. Census data for the zone estimates its population at 2,212 people.

The median household income in the zone is $21,677, according to census data. About 33 percent of the population there is below the poverty level.

The two men came as a team, but they technically represented two separate components of their fund. Michael Butler spoke generally about how investment in opportunity zones works, and talked up their versatility.

“It is easily the most dramatic tax incentive for individuals that the government has rolled out,” Michael Butler said.

Then, Jim Butler explained their fund's specific method. The group employs something that's coined “appraisal gap insurance” to incentivize owner-occupied homes without depreciating local property values through typical grants. They insure buyers wanting to purchase homes with appraised values lower than the amount needed to buy and fix their problems — a deficit Jim Butler described as the “appraisal gap.”

If operational, investors looking to avoid capital gains taxes would give money to their fund, and then the fund would give money to their insurance company to serve it to the community.

Whether that happens in Butler County, Wednesday's idea seemed like it would be the first of several considered in Butler's zone.

The event was associated with the Center for Community Development, and that group's executive director, Joe Saeler, organized the presentation.

Saeler offered his summary on the topic to close the speeches.

“It's not something that can be decided today,” Saeler said. “We need projects, and we need investors.”