Although originally founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985, Capital Consultants moved to Washington, DC in 1990 and until quite recently was located at the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), just two blocks from the White House. USCM is a non-profit membership association of mayors with populations of 30,000 or more. It is the premier, bipartisan organization representing cities in the United States interacting with member mayors and city governments, the White House, and Congress. As a client, Capital Consultant’s primary issue for the Conference of Mayors included economic development in the post-Cold War era (i.e., the closure of military bases and defense industries and its affect on cities). CC’s report on behalf of the nation’s mayors to the President of the United States and the 104th Congress entitled, “A National Action Plan on Military Base Closings: Recommendations from the Mayors’ Task Force on Military Base Closings and Economic Adjustments,” led to several new pieces of legislation on Capitol Hill in 1995 and 1996, and continues to be one of the most important works on military base closure in America.
Capital Consultants is not only familiar with the most recent government actions affecting cities in the United States, but also actions in cities across the globe as people everywhere deal with the challenges of post-Cold War “conversion.” Capital Consultants has also collected numerous models or “Best Practices” of local economic development and private industry conversion success stories from companies and communities throughout the world.