LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Community Project requests were included in the Omnibus Appropriations package signed into law by President Joe Biden, soon delivering more than $5.1 million in federal funding for our community.
The local investments are part of an overall twelve-bill government funding package that aims to help middle-class families with the cost of living, create American jobs, support the vulnerable, and work to help small businesses and restaurants that are key to our economic future.
Funding for local projects secured by Yarmuth include:
- $330,000 to West Louisville food incubator Chef Space for their planned Consumer-Packaged Goods Expansion in the West End. The funding will be used to provide equipment, storage, and space to allow for a growing consumer packaged goods operation at their site in the Russell neighborhood. Chef Space provides commercial kitchen space and business training for entrepreneurs to start food-related ventures as a means for economic security.
- $250,000 to Louisville Metro Government’s Black and Diverse Business Wealth Initiative. The funding will be used for a workforce development program to provide training directly to businesses and entrepreneurs to help build capacity for Black and diverse business enterprises in the city. In 2020, Louisville announced the Equity in Contracting Task Force via Executive Order of the Mayor with the specific goal of increasing the number of Black and diverse businesses in the city. The Black and Diverse Business Wealth Initiative will help the city make progress toward that goal.
- $1,000,000 to Louisville Metro Government for sidewalk rehabilitation. The funding will go toward repairing or replacing city sidewalks to help remove barriers to accessibility, improve modal choice, and enhance pedestrian safety. The city plans to rehabilitate sidewalks by the following criteria: where entire blocks of sidewalks are rated the worst, within Environmental Justice areas, within areas with high concentrations of households with no vehicles available, within areas with a high number of pedestrian crashes, and within close proximity of schools.
- $225,000 to Volunteers of America Mid-States’ Unity House, one of the only shelters in Jefferson County where families experiencing homelessness can stay together while receiving support. The funding will be used to make critical improvements to the facility, including repairs and renovations of two non-functioning resident bathrooms, as well as Unity House’s kitchen and cafeteria space. The Unity House program works to keep families unified and safe, keeping children out of foster care and providing long-term, comprehensive support services, educational opportunities, and employment readiness training.
- $500,000 to the Parks Alliance of Louisville’s Maple Street Park project. The funding will support the Alliance’s partnership with residents and public, private, and non-profit entities to transform seven city blocks in West Louisville’s California neighborhood into a 20-plus acre public park.
- $480,000 to Louisville and Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District’s Park DuValle Community Odor Control Improvements project. The funding will help make repairs at 109 locations in the Park DuValle neighborhood to prevent odor-causing hydrogen sulfide gases from escaping the sewers. While MSD already invests more than $1 million annually to address customer concerns through sewer main flushing and the cleaning and deodorizing of catch basins, this funding will enable them to install and rehabilitate catch basin traps where odors can persist, especially in hot, dry summer months.
- $1,000,000 to Bellarmine University’s community health profession simulation center to provide state-of-the-art equipment for experiential learning opportunities for students, allowing them to engage in patient care more effectively and in increasingly complex healthcare environments. Simulated learning activities also help mimic clinical scenarios and provide students with contemporary, evidence-based instruction in simulated work and patient care situations.
- $750,000 to the University of Louisville’s Robotics and Additive Manufacturing Pathways to SUCCESS (RAMPS) program to help address the shortage of labor in the skilled manufacturing sector and enhance employment opportunities for underrepresented groups. The university plans to enroll 200 students in the program annually, providing critical advanced manufacturing skills to future workers and targeting emerging technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence (A.I.), and 3D printing.
- $600,000 to YouthBuild Louisville’s Smoketown Hopebox community space project. The funding will be used to continue revitalization efforts centered in the city’s Smoketown neighborhood. The project aims to reimagine a traditional community center as a shared community space that will house a laundromat, health clinic, business incubator, flex space, and more. Working with more than a dozen local partners, including the University of Louisville and IDEAS xLab, YouthBuild Louisville’s Smoketown Hopebox project will help provide much-needed amenities to an underserved community in Louisville.
- $50,000 to Wilderness Louisville to address riverbank erosion issues at Chickasaw Park. The funding would enable Wilderness Louisville to conduct a feasibility study concerning ongoing erosion issues and bank failure problems along the park’s shoreline of the Ohio River. The study will be conducted with the support of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
A detailed section-by-section summary of the full Omnibus Appropriations package can be found here.
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