Less than a week after voting the proposal down, the West End Opportunity Partnership board will again consider buying the Nia Center on behalf of Goodwill Kentucky.
The partnership’s board will meet virtually Wednesday night to consider an amended proposal. This time, the group is proposing to pay each of the small business owners located there $5,000. That’s on top of additional promises by Goodwill to cover moving expenses and security deposits at a new location.
Goodwill has been pushing the partnership to buy the west Louisville business hub and lease it to the nonprofit, which wants to demolish the Nia Center and replace it with 78 apartment units for lower-income residents.
The redevelopment plans became public earlier this month, when Goodwill said it would purchase the building from TARC, the city’s bus agency. The partnership was subsequently asked to facilitate the deal by buying the property then giving Goodwill a 99-year lease.
All these negotiations among nonprofit leaders, board members and city officials have happened without input from the small business tenants that will be most impacted, said Shaun Spencer, who owns a print shop in the Nia Center.
“We’re being used as a pawn to get this deal through, yet nobody has asked us what we want,” Spencer said. “We feel invisible. We are not even a second thought, we’re a third or fourth thought.”
There are currently 10 businesses located with the Nia Center at 2900 West Broadway. That means the Partnership’s proposal to pay the tenants directly could cost the organization $50,000.
The West End Opportunity Partnership is a quasi-governmental body created by the Kentucky General Assembly in 2021 to spur development in west Louisville. It’s funded through a mix of private dollars and taxes paid by West End residents.
Spencer, who has helped lead the effort by tenants to push back against the redevelopment, said she had spoken with four other business owners by Tuesday morning. None of them were swayed by the proposed payments.
“The money is not enough,” she said.
Spencer said many tenants are still concerned about being relocated. While Louisville Metro and Goodwill have promised to help business owners find new space, those conversations have not happened yet.
“It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all for everybody, because we have different needs,” she said. “You haven’t even talked to us to find out what those needs are.”
Spencer said tenants who are opposing the deal are speaking with partnership board members, urging them to vote “No.”
She said they’re also talking with Metro Council members about an alternative deal: They want the city to purchase the Nia Center and turn it over to the West Louisville Dream Team to operate and expand the small business hub.
At the partnership’s meeting last week, board members were split on whether to purchase the Nia Center and facilitate the demolition. The proposal failed on a 9-9 vote.
Some of the board members who opposed the deal said they were concerned about displacing the tenants and demolishing an important resource for Black business owners. Supporters, meanwhile, argued the city has a huge need for housing that's affordable to its poorest residents.
The board’s attorney told members that TARC, which owns the building, is planning to sell the Nia Center with or without Goodwill.
TARC Executive Director Ozzy Gibson echoed that sentiment at a Metro Council Budget Committee meeting this week.
“We are not in the property management business,” Gibson said.
TARC does not know how much of the proposed sale price for the Nia Center, $2.1 million, it will actually receive to put toward other public transit needs. TARC and Louisville Metro purchased the building using a federal grant.
Gibson told Metro Council that TARC could end up with less than a million dollars, but it’s ultimately up to the federal government. He said they may give TARC a portion of the proceeds, or allow them to shift the entire sale price to deferred maintenance projects.
