Plans to turn a west Louisville small business hub into an apartment complex are back to square one after it failed to get support from the West End Opportunity Partnership.
The partnership’s board, which first rejected the proposal last week, held another special meeting Wednesday night, where board members voted against purchasing the Nia Center 9-6. Goodwill Kentucky had asked the partnership to buy the business hub and lease it to them for $1 per year. Goodwill planned to demolish the Nia Center and turn it into a 78-unit apartment complex for lower-income residents.
The only difference between Wednesday’s proposal and the original one was a commitment from the partnership to pay each of the Nia Center tenants being displaced $5,000 to cover moving costs.
Board member Gaberiel Jones, Jr., who represents the Russell neighborhood, said he felt the vote on a new proposal felt rushed.
“There are good ways to spend millions of dollars, there are bad ways to spend millions of dollars but I’m concerned we are pushing toward the bad ways by spending $2 million in a hurry,” Jones said.
Other board members expressed concerns about tying up a significant amount of money in a single project, money that could be used to award other grants. They echoed the concerns of the small business tenants who would be displaced.
Under the proposed deal, the partnership, which is funded through a mix of private funds and taxpayer dollars, would have purchased the Nia Center for $2.1 million.
The proposed project drew considerable pushback from the small business owners who call the Nia Center home. They slammed Goodwill and Louisville Metro for not talking to them directly about their needs and trying to demolish what they say is an important resource for Black entrepreneurs.
The Transit Authority of River City, Louisville’s bus agency, notified tenants it planned to sell the Nia Center in May. It’s not clear if leaders still plan to move forward with a sale, now that it appears the partnership will not be a part of the deal.
Nia Center ‘needs to stay there’
Ahead of the meeting Wednesday night, Nia Center tenants and some West End residents held a press conference calling on board members to vote “no.”
Regina Whitlow, who’s owned a salon in the Nia Center for the past decade, said the push to demolish the building “has been a shock.”
“I chose the Nia Center because it’s centrally located and my customers were happy,” Whitlow said. “My business has grown. I was just getting ready to do a revamping, an updating of my salon.”
Whitlow said west Louisville needs the Nia Center, which has “plenty of resources, plenty of striving businesses, just incubators of new businesses.”
She said the owners there have become a family.
“It’s going to be a great loss,” she said. “It needs to stay there.”
Other residents and community groups have also voiced support for the business hub. The Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhood Associations sent a letter to the partnership board on Tuesday to express “unified opposition” to the deal.
“We urge the board to reconsider this proposed transaction and instead align its actions with the intent of the WEOP statute and the will of the people of west Louisville,” the letter stated. “Failure to do so will only deepen mistrust and invite greater scrutiny of WEOP’s operations and legitimacy.”
At the Wednesday press conference, Danette Matthews, a west Louisville resident and founder of the West End Community Action Network, said the issues are larger than just one project.
“It’s a pattern that we recognize,” Matthews said. “A pattern of decisions made for us and not with us, a pattern of using public dollars without public power and insights and it’s a pattern of displacing Black people and businesses and masking it as progress.”
Matthews said it's important for the partnership board to know that West End residents are watching and organizing.
