Explanation
This ordinance authorizes the City Clerk to enter into a grant agreement with Community Development for All People (CD4AP) in support of the South End Café project.
CD4AP is in the process of launching a social enterprise called the South End Café. The Café is designed to provide good paying jobs to those who are having a hard time finding employment, such as returning citizens and those who have been out of the workforce for an extended period of time. Positions in the Café will be offered to people without prior experience, and employees will gain a work history and practical training in both soft and hard job skills that they will leverage into future employment opportunities. CD4AP will create relationships with South Side employers with the goal that they will recruit from staff for any full-time employment opportunities.
The Café will also offer affordable, healthy meals in a neighborhood where access to healthy food is limited. As the area around the Café continues to develop, it is important to have places that are affordable and accessible for people with low income. In addition, the Café will provide a place for community members to gather for meetings, activities and socialization. So called “third places,” where people come together to build relationships, are critical in achieving community transformation, and CD4AP has made the creation of such places a priority in their work. The Café will begin construction in August, 2021 and is expected to open in February, 2022.
Fiscal Impact: Funding is available within the Neighborhood Initiatives subfund.
Emergency action is requested in order to avoid any delay in providing CD4AP with the resources necessary to complete the construction and opening of the South End Café.
Title
To authorize the City Clerk to enter into a grant agreement with Community Development for All People in support of the South End Café project; to authorize an appropriation and expenditure within the Neighborhood I...
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