HUD/Cessna/City of Wichita
Partnership for Welfare to Work

Brief Description
This project is an innovative public/private partnership, consisting of the City of Wichita, Kansas, the Cessna Aircraft Corporation, the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development and a host of other community partners. The City of Wichita, through a Community Development Block Grant, and Cessna helped finance the conversion of a long-abandoned building located on 21st Street, the city's most troubled area in terms of crime and unemployent rates, into a Cessna training and subassembly facility. This facility has already graduated over 150 people into permanet employment. In 1994, HUD awarded the City of Wichita a $1.5 million special purpose grant for the acquisition of a property adjoining that of the initial building, and Cessna is expanding its operations to include a new Learning and Work Complex, which will include a day care center. This project is revitalizing Wichita's northeast and providing learning and career opportunities to those previously labeled "unemployable." Of the 115 new jobs created, 51% will go to low and moderate income neighborhood residents. It is of special note that Cessna has idenitfied three major impediments to success: the absence of reliable transportation, the absence of accessible child care facilities, and the presence of an abusive home environment. Cessna's complex will include a child day care center and 36 residential courts to house those entering the training program, directly addressing the day acre issue and eliminating the other two.

Contacts
Agency Contact: Mary Ellen Bergeron
NPR Contact: Jerry Nikolaus, phone (202) 632-0150, fax (202) 632-0390, email jerry.nikolaus@npr.gsa.gov

Presentation
Date of Award: 02/03/98
Award Presenter: Susan Valaskovic