The Fort Wayne City Council is committing $1 million from the Legacy Fund to early childhood care and healthcare on the city’s southeast side.
The money is going to help fund Bridge of Grace’s 17-million-dollar Hope Unleashed project. That project includes establishing an early childhood center, where the Legacy Fund money will go and a “comprehensive” health clinic in the Mt. Vernon Park and Pettit-Rudisill neighborhoods.
The project as a whole is called H.O.P.E. Unleashed because it focuses on housing, opportunity, progress and education in those two neighborhoods.
The Fort Wayne City Council opened the floor for discussion on the proposal, but no one offered any instead moving straight to a do pass recommendation vote which was unanimously approved. According to the resolution, “significant private funding is already in place” for the project.
Fort Wayne’s Legacy Fund was established in 2011 by Mayor Tom Henry. The money in that fund is supposed to go towards funding projects that “promote change” in Fort Wayne.
The Legacy Fund committee approved Bridge of Grace’s proposal unanimously late last year moving it to a City Council vote. With the Council’s unanimous approval on Tuesday, the resolution now just needs Mayor Henry’s signature to secure the Legacy Fund money for the Hope Unleashed project.