Bigelow Foundation Supports St. Paul Education, Community Development

The board of trustees of the F.R. Bigelow Foundation supported various efforts to strengthen and expand education and community development in St. Paul as part of the foundation’s November 2004 grantmaking.

The foundation provided a $100,000 grant to the Saint Paul Public Schools to help launch three new Transitional Language Centers. The centers will be located at the Como Park, Hayden Heights and Phalen Lake elementary schools, and will serve a total of 450 children from kindergarten through sixth grade. The grant will help finance coordination and staffing expenses at the centers, which will operate from July 2004 through August 2005 as the school district’s core effort to meet the unique needs of approximately 1,000 new Hmong students from the Wat Tham Krabok refugee camp in Thailand.

In other support for education, the foundation awarded a $75,000 grant to the Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative to provide bridge and expansion funding for the organization’s Healthy Child/Youth Development Program and After School Enrichment Program, which recently lost federal funding. The Collaborative is a partnership of Ramsey County, Ramsey Action Programs Head Start, four suburban Ramsey County school districts, nonprofit social service agencies and community members. The Collaborative integrates prevention and early-intervention services for at-risk families by providing funding, training and coordination to 120 programs that offer health, safety and security services to children and youth.

The foundation also supported the development of new affordable housing in St. Paul through a $50,000 grant to the Central Community Housing Trust, which will help finance the redevelopment of the Crane Ordway Building for affordable housing. CCHT was founded in 1986 in an effort to replace housing units lost through construction of the Minneapolis Convention Center. Since that time the organization has become one of the largest providers of affordable permanent housing in Minnesota. This grant will help fund CCHT’s first development in St. Paul. The Crane Ordway building will contain 67 affordable rental units of housing, 53 efficiency apartments, 15 one-bedroom apartments and a first-floor community room. The units will be rented to individuals and couples living at 30 percent of medium income (34 units) and 50 percent of medium income (33 units). A special effort will be made to promote these apartments to seniors, and 20 percent of the units will be set aside for homeless adults. Construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006.

Affordable housing in St. Paul also got a boost from the foundation’s $75,000 grant to Local Initiatives Support Corporation to support LISC’s Twin Cities Local Area Account, which provides predevelopment financing, interim construction financing and technical assistance to community development corporations for east metro community development. The St. Paul Local Initiatives Support Corporation office supports affordable housing, employment programs and durable institutions that preserve and enhance local neighborhoods. In 2003, LISC provided east metro partners with approximately $500,000 in predevelopment financing for at least 146 units of housing. LISC will continue its focus on increasing rental housing production in St. Paul and will also work to develop affordable housing in east metro suburban communities.

In total, the board of trustees of the F.R. Bigelow Foundation approved 28 grants totaling $1,027,500 at its November 2004 meeting. For a complete list of grants, visit the foundation’s Web site (select “News”).

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