| Ten of Louisville, Kentucky's most impoverished neighborhoods make up the city's Enterprise Community. These distinctive neighborhoods are located primarily in Louisville's West End, adjacent to the city's central business district. Home to 50,000 individuals - most of whom are African Americans - the neighborhoods suffer from declining populations, business and personal disinvestments, rising crime rates, and poor housing conditions.
Each of the 10 EC neighborhoods confronts a variety of specific issues. The Phoenix Hill neighborhood has the highest rates of violent crime and poverty in the city. Smoketown has suffered a loss of almost 60 percent of its housing stock and has a housing vacancy rate of approximately 35 percent. In Shelby Park, more than 20 percent of homes are in need of major repairs.
The neighborhoods of Russell, California, Park Hill, and Algonquin border a north-south industrial corridor designated as Louisville's Empowerment Zone. In the northernmost sector, Russell has experienced a 57-percent drop in its residential population. The Park Hill neighborhood is situated around a large public housing development of the same name, which has experienced relatively low vacancy rates.
Parkland, a bordering neighborhood to the west, is a residential historic district that has experienced significant disinvestments since the racial riots of the late 1960s. Nearby, the Park DuValle neighborhood has seen the inner-city's most dramatic revitalization efforts: the transformation of the enormous Cotter Homes/Lang Homes public housing development into new, mixed-income, single-family housing units. The tenth neighborhood is Portland, which is one of Louisville's oldest. Dating to the 1700s, the area now has mixed zoning, which has contributed to low property values.
The University of Louisville and its community partners established a COPC in Louisville's EC to help revitalize these neighborhoods. The COPC's 3-year goals and strategies have focused on four functional categories: housing, economic development, community organizing, and neighborhood revitalization. The Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods (SUN) at the university administers the COPC grant. Its primary community partners include the Neighborhood Development Corporation, the Canaan Community Development Corporation, Neighborhood Housing Services, Louisville Central Development Corporation, the Louisville Department of Economic Development, and local banks.
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