SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) - A culinary hub for budding chefs and restaurant owners is expected to open in Shreveport as early as March 2018.
The $1 million project, the result of a grant awarded to Southern University at Shreveport and a partnership with the City of Shreveport, will bring the commercial kitchen and amenities to 1210 Milam Street - currently a vacant lot.
The project aims to help revitalize the Allendale and Ledbetter Heights neighborhoods.
The new 5,000-square-foot culinary hub will be built on 2.2 acres and also will host office space, a conference room, cafe and coffee cafe. It also will have an event space and administrative offices.
The purpose of the “incubator” is to connect new chefs to resources, including a sanitary place to create their culinary masterpieces, according to an eNews letter from Southern University.
The kitchen will be open to amateur chefs and restaurateurs to test their skills, learn new techniques and participate in ongoing culinary classes for reasonable fees. Southern University at Shreveport will staff, manage and offer classes through its workforce training center.
“Outreach and engagement efforts revealed that many food entrepreneurs … work from their homes preparing meals for catering activities, or creating food products for sale in local markets, but with very limited capacity,” the SUSLA ENewsletter said.
Market research had indicated “a need for the kitchen incubator to support existing food-related businesses” and create living wage jobs, the newsletter says.
The kitchen incubator is projected to create 32 jobs and bring in more than $3 million in its first phase, according to an economic impact study provided by the City of Shreveport.
The Northwest Louisiana Council of Governments and the City of Shreveport received a Choice Neighborhood Planning grant in 2011. After 18 months of public outreach and engagement, the city completed a transformation plan targeting Allendale, Ledbetter Heights and the west edge of downtown, said Community Development Director Bonnie Moore.
Moore added that the city and the Housing Authority of the City of Shreveport received a $1 million Choice Neighborhood Planning and Action Activity grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2016. The grant was specifically for physical, neighborhood-based activities identified in the Transformation Plan designed to spur redevelopment.
Moore said that Southern University will be taking the lead on the project. The university has had success with two small business incubators, according to the newsletter, and also consulted with the Martin Luther King Health Center and Pharmacy and Tulane University’s Culinary Medicine Center in developing the model for the kitchen incubator. The training components of the program will be modeled after Liberty’s Kitchen in New Orleans.
The plot of land chosen for the development on Milam Street, within the Choice Neighborhood target area, currently belongs to the City of Shreveport.
“The Milam Street corridor was once a thriving commercial district and was identified in community engagement activities as a priority for commercial development,” Moore said in an emailed statement. “It is also within walking distance of the targeted housing slated for development, improved public transportation accessibility, economic opportunity and other redevelopment initiatives.”
The city council passed a resolution authorizing Mayor Ollie Tyler to lease the property for the new kitchen incubator.
Councilman Jeff Everson, who contributed to the resolution’s language, said the kitchen incubator would provide educational opportunities for workforce and economic development and educational and community gatherings around healthy eating and living.
Moore, director of the city’s Community Development Department, said the kitchen incubator will align with the department’s mission of improving communities by connecting entrepreneurship, culinary workforce training, economic opportunity and community education.
“The incubator will play an important role in reviving an area that lacks investment and is plagued with vacant and abandoned properties,” Moore said. “We are confident that the project will successfully grow new jobs and businesses, provide needed vocational training and nutrition education, and promote programs that create positive health outcomes.”
A second phase of the kitchen incubator will incorporate a “culinary medicine center” and initiatives aiming to target those in public and assisted housing.
Moore has spearheaded several healthy lifestyles and eating initiatives, including a push toward “culinary medicine.” She said the Culinary Medicine Center model, based on Tulane University’s Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, has a simple goal: to teach doctors, medical students and other healthcare providers how to cook healthy meals so they can pass culinary advice on to their patients.
“The program’s mission of a teaching kitchen is to change peoples’ minds about food they only think they don’t like,” Moore said. “Many of people tend to think healthy food is flavorless, expensive, and hard to make.”
She said an added bonus for Shreveport residents will be medical students, chefs and other healthcare providers offering lessons for the community. Lessons will range from how to prepare healthy foods, how to properly use kitchen equipment and how to shop on a budget. ?
“Medical training has made great strides in treating diseases like diabetes and hypertension, but there needs to be more emphasis on preventing disease,” Moore said. “The program’s reach includes education on diet, nutrition, and preventive medicine. It is important for healthcare providers to not only tell people what to do, but how to do it.”
Moore said Caddo Parish ranks 49 for health outcomes. Residents in Allendale and Ledbetter especially have poor health outcomes, she said. She hopes that the culinary medicine part of the project, scheduled for Phase II, will be implemented in 2019.
“The Martin Luther King Health Center will lead this effort on behalf of all partners,” she said. “They are in the planning and development stage of this component, which includes a comprehensive marketing plan once the program has been solidified.”
Other partners in the endeavor, according to SUSLA ENews, include the Regional Metropolitan Planning Commission, the Shreveport Housing Authority, the Martin Luther King Health Center & Pharmacy, LSU Ag Center, Community Foundation of Northwest Louisiana and Step Forward.
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