Construction is wrapping up on a new 5-story building for Wayside Christian Mission at 432 East Jefferson Street, although the building faces Jackson Street. The building was funded with $10.3 million from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, after a wing of Wayside’s facility at the corner of Jefferson and Jackson streets was razed to make way for the massive expansion of Interstate 65 for the Ohio River Bridges Project. Additional funds were privately raised.
“We’re actually adding 40,000 square feet of new construction to our site here at Jefferson Street,” Nina Moseley, COO at Wayside, told WDRB recently. “This building was built specifically for our purposes as a homeless shelter, it is going to be very nice but it’s not going to be so nice that people are going to want to stay here forever.”
The $11.5 million project, begun in 2013, primarily brings additional beds—upping the total number at the campus to 640, from 342, according to the Courier-Journal. Additionally, the expansion includes a new kitchen, a very unfortunate drive-through drop off, and multipurpose spaces that can handle overflow tenants during extreme weather—called “white flag days”—when the temperature falls below 35 degrees or rises above 95 degrees.
According to WDRB, the shelter’s first resident just began moving in and the entire project is expected to wrap up by March 2015.
