LA2050 funded the Thai Community Development Center’s Thai Town Marketplace (TTMP), a new approach to urban revitalization and an innovative “green” community market. Creating the first “Health/Wealth Zone”, the TTMP will deliberately link health and economic outcomes, revitalize the area, help low-income residents start their first business, create 18 businesses every three years and over 60 jobs, teach vendors financial and health literacy, host monthly health and information booths for visitors at our adjacent farmers’ market, increase access to healthy foods by enrolling individuals into public benefits programs, and make local organizations’ social services more accessible.

We are pleased to report that during the grant period, our Business Counselor was able to provide technical assistance and business counseling to 12 low-income entrepreneurs who will be starting a food business in the marketplace. Our entrepreneurs fall within 200% of the federal poverty level.

The grant also funded our Operations Manager who oversaw the completion of construction of the project of which 20 temporary construction jobs were created.

Other outcomes include:

• Our Business Counselor helping our vendors access capital to purchase their kitchen equipment; • Our Operations Manager ordering the kitchen equipment and preparing the market opening by getting the market ready for the next stage at the end of the grant which includes the installation of the windows, doors, CCTV, internet, signage, indoor and outdoor furnishings, and canopy, the landscaping of the outdoor patio, and preparation for inspections.

Our Operations Manager addressed operations issues, needs and concerns with the incoming vendors and reviewed with them our TTMP Rules and Regulations.

The number of people directly and indirectly impacted by our project are as follows: Directly impacted (#): 70 (these include vendors, construction workers, volunteers, development team)

Indirectly impacted (#): 40,000 (these include members of the community we outreached to regarding the market through social media and community engagement activities)

Our project was not without its challenges though. There were supply chain issues that delayed the arrival of equipment and supplies to complete construction and installation of various components. The project was also dependent on funding from the City of LA and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for construction which took time to draw down resulting in further delays increasing the construction cost.