NCKCN - Case Summaries

Governor Bill Graves addresses a crowd of approximately 250 people during the formal dedication of the Jewell Community Center on Monday, July 24, 2000. For more photos of the dedication ceremony, please click here.

Project: The city of Jewell was awarded a comprehensive development grant in June 1998. Through the combined resources of the Kansas Department of Commerce & Housing and local funding, several needs related to local housing and the general community were addressed.

The Jewell Community Center is a one-story metal framed structure covering an 11,200 square foot area. The Community Center houses the library, community room, four (4) motel rooms with lobby and two (2) commercial offices. The building is located at the site where five dilapidated business buildings were razed.

The waterline improvement project included replacing 24,000 linear feet of existing water lines and numerous hydrants, valves and meters.

Eighteen (18) homes were rehabilitated and four (4) uninhabitable units were demolished.

The featured activity of the project was the work done in the downtown area of the community. The picture below shows the "before" look in Jewell immediately south of the City Park.

The "after" look is shown below at right. Although the perspectives are not the same, one can still get a sense of how much change occurred in the downtown area as one whole block was restructured.
Whereas before separate buildings stood vacant and/or underutilized, now a single, multi-use facility houses a four (4) room motel, the City Library, a large community room capable of handling approximately 200 people at one time, kitchen facilities, the city's Day Care Center, the American Legion meeting room, and space enough for two (2) business operations. The red metal building seen to the right in the first picture above was moved to the west end of the block, as one can seen in the photo at right. That building houses a mechanics shop.

Jewell City Project