LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Nucleus: Kentucky’s Innovation Center has transformed a vacant former nightclub property into a hub for coding instruction.
The University of Louisville Foundation, which oversees Nucleus, purchased the rundown property at 252 E. Market St., last year. It had formerly housed several bars and restaurants.
Nucleus has converted a portion of the building into classrooms, where KentuckianaWorks has leased space to operate Code Louisville, the city’s free 12-week coding-training program. Classes already have started.
The Learning House Inc., a leading cloud-based technology learning provider, also is leasing space for intensive coding boot camps that will launch in September.
The building is part of the UofL Foundation’s J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Its classroom space is being called the Trinity Video Communications Center to recognize the Louisville company that donated the audio-visual equipment and engineering to make the system run on a wireless network.
The campus is being developed by the University of Louisville Development Co. and Louisville real estate firm NTS.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer noted that by 2020, there will be 1 million more computer programming jobs in the U.S. than workers to fill them, and 10,400 of those jobs will be in the Louisville area.
“Code Louisville is helping to quickly fill that need,” Fischer said. “By taking coding classes in this updated space, local workers are gaining access to good-paying tech jobs.”
Learning House president and CEO Todd Zipper said his company is “thrilled to be sharing the same space as Code Louisville and working to fulfill the mission of developing a skilled workforce in Kentuckiana.”
Trinity Video Communications CEO Barry Sawayer said the center “gives the city of Louisville an even greater opportunity to rise to the forefront of technology development.”