A facility designed to help close the so-called digital divide between computer haves and have-nots in the Aurora area received a $300,000 grant this week from the Kane County Board.
The grant to the Quad County Urban League, which will run the Ameritech Digital Campus, came from the county’s share of riverboat gambling proceeds from the Grand Victoria floating casino in Elgin.
It will help the Urban League finance the costs of its new building on Farnsworth Avenue, south of Interstate Highway 88. The building will house both the Digital Campus and a trade union apprenticeship training center to be called the City of Aurora Career Development Team.
Last December, the city committed $50,000 annually for five years toward the building and support services for the programs.
Both the local United Way and YWCA have contributed to the program, and Ameritech provided a $70,000 grant to buy computer equipment, with the focus on computer training for minorities and low-income people in the Aurora area.
The Digital Campus is expected to have dozens of state-of-the-art computers with high-speed Internet access. It is designed to bridge the local digital divide, the term used to describe a gap in computer access between the upper- and lower-income strata of society.
A grand opening for the Digital Campus is scheduled for Aug. 29.
Also this week, a County Board committee approved and sent to the full board a proposal to award a $500,000 riverboat grant to help expand the Garfield Farm Museum, west of Geneva.
The two non-profit organizations that were established to preserve and operate the 1840s prairie homestead, on Garfield Road near Illinois Highway 38, are in the middle of a $2.5 million fundraising effort to acquire the 99-acre Mongerson Brothers farmstead, which is at the museum’s southeastern border.
Garfield Farm’s executive director, Jerome Johnson, said the property is especially significant because of its historical relationship to the museum property. He also noted it is the last piece of open space available for protection in a contiguous 2,000-acre corridor of open space in the area.
The board’s Executive Committee approved the matter Thursday, and the full board is expected to follow suit next month.
