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By Terry Shropshire | December 16, 2020

LeBron James, a perennial NBA superstar and social activist, is adding to his impressive philanthropic portfolio with the opening of a job training and financial center in his Akron, Ohio, hometown.

Despite James‘ worldly exploits, he has remained fiercely loyal to Akron, a 40-mile drive south of where he entered the NBA as a teen prodigy for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The LeBron James Family Foundation announced he is opening a 60,000-square-foot venue called House Three Thirty, which will provide financial literacy advice, job training and recreational activities for area youth, Time magazine reports.

The number “330” is the area code for the city of 200,000 residents. Once dubbed the “Rubber Capital of the World,” Akron has continued to experience pains during its transition from being the epicenter for tire manufacturing and home to Goodyear, Goodrich and Firestone. James hopes this will help expedite the process.

House Three Thirty is expected to be up and running in 2022 and will feature amenities such as a dining space, coffee bar and private card room. The hub will join other major endeavors LBJ has started in Akron, including most prominently his I Promise School in 2018 and his I Promise Village transitional family housing in 2019.

According to Time, House Three Thirty, which is open to anyone in Akron, will provide hands-on job training in sectors such as plumbing, heating and cooling, food service, merchandising, accounting and event planning.

“House 330 is going to be a sanctuary for our families,” James said, according to Time. “It’s going to be a place where all our families can grow and learn. This will be a hub for everything possible our families will need.”

Interestingly, the concept for House Three Thirty began organically as the James foundation’s executive director, Michele Campbell, began responding to I Promise Village residents’ complaints and needs.

“It really started, much like everything we do, from the ground up,” Campbell said. “You have more intimate relationship when you have people living in your building 24/7. We started listening to some of the struggles with employment and job training and really digging deeper with our families. So we learned pretty quickly that the next part of the movement, if you’re to going to change the trajectory of a whole community, was we need that job-training piece.”