NuLu: A Louisville Renaissance

Blocks like this one in St. Matthews are becoming common place in Louisville.  Former centers of commerce that have fallen into disrepair, but are being redeveloped for the greater good.

If you haven't noticed Louisville has been going through a quiet renaissance over the past decade in the areas of new building and redevelopment.  Louisville has long been considered a very suburban town with many people traveling into the Central Business District during the day, only to head for the hills (or Prospect) after the whistle blows, and leaving Downtown like a scene in an old western movie at night - tumbleweeds and all!  For decades the story around town was that development was hard to come by more or less because of the rigmarole that was required by the old, un-merged city and county governments.  If you wanted to get zoning rights in St. Matthews you potentially had to have it cleared by three or more municipal bodies - the city of Louisville, Jefferson County, and the City of St. Matthews, not to mention any other neighborhood associations that might be involved.  As you might expect this kept a lot of interested parties away.

Beginning in 2003 with the merger of the city and county governments into one Louisville Metro Government (what a funny idea that was - it only took 205 years to accomplish!) the narrative began to change.  One of the first announcements of then-Mayor Jerry Abramson's new term was on the partnership with the Cordish Company and the redevelopment of the old Galleria Mall into what is now Fourth Street Live!  This broke the chain of unimaginative thinking that had plagued the city throughout the 1990's, and earlier, as it proved that national development could happen in Louisville on a grand scale.  Once Fourth Street came to fruition in 2004 the city began seeing a slow and methodical transformation of downtown as people started to come back to the hallowed grounds of the old city, either to visit the new restaurants and bars that were now present or to take in the new landscape provided by the completion of phase one of Waterfront Park which was occurred in 1999.  This created exactly the buzz that was needed at the time to spur development and get people talking about Downtown Louisville as a destination again, as opposed to the ghost town that it was previously associated with.  Once plans for the KFC Yum! Center were finalized, and new hotels and offices began coming to fruition, the bar had been set - Louisville could successfully spur development and improve its status as a deteriorating city, and it had much more capability to do so than even it had thought possible.

Since 2004 we have seen an outburst of building and redevelopment in and around Downtown Louisville.  Main Street and Market Streets have been revitalized by developers seeing the value in acquiring historic buildings with old-world facades.  The former projects on the east side of Downtown have been transformed into brand new, bright and clean residential complexes.  And Old Louisville has regained much of its reverence as a place of history and dignity within our city.  But it hasn't stopped there.

With the East Market corridor serving as guide, the neighborhood of Saint Matthews has seen a remarkable change over the past five years as developers have been able to transform old, outdated retail spaces into new restaurants and bars that serve the young professionals that live in the area.  In that time upwards of ten new establishments have sprouted up and taken firm root in the city as demand for "new and fun" places to go has steadily increased.  Similar development has been seen in the Bardstown Road / Highlands corridor, as well in the Eastern Parkway / Germantown Area; although not nearly as concentrated.

The driving forces behind these developments are all different and varied in several ways, but there are a few underlying factors which we can attribute towards their creation.

1. Demand - As I've written about before, Louisville is booming in the 35 and under population segment.  These folks are largely college educated, have often lived outside of Louisville for an extended period of time, and want more and varied things to do around town.  They also have larger disposable incomes which they enjoy using to consume food, drinks, and more specialized items that their parents may have previously thought of as frivolous or outlandish expenditures.
2. Availability - If you take a once great metropolitan area (at one time in the top-10 in the country in population),  diminish its occupancy, and move half of those remaining to an outside suburb, you're going to have a high vacancy rate.  Over time these vacancies create blight, and blight offers opportunity for those creative visionaries to turn an old warehouse into new condos, or a vacant lot into a LEED Certified office space.  This is at the forefront of the development in NuLu (the East Market District), Butchertown, Germantown, and other parts of the Central Business District.
3. Capacity - While many people have bemoaned the old guard that formerly ran the city from the C-Level suites in the penthouse floors of the Aegon Building (as opposed to City Hall), what Louisville's power brokers have left behind is a population of wealthy individuals who want to reinvest in the city they love.  These folks are taking on projects like there's no tomorrow, and trying at all cost to put their stamp on the town.  As each has had more and more success, it has only created more excitement and buzz as everyone anticipates the next great development coming to Louisville.
4. Re-Urbanization - In previous decades Downtown Louisville was a place people wanted to get away from, and stay away from at all costs.  However, now that many of the once-downtrodden areas of the Central City have been dramatically revitalized, Downtown is a place that people want to be and be seen.  Condo developments are sprouting up like weeds, and demand for luxury living quarters within the boundaries of the Watterson Expressway is increasing at a rapid pace.  This puts a premium on new retail and commercial development in these areas as new residents want places to go and things to do without having to drive across town.

So where does all this leave us?  On his radio show this past week local sports personality Bob Valvano said, in reference to Louisville attracting a National Basketball Association franchise (or other major sports team for that matter), that Louisville often thinks of itself as the Chicago Cubs of cities - a decent place to live, a fun place to be, but not capable of really doing special things.  And for the most part I would say that this is correct in a lot of ways, currently.  But as I alluded to in my last entry ("Why Louisville Will Be Great"), the young people of this town have big dreams for the city and want to see them fulfilled.  There are going to be bumps along the way and convincing to be done - and it will not happen overnight - but we will slowly get there.  With each new string of development that has arisen over the past decade people have constantly said "That won't last" or "I'm not sure why that's being built", but more times than not these projects have been a success.

As the current leadership in redevelopment has shown, if you build it they will come.  From downtown condos to restaurants to new bars and clubs, if there's a demand for it around town - no matter where that demand is coming from - it will not go unrequited.  It all started with one string of legislation, and then a development downtown, and then another and another.  As the city grows, improves, and redefines itself it will become more and more attractive for outside investment and corporate ventures.  Once that happens then we will really see the fruits of our labor and begin to get the credit we've deserved for the last fifty years as being one of the most progressive cities in the South.  To this end, that is how we will continue to make Louisville Major League.