To say the least, much has taken place in the country, state, and downtown Louisville since my last post. Pushes for social and racial justice - including the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville - the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 election, and economic outcomes have all had great impacts. Before these events, downtown Louisville was on the upswing. However, a period of protests, vandalism, and looting in summer 2020 and fewer people working downtown and visiting Louisville as a result of the pandemic halted all of that energy. Some businesses closed. Some treaded water. Development plans were put in limbo. The streets were dead. It's now almost fall of 2021. It's starting to come back - but slowly. Will Louisville regain the momentum it had a few years ago? Will cities in similar situations also get moving again? Only time will tell. Personally, I am optimistic. People inside and outside of Louisville must be shown a. it is safe to return downtown, b. it's a great place, and c. there's a lot of potential that can only be harvested by getting back to business and investing.
Some recent happenings of note:
- Great new additions to downtown:
Lynn Family Stadium, home of Louisville City FC professional soccer team.
Waterfront Botanical Gardens, which is turning what used to be a dump into a premier urban botanical garden!
Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center. Huge athletic facility along 30th between Market and Muhammad Ali. Great development for the West End. We need to see more of these type projects in that area of the city.
- UofL Healthcare took over and rebranded all Jewish Hospital facilities.
- A Walmart was going to be built at Broadway and Dixie, but that plan fell through some time ago. Passport Health then committed to building a headquarters there and started on it but stopped due to financial trouble and being acquired by another company. At last check, there's just a half-constructed building there. Hopefully something will come to fruition. The good news is a fancy new Republic Bank YMCA has also been built - successfully - on the site.
- Gannett, owner of The Courier-Journal, closed its presses, sold them off, moved the paper to smaller quarters, and is selling the landmark C-J headquarters. The paper is now printed in Indianapolis. Very sad. A city that once had one of the best newspapers and media outfits in the country now no longer even prints its own news. Robert W. Bingham, Barry Bingham Sr., and Barry Bingham Jr. are probably rolling over in their graves!
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