Humana, LG&E, and Fifth Third have said they are leaving the downtown core. Courier-Journal’s Joe Gerth called it “another death knell for downtown,” and scoffed at Mayor Greenberg’s suggestion that it’s an opportunity.
If an opportunity is to be made of the changing urban core, what might that be?
With the departure of these major corporations to smaller buildings and not directly inside Louisville’s urban core, questions about “What’s Next?” for the downtown area have arisen. Some feel that more corporations should move in to take the places of Humana, LG&E, and Fifth Third Bank.
Others have called for a decentralized downtown model, which takes the traditional cultural core of a city and disperses it out of the urban center. In many models, this unfortunately results in suburban sprawl, fractured city governments, and dying city cores.
But what do urban planners and developers think?
Answering this definitively would likely be tougher than German mathematician David Hilbert’s unsolvable equations. The fact is developers and urban planners (sometimes the same person) have as many ideas as governments, businesses, and the other citizens of the city.
In exploring the new paradigm for downtown, it seemed fair to reach out to the University of Louisville Urban and Public Affairs Department for input from the expertise of some of the top thinkers in urban planning and community development. This piece will only scratch the surface of the conversations to be had. Expect followup.
Dr. John “Hans” Gilderbloom serves in the Graduate Planning, Public Administration, Sustainability, and Urban Affairs program at UofL. For him, a decentralized downtown isn’t an option. He believes strongly in a centralized and well-functioning urban core. One of the ways that he sees that happening is through some very basic corrections in how the Louisville downtown moves.
“I think the problem with the downtown is that they need to make some corrections. And when Pete Buttigieg ran for president from up in Indiana, we’d been in contact about transforming downtowns from speedy, reckless accidental prone one-way streets to multi-lane, one-way streets to two-lane, two-way streets.
“And, we thought, that was a really good idea. I’ve written before for LEO and for the Courier-Journal — articles talking about the benefits of two-way streets, which finally Fischer [former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer] agreed to when David James ran in Old Louisville that they would transform Brook and First Street into two-way. They did that, and it was highly successful.”
For Gilderbloom, the maze of one-way streets in downtown Louisville works antithetical to making it a more vibrant area. This change in Brook and First gave him some hope that Louisville was moving in the right direction.
“That was like 15 years ago. We thought there’d be a movement. The good news is they are transforming Muhammad Ali [Blvd.] and certain other strategic streets to slow, calm, and cool. The idea is that pedestrians would like to walk more and feel safer. And you see a lot more baby carriages out there, skateboarders, people walking around”
The downtown Gilderbloom envisions is one that is found in many larger cities. Cities like Nashville where there is booming business and cultural activity.
“I am proudly from San Francisco, and our family’s been involved in San Francisco ever since it burned down in 1906. My grandfather was bravely carrying buckets of water, but said, ‘You know, there’s a better way to save the buildings, and that is to fix the maze of water pipes throughout the city.’ He had come over here as a plumber, so he’d done that.”
These seemingly simple solutions increase accessibility and flow.
“I don’t think we should give up on the downtown, but I do think I’ve seen this movement where converting the empty places into housing and trying to get people, more people, to live down there. Well, the difficulty of downtown right now with housing is parking,” GIlderbloom said.
“You’ve gotta get parking there, which is, again, people recognize that the parking is itself a challenge.
“For example in Cincinnati where they are coming back, and it’s notable in terms of how they’ve done it, is there’s few, very few empty spaces there in terms of parking just on the surface parking. And it’s an eyesore. But it is doable.”
Developer Gill Holland sees the use of downtown’s empty spaces with a creative eye. Holland is responsible for several development projects around Louisville, most notably the development that changed East Market St. into Nulu, starting with the Green Building.
Holland was out of town when LEO reached out for comment but shared some thoughts via email.
“It would be cool if some big company just gave KyCAD or Fund for the Arts a building. The building would then be a nonprofit so there would be no property tax — just would need to have enough to cover LG&E, MSD, maintenance, and insurance. And, business gets the tax deduction for the donation.”
Like Gilderbloom, he doesn’t feel that many of these buildings would be easily convertible to living situations. For him, that’s based on HVAC, ceiling heights, and plumbing logistics.
“If we did inverse property tax so the folks who own the parking lots would pay way MORE based on the lesser value of what is on their property, and someone who invested a bunch, built big buildings, converting the lot to a higher use, would pay LESS property tax, that could be a good idea.
“Even the parking lot folks could then build a 5-story parking garage if they wanted, and that then frees up downtown space for more living space buildings.”
Aside from the streets being one-way and parking creating an untenable situation. Downtown Louisville has another larger and more complex-to-solve issue, and that is its western half surrounded by “44 toxic chemical companies that are just smoking it out and reducing your lifespan,” according to Gilderbloom. He cites these plants as one of the major reasons why Louisville was bypassed for Nashville when Amazon was looking for a large hub.
“We are currently ranked among mid-size cities as one of the top polluters, actually number two,” said Gilderbloom.
“I’ve been studying this stuff, the urban dynamics, since I was an undergraduate, where I worked with these two great planners, Harvey Molotch and Richard Applebaum, who wrote about what makes a city dynamic, and what makes it work, what makes it affordable, what makes it pleasant, what makes it civil, what makes it beautiful.”
Molotch, a sociologist, is famous for his work in creating the field of environmental sociology, as well as his book, “Urban Fortunes,” which examined the city as a “growth machine.” He proposed that the city was not a series of empty pieces of land waiting for humans to interact with them but was already associated with specific human interests — commercial, sentimental, and psychological. He felt that real estate interests of people who own properties that gain value when growth takes place were important in shaping cities. He labeled these people the “local growth machine” and suggested that cities needed to be studied (and compared) by examining the organizational structure, lobbying, manipulation, and structuring done by these “growth machine” people. He suggested that the shape of a city including the distribution of its population is due to social actions including opportunistic interests, and not interpersonal or geographic necessities.
This thinking has become standard in how urban planners and developers approach advising a city about how to revive its urban core.
Applebaum, like Molotch, approaches the ideas of cities from that of sociology. He, however, focused on the city and economic justice including housing, homelessness, and labor. His work falls firmly in the world of activist-academic.
Gilderbloom’s work with both thinkers created a lasting impact on his approach to cities. His prescription for downtown has simple two first steps: Fix the streets and fix the pollution.
As conversations loom on what to do about Louisville’s downtown, the Humana building is embroiled in a lawsuit with the firm of famed architect Michael Graves who designed the former tower that housed Humana’s headquarters.
Humana alleges that inspections in 2019 found faulty construction and evidence that it had been hidden behind drywall and that other corners were cut in significant design and structural areas of the building.
With the tower tied up in litigation, it is unclear when or if it will be used for a new purpose.
Gilderbloom would hate to see it torn down.
Some have suggested retrofitting the Humana tower or other buildings for housing but with the lawsuit and issues with the tower that doesn’t seem to be the course of action.
Gilderbloom does believe that housing in downtown can be addressed and that it shouldn’t be another “luxury” housing development.
A project that he has consulted on with Underhill Associates involves a conversion of the former Louisville Urban Government Center and Old Baptist Hospital in the Paristown Pointe neighborhood. There was some scandal, according to Gilderbloom, in that the city sold the property for cheap to be razed and used for luxury housing.
“But, imagine 300,000 square feet of housing, 300,000 square feet, which could create 200 – 300 housing units, and that could help the elderly.
There’s a market for that. And, of course, students going to Bellarmine and downtown.”
The luxury market, which is accustomed to living with a view, would likely be remiss to find the area as desirable because of the lack of a view.
“The view and the location, and so on is not one that people who wanna buy a luxury house like, or who are used to along the river are going to reject.”
A final note
The loss of large businesses in the downtown core is more than an economic shift for businesses, there is a shift in the culture and not just in Louisville, in no small part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers learned to work at home and when the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, these same workers refused to return to fluorescent-lit offices and a lack of free movement.
In Louisville, we are looking at three major towers being vacated. In cities like New York, this is closer to 30 empty buildings.
According to a January 2024 CBS news report, the effects of empty office spaces could ricochet through the economy because of the way these buildings are financed, at least in places like New York City. The risk of real estate firms not being able to make their rent and potentially defaulting on loans could increase the risk for banks (and taxpayers) who often have to bear the cost of failed industry. See the recession of 2008 and the auto industry collapse.
But that risk doesn’t translate to the way people are working now. In short, it’s not the fault of the worker. It’s time for the industries to adapt.
According to CBS, “By some estimates, the price of office buildings has tanked by as much as 40% since the pandemic. At Columbia Business School, real estate professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh has modeled out the impact of hybrid work on pricing. He calls it a “train wreck in slow motion.”
In the article Van Nieuweburgh also said that reimagining these spaces can and should be “ambitious” with the use of both private and public monies.
“We no longer have to live where we work,” Van Nieuwerburg said in the piece. “And that’s a very transformational idea. And I believe society is only at the beginning of realizing the full potential of that idea.”
In Louisville, we are also standing on that same precipice. What do we do if business isn’t at the core of our cities? How do we maintain a strong urban center that serves our city in a way that keeps the cultural integrity intact?
It seems that the answer is both simple and complex and best summed up in a single phrase, one that has aided humans throughout our time on the planet. Innovate.
We need to innovate to survive and the same can be said for our cities. Innovation is the way that we will create the paradigm of living in our new post-COVID, post-office, world.
