I would love to see Louisville become the place where we REALLY address the relationship between class and race and a vision of urban progress. The town I moved from, Rochester, seemed unable to address that question and so has gotten neither progress nor fairness. Maybe we can… in Butchertown, with Wayside, with the West End, with schools.

Let’s go for it.

Why is JBS not willing to address the noise and air pollution.
Certainly, that would cost a lot less than relocation.

KRS 100.253 states “The lawful use of a building or premises, existing at the time of the adoption of any zoning regulations affecting it, may be continued, although such use does not conform to the provisions of such regulations, except as otherwise provided herein.”

The next paragraph explains that the use can not be expanded.

What that means is that if the CUP were revoked, then the plant would have to go back to it’s original state prior to receiving the CUP. It does not mean the plant would close.

I am not arguing that the plant should stay, but I wonder if taking a hard look at the realities of the site, what could feasibly be expected to happen to it once the plant moved? I definitely think that there are successful ways of incorporating industrial into residential as in Brooklyn and many other national examples, but I would say that it really depends on the industry. I don’t think that a meat packing operation is the best fit given multiple pollution sources (odor, noise, idling trucks etc). I know personally that the odor was a deal breaker when I was looking to buy a new home a year ago, even though Butchertown probably was at the top of my list due to location to downtown.

Hopefully there is an answer that will both improve the core of downtown and keep the jobs in Louisville, at a reasonable location not too far from where the workers live.

I honestly sympathize with both the workers and the neighborhood residents simultaneously. Surely something can be worked out that satisfies both?

Most of the time I find myself nodding along with your thoughts about the future of Louisville and how cities function overall.

But I think this article hits a bum note, for two main reasons:

1. Jobs matter to cities. The job environment in Kentuckiana and most of the country is horrifying right now. Cities bustle and thrive for all of the reasons you write about on this blog, but jobs are, like it or not, a crucial factor. The jobs at Swift are increasingly rare in Louisville and nationwide: full-time work with basic health care and retirement for non-college graduates can get. Eliminating those jobs in our community would carry real social costs. The Swift workers may not live in Butchertown itself anymore, but they live in other neighborhoods in the city. If you want to shut down Swift, we need to think about what that means for the neighborhoods where Swift workers live — and the dollars their wages and benefits contribute to the local economy.

Moving the jobs “somewhere else” wouldn’t just be another blow to the local economy — it might also contribute to the sprawl and infrastructure problems that already hold back the city.

2. Workers deserve a say. Opponents of the packing facility tend to depict this situation as a clash between plucky local residents and a big corporation. The reality is more complicated. Opponents of the facility rarely admit that the recent protest was organized by the members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227. To be sure, Swift was certainly pleased to see the workers’ union take this step. But it comes across as condescending and arrogant when closure-supporters argue that the workers are just pawns being pitted against Swifts opponents. The workers are stakeholders here just as much as the company, local residents, and local business owners. They aren’t crazy to want to hold onto their jobs in this economy. “Poverty sucks, Save Swift” is an all too accurate slogan coming from them.

It’s fair enough to argue that Swift’s estimates for the impact of closing the facility might be fudged. But folks who want to close the plant need to take the workers’ future into account and respect their hopes, too. That means factoring in the costs of moving or eliminating those jobs when they make guesses about what post-Swift development could mean.

[Side note: It's interesting that the cities that city lovers tend to admire for various reasons: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC -- to say nothing of Northern and Western Europe -- tend to have comparatively strong local union movements. Louisville's unions have also been historically strong for a smallish city on the border of the South. Urbanists need to think more about why that is. I suspect that independent worker organizations can serve as a civic and social counterweight to short-sighted corporate growth that yields big highways leading to big malls and shopping centers employing lots of nonunion workers in minimum wage jobs with no benefits]