Street safety is a big topic in Louisville because the city’s streets are not safe. That’s part of the reasoning behind Metro Louisville’s ongoing Look Alive Louisville pedestrian safety campaign that seeks to enforce traffic laws and educate about the problem.
TARC, the Transit Authority of River City, is hopping on board with its annual Kids Design-A-Bus Contest that takes the safety campaign as its inspiration. The authority partnered with Metro Louisville Public Works for the 17th annual contest that will result in busses plastered with artwork designed by local students.
Examples of student art from previous years. (Courtesy TARC)
Thankfully, “TARC values the safety of pedestrians and passengers,” the authority Executive Director Barry Barker said in a press release. With that out of the way, Barker added, “Our aim is to increase the awareness of safe practices with this partnership.”
The contest is “open to all elementary and middle school students in Jefferson, Oldham and Bullitt counties in Kentucky and Floyd and Clark counties in southern Indiana,” according to TARC’s press release. Twelve winners will have posters of their designs displayed on a bus and will be invited to participate in this year’s Pegasus Parade.
If you know a child with budding artistic abilities, get out the markers, crayons, or paint and go to town on an 11-by-17-inch piece of white paper. Submissions are accepted digitally or on paper and judges will consider visual appeal, creativity, originality, and message.
West Louisville is getting another Family Dollar, bringing the total number of stores for the North Carolina–based company to six in an area west of Ninth Street and north of Broadway.
Construction is about to begin on the store at 3901 West Market Street at the corner of 39th Street. The site was formerly home to a suburban-style bank-turned-fast-food-joint. The generic structure set far off the street with a drive through has a sign out front reading Crystal Chinese Restaurant. Two brick houses, one that had burned a couple years ago, will be demolished to build the store’s parking lot.
Two houses to be demolished for the Family Dollar parking lot. (Courtesy Google)
The building permit for the 8,320-square-foot store was issued last week (h/t Business First), and site plans filed with the city show a standard box facing a 29-space parking lot on a .9 acre lot. Vehicles can enter the site from Market Street or through a widened alley in the back.
The Family Dollar store and parking lot overlaid on an aerial view of the site. (Courtesy Google; Metro Louisville; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
With 29 parking spaces, that pushes the development well above the parking minimum of 17 spaces (71 percent over the minimum). Given the dense and walkable character of the surrounding Shawnee neighborhood, holding to that minimum would have likely sufficed. (Across the street, a large strip mall sits behind an excessively large parking lot as well.) Four bike parking spaces are also noted on the plan, meeting the minimum required by code. The result is a large parking lot surrounding the new building.
The project—both the building and parking lot—will cover about 70 percent of the .9-acre site with impervious paving, leaving 30 percent, or almost 11,600 square feet, of pervious space. That’s a net increase of about 6,300 square feet of land that can’t soak up rainwater over what’s there today.
(Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
That’s important because this stretch of West Market Street recently underwent a streetscape redesign that brings green infrastructure into the design with rain gardens meant to increase the pervious area of the street and divert rainwater runoff from an already burdened Combined Sewer system.
“We incorporated streetscape elements to differentiate between each character district and help create a sense of place,” Trey Rudolph, a landscape architect at GS&P, said in an interview posted on the firm’s website. “For instance, brick paving in the commercial areas is a uniquely different experience than the residential areas.”
Designers also looked to promote public safety with the street redesign. “We proposed narrowing some of the drive lanes to reduce traffic speeds and also included bump-outs, which are periodic landscape islands that bring the curb line closer to vehicular traffic to visually slow down drivers,” Rudolph said. “For instance, where there are two lanes of vehicular movement with parallel parking on either side of the street, we replaced one of the parking spaces with a bump-out to visually infringe upon the vehicle’s space.”
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The new streetscape reflects the surrounding neighborhood’s designation as a Traditional Neighborhood Form District under Louisville’s land development code. The new Family Dollar meets the general rules of the form district by locating the new structure at the sidewalk, among other things.
“Traditional neighborhood districts are generally characterized by a range of residential densities and a variety of housing types, street patterns which include alley ways, on-street parking, occasional office uses on predominantly residential blocks, and proximity to parks and open spaces and to marketplace corridors or to the downtown,” Cornerstone 2020, the land development code, reads. “Proposed residential, office and neighborhood commercial developments in aging neighborhoods with distressed and vacant housing should be encouraged.”
Aerial view of the site. (Courtesy Google)
As a neighborhood-serving commercial development, the Family Dollar can be seen as a boon to the area’s walkability. It’s a sort of corner store where neighbors can go to purchase household goods or students from the adjacent Shawnee High School can shop after class. It’s location at a commercial intersection helps cement 39th and Market streets as a neighborhood hub.
While no design documents were submitted to the city, based on other stores in the area, the structure will likely be a standard, cookie-cutter dollar store. Its box layout, no doubt optimized for efficiency and ease of construction, is forced onto the irregularly shaped parcel rather than building to the site lines, leaving an awkward triangular plot leftover on the corner. That’s fine, but the end result runs the risk of ignoring the corner with its parking-lot-side entrance on the west side of the building.
According to documents filed with the city, the new building will stand nearly 23-feet tall and pop up at its entrance to 26 feet. A concrete block wall covered in EIFS, a synthetic stucco, will screen the dumpster along 39th Street. Metro Louisville advised against that type of wall in its recommendation for a parking lot on First Street this month.
Two permits have been issued for the project, a building permit and another for the parking lot. The building permit carries an estimated budget of $545,000 while the parking lot permit shows a $20,000 budget.
In the end, it looks like the Family Dollar is a good development for the Shawnee neighborhood. It replaces an abandoned suburban intrusion with a commercial anchor at the sidewalk level. While the store generally turns its back to the corner, an entrance is provided at the sidewalk. It will provide basic goods for the neighborhood.
Now if we could work on reducing the amount of parking in these kinds of new developments to ensure that their walkable neighborhoods remain—and increase—walkable.
The $9.6 million, 832-space parking garage largely went through the public review process unnoticed. And walking by its construction site at 220 South Preston Street tells you exactly why. This area is an urban wasteland.
An enormous elevated highway hovers over the corner opposite the parking garage. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
The 296,500-square-foot garage will project a blank wall onto an area already replete with blank walls. Hemmed in by the enormously wide Interstate 65 on the north and east sides, the structure is located in perhaps the deadest of all dead spots in Downtown Louisville.
Maybe that was the point in building it this location in the first place—things can’t get much worse over here. How much of a negative impact could the garage make on an area already this bad? But while it adds little to an area with little going on, the garage does seal in six-stories of cement the fate of this edge condition between Downtown, Nulu, and the Medical Center.
The parking garage site and the surrounding Nucleus block. (Courtesy Google)
The garage’s larger context, the so-called Nucleus campus developed by the University of Louisville Foundation, is still in its infancy. The bold plan to redevelop the former Haymarket block into a hub for entrepreneurs, researchers, and office users has been nearly a decade in the making.
So far, the centerpiece of this in-progress master plan is the eight-story Atria Support Center at The Nucleus on the block’s opposite corner at East Market and Floyd. Additionally, smaller-scale rehabs of existing structures created the iHub and tech offices for Code Louisville on Floyd Street.
Arrasmith, Judd, Rapp, Chovan’s original master plan for the block shows an office tower on the parking garage site. (Courtesy AJRC / Nucleus)
The original master plan by Louisville’s Arrasmith Judd Rapp Chovan Architects shows a symmetrical arrangement of office blocks and towers, including one approximately 16-story tower on the site of the parking garage that could have added a punch of activity to spur sidewalk life in this corner of Downtown. Like many master plans, plans change.
To date, the campus has certainly added needed office space to an area that, for years, didn’t have a lot going on. Seeing the new eight-story structure on Market Street gives the street a certain excitement that change is on the way.
The eight-story Atria Support Center at The Nucleus. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
But the Atria Support Center building shies away from fully embracing its urban context. The structure would look just as at home along Hurstbourne Parkway as it does in Downtown with its solid but restrained design and lack of retail.
While we hope the ground floor can some day be retrofitted to include retail on, of all places, Market Street, right now, the building sets a precarious example of university-sponsored development in the city core. A pattern that continues around the corner at the parking garage.
Rendering of the parking garage. (Courtesy Nucleus)
The design-build garage was designed by Louisville architecture firm Tucker Booker Donhoff + Partners, located just a few blocks away in Nulu, and is being built by general contractor Sullivan & Cozart.
The garage is fairly typical for a single-use parking structure in Louisville. It’s got a little brick giving the structure a vague sense of context, some exposed concrete that reveals the building’s true function, fake storefront windows, and a design flourish that makes up for the otherwise dull building type.
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At the J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Parking Garage Structure, architects did all of the above. The design flourish is the building’s signature element, located on the corner, and takes the shape of a vertical LED light pole culminating in an enormous billboard facing Interstate 65.
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It’s difficult to see the gesture as anything else but an advertisement. And a lot of attention probably went into the garage’s highway presence based off the number of rendered views from the elevated interstate.
Of the five renderings submitted to the city for the project, three of them were from the perspective of a motorist on the highway. The other two are identical street level views, one during day and one at night. None of the renderings show the pedestrian experience up close to the structure.
The final design stands stands 57 feet tall with the corner billboard rising to a height of 73 feet.
Rendering showing the garage glowing at night. (Courtesy Nucleus)
Vickie Yates Brown, Nucleus president and CEO, described the garage’s design as “fun and innovative” in an interview with Business First‘s Marty Finley in March 2015. She added that the structure would “be very bright and eye-catching.”
“The South Preston Street corner at East Jefferson Street will feature a design element that includes the corner being recessed into a concaved [sic] formed space that highlights a freestanding vertical LED lighting element with surrounding frosted acrylic panels, and aluminum mesh screens above,” reads the staff report from Metro Louisville’s Urban Design Administrator. “The garage structure’s design includes a mix of masonry clad columns and pilasters, E.I.F.S cornices, exposed precast concrete, and aluminum mesh screen panels used for future signs and images. The buildings metal panels will have the ability to be illuminated with changing light colors and the design features vertical LED light strips that are placed between open wall bays.”
Detail of the Preston Street side of the garage housing the “Bike Hostel.” (Courtesy Nucleus)The bike storage component. (Courtesy Nucleus)
The garage has been designed to include interior bike parking on Preston Street—called the “Bike Hostel”—but, following the sidewalk, the entrance to the bike parking is nearly 750 feet from the main entrance to the first Nucleus building. Until the rest of the block is built up, cyclists are better off locking up to a rack right next to the office building.
Brown told Finley that the foundation is “trying to encourage people to ride their bikes and put them in a safe place.” Electric car charging stations are also provided in the garage.
According to a site plan submitted to the city, the parking garage contains 832 parking spaces for cars—including 17 handicap spaces and seven electric car charging spaces. Those documents also indicate that only four short-term bike parking spaces and 12 long-term bike parking spaces are included (about two percent of the number of car spaces).
The garage under construction in early January. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
This investment, of course, is all about parking cars. Despite Nucleus’ central location, the University of Louisville Foundation appears preoccupied with providing plentiful and easy access for private motor vehicles. “Safe and convenient parking for our tenants and visitors is one of our top priorities,” Brown said in a press release in September 2014. “Parking is at a premium downtown,” Brown told Finley last year. “It’s going to be a welcome addition.”
No matter its design merits or whether so much parking is needed, the garage is fundamentally changing this corner of Downtown, and we would all do well to fully understand how. For all the talk over creating a deadened canyon with a parking garage along Third Street for the Omni Hotel & Residences, no such public debate came of this proposal just five blocks away.
Looking west down Jefferson Street. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Ultimately, Metro Louisville Planning & Design recommended approval of the garage to the DDRO. “Staff finds that the project substantially complies with the design guidelines of the Downtown Development Review Overlay and that the proposed first floor animated design features mitigate the 50% storefront requirement along E. Jefferson Street,” the staff report said.”
That recommendation for approval came with a series of suggested conditions including that storefront windows and stair towers use clear glass or glass with minimal tint, that the Bike Hostel and electric car charging stations become operational immediately, and that a plan governing street trees be followed.
The Board of Zoning Adjustments also granted the project waivers to eliminate a requirement of at least 50 percent of the ground facade used as retail and to set back the corner along Jefferson Street for the LED strip design element.
In many ways, this decision reads like a prelude to the Omni’s garage debate. It was here that “promotional images” on the building facade and “acrylic window boxes” were declared “an engaging pedestrian experience” in the opinion of Louisville’s Urban Design Administrator. It was with this decision that the poor urban quality created by slicing a highway through the city was justification for more street-numbing design.
“The first floor facade facing E. Jefferson Street features graphic acrylic window boxes and other promotional images highlighting the campus as an attempt to mitigate the LDC 50% storefront requirement by providing an engaging pedestrian experience,” the city’s staff report continued. “This mitigation is initiated because of the site restrictions imposed by the close proximity of I-65.”
We’re thrilled the University of Louisville Foundation is making such a substantial investment in Downtown and look forward with excitement to the completion of the Nucleus block—it’s going to get people spending time here and spending money here at local businesses. And the kind of entrepreneurship the program is encouraging is, without a doubt, needed in Louisville today.
But let’s tailor that substantial investment in a tattered edge condition in a way that can help bridge barriers and create a more lively community. This isn’t about just adding retail or paying attention to urban design. It’s about an attitude that the street matters. That every street in Downtown Louisville can make the city a better place. Even streets facing a highway.
It’s a common refrain that buildings today aren’t built to last. Compared to the sturdy masonry of the 19th century of the hulking concrete work of the 1950s and ’60s, structures from the late 20th century can feel flimsy in comparison. And it doesn’t help that big retailers seem to design in a short shelf life that makes bulldozing and starting over easier than renovation.
So it’s particularly fascinating to see an adaptive reuse of a circa 1980s office building on the Schnitzelburg side of Goss Avenue into a bar and restaurant known for featuring local craft beer. That’s exactly what’s happening at 1030 Goss Avenue where an unassuming wood-frame structure built as a rehabilitation center for veterans is being converted into the Germantown Craft House.
The building today sits behind chain link and barbed wire. (Courtesy Google)
“It’s a pretty standard wood frame building with wood trusses every two feet on center—it’s in pretty good shape because it’s not that old,” Jeff Rawlins, principal of Louisville-based Architectural Artisans, told Broken Sidewalk. “We couldn’t afford to scrap it and start all over again.”
Rawlins previously helped create the Crescent Hill Craft House at 2636 Frankfort Avenue. There, bar owners Pat Hagan, Beau Kerley, and Brad Culver asked Rawlins to reconfigure the facade of the former Dark Star Tavern and relocated an entrance. The Germantown project is much more ambitious.
Rawlins said the Germantown Craft House will be slightly larger, mostly to accommodate a more spacious kitchen. The number of local beers on tap will increase to 50 from Crescent Hill’s 40. When the Germantown Craft House opens in June, it will hold over 150 people inside and on its patio.
Aerial view of the site today. (Courtesy Google)
The Goss Avenue site is the short-lived corporate offices of developers Underhill Associates, who purchased the site when scouting the neighborhood for their Germantown Mill Lofts project. The bare-bones structure, designed by architect Cecil Brumley, is set back from the street, faces a parking lot, and sits behind a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. It’s not a neighborhood player.
Rawlins’ design reengages the building with Goss Avenue, giving it a much-needed street presence. The new design essentially extrudes the basic form of the building to the sidewalk level, pulling the existing roofline out and slicing into it to create an outdoor patio space in dialogue with the sidewalk.
The Germantown Craft House. (Courtesy Architectural Artisans)
The facade is held about three feet off of the sidewalk with a landscaped buffer and a knee wall at the patio. “When you’re walking along the sidewalk, you’ve got three feet of landscaping and then a wall that’s up a little bit,” Rawlins said. “You can talk over that but it’s enough of a barrier that you’re not going to try to walk through it.”
Rawlins initially looked at designing the structure around an existing tree out front, but realized its location along a utility path likely would kill it during the renovation. “Instead of trying to make a renovation that works around this tree we can’t save,” Rawlins said, “let’s pull the building all the way to the sidewalk and carve out a space within our building to put three new trees.”
The Goss Avenue facade. (Courtesy Architectural Artisans)
The team peeled away an 8-by-30-foot section of roof for the new tree grove. “It’s set up so there’s a glass dining room on one side of the green space and then a patio that wraps around the other side and the front,” Rawlins said. “It becomes this sort of oasis patio inside the volume.”
The entrance to the Craft House is still around to the side at an existing canopy. “We’re trying to make a stone entry piece underneath that canopy that sort of compresses you and changes how you feel before you go into that space,” Rawlins said.
The main entrance off the parking lot. (Courtesy Architectural Artisans)
Once inside, Rawlins was faced with low, eight-foot ceilings in the existing structure. To create the bar room, he simply removed the ceiling. “In the main room we want to vault it and expose all the trusses,” Rawlins said. “So it’ll be visually kind of busy with all those wood trusses but at least the volume will be larger.”
The real surgery takes place toward the front of the structure. “We’re taking off the front 20 feet or so,” Rawlins explained. “Because we didn’t want that compressed volume everywhere, we felt it was important to peel off a chunk and then put back an addition that goes closer to the street that’s more open.”
Besides upgrading a major eyesore along Goss Avenue, the Germantown Craft House renovation shows that it’s possible to adapt anti-urban architecture to respect the street and become an engaging part of the built environment. Where else around town could benefit from such a rehab?
Images from an uncorrected proof of NACTO's forthcoming Transit Street Design Guide. Used with permission. (Courtesy PeopleForBikes / NACTO)
Because protected bike lanes can make it comfortable for almost anyone in a city to ride a bike to a good transit station, they’re perfect complements to public transit.
And as variouscities have found, transit projects that remake streets can be the perfect time to add a protected bike lane, too.
That’s why we’re excited about the new guide for transit-oriented streets that’s due this spring from the National Association of City Transportation Officials. NACTO’s latest design guide draws on examples here in North America to show how streets can fit walking, biking, driving, and efficient mass transit all in harmony.
For example, here’s an annotated illustration of a conventional bike lane that bends out around a bus stop, to avoid any conflict between bikes and buses:
Images from an uncorrected proof of NACTO’s forthcoming Transit Street Design Guide. Used with permission. (Courtesy PeopleForBikes / NACTO)
Here’s how it might work with a parking-protected bike lane:
Images from an uncorrected proof of NACTO’s forthcoming Transit Street Design Guide. Used with permission. (Courtesy PeopleForBikes / NACTO)
And here’s an illustration showing that a contraflow bus lane on a “one-way” street can also make a pretty good barrier for a bidirectional protected bike lane:
Images from an uncorrected proof of NACTO’s forthcoming Transit Street Design Guide. Used with permission. (Courtesy PeopleForBikes / NACTO)
All of this is a huge shift from the way things have been in the United States for years, with buses and bikes both shoved, together, into spaces that cars couldn’t use.
We should be divvying the resources of our cities, including our public road space, among ourselves, not among our machines. Guides like NACTO’s are associated with bikes and transit, but they’re actually instruction manuals for the proper use of cars as tools. NACTO shows us how to make sure that our machines are our servants, not our masters.
[Editor’s Note: This article has been cross-posted from PeopleForBikes’ Green Lane Project Blog. Follow the broader story of bicycling with PeopleForBikes on Facebook and Twitter.]
Bicycling for Louisville (B4L) knows that great streets benefit everyone, not just those, well, bicycling around town. To help promote the idea, the group that launched 2015 as the #YearOfTheBike is feting 2016 as the #YearOfTheStreet at its annual kick-off party taking place on Thursday, January 28 (details below).
As part of the kick-off fundraiser, B4L will also launch a new advocacy focus called, plainly enough, Streets for People.
“Traffic engineers tend to design roadways to move cars as quickly as possible from point A to point B, at the expense of making the roadway a pleasant environment for people,” Chris Glasser, executive director for B4L, said in a statement. “We’d like to see traffic calmed while increasing access for everyone. That’s what Streets for People is all about.”
Rendering of the proposed redesign of East Market Street. (Courtesy Carman Landscape Architecture)
Glasser holds up the planned redesign of East Market Street as an example of the kind of urban design the group is advocating for: a complete street designed “to be comfortable and convenient for all users in all modes of transportation,” according to B4L. Pedaling the point home, a presentation on the new streetscape will be given at the event.
The 2015 Kick-Off Party takes place on Thursday, January 28 at St. John Nulu Theater, 629 East Market Street, from 5:30–9:00p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Streets for People represents a major shift for Bicycling for Louisville, which has advocated for better bike infrastructure since 2004, with major successes stacking up in the previous three years. The new emphasis on complete streets will look more holistically at streets as places for all people.
“With the Streets for People initiative,” B4L said in a press release, “the organization will focus on converting one-way streets to two-way, improving the transit experience for TARC riders, increasing pedestrian access and safety, and adding bike lanes where safe and appropriate.”
Among the first projects B4L will pursue under the Streets for People banner will be two-way conversions along Oak Street and St. Catherine Street in the Shelby Park neighborhood. Initial talks with Metro Planning, Public Works, engineering firm Qk4, and community stakeholders are already underway in an effort to fund a traffic study along the corridors.
“It’s a big project, but we’re going to see it through,” Glasser said. “We already have a lot of support from everyone we’ve talked to.”
This news couldn’t come at a better time for Louisville, which is among the deadliest in the country for all road users, especially pedestrians. “A vibrant community has vibrant streets,” Glasser said. “Projects like NuLu and Oak St. Catherine are the logical next step for safer streets in our city.”
Also on hand at the kick-off, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer will give a pep talk to the city’s cycling and complete streets community and the city’s Bike Louisville coordinator Rolf Eisinger will discuss city efforts around cycling.
West 6th beer will be on draft and B4L will be raffling off a bike from Parkside Bikes for people who sign up or renew membership with the organization. Appalatin will provide live music. The event is sponsored by bike-friendly planning firm Gresham, Smith & Partners.
“We want to make an architectural statement,” Gant Hill, owner of Gant Hill & Associates and a member of the development team, told Broken Sidewalk. “Our goal is to make them fun and very unique.”
The project site at Shelby and Ash streets. (Courtesy Google)
Besides Hill, the team includes Rick Kueber, founder and CEO of Sun Tan City, and Bella Portaro Kueber, owner of Bella Vita Media. The complex is being designed by Mark Foxworth of Foxworth Architecture and shipping container guru Jeremy Semones of Core Design will fabricate the units. As you may recall, Foxworth and Semones are working on another exciting shipping container community hub in the Park Hill neighborhood along Dixie Highway.
The project site at Shelby and Ash streets. (Courtesy Google)The former Ash Street Station bar was on the site. (Broken Sidewalk / Google)
Hill said the project, called the Schnitzelburg Container Apartments, is still very much conceptual and subject to change, but that there could be up to six apartment units on the site.
“We don’t know the final layout yet, Hill said. “A lot of it comes down to how we can maximize the site.” He said the team is looking at how to handle parking and provide quality green space for residents.
Conceptual layout of the Schnitzelburg Container Apartments. (Courtesy development team)
“Our target audience is anybody that…looks for high quality and smaller spaces,” Hill said. “Somebody that looks for something unique and different than what can be traditionally found on the market.” Hill declined to reveal rental rates for the units, but said they would be in line with existing rents in the area, such as the Germantown Mill Lofts a block north.
Hill said the proposal speaks to the larger evolution taking place in Germantown and Schnitzelburg. “It’s a vote of confidence in the momentum and energy that Germantown is currently experiencing,” he said. “We’re hoping to continue to celebrate that.”
Conceptual mockup of the Schnitzelburg Container Apartments. (Courtesy development team)
“We feel that this design is going to really showcase the neighborhood and the semi-industrial cool aspect of that location,” Hill said. “I think the fact that we’re using a container as a structure is going to really play into the landscape of the area. It’s going to be really dynamic.”
The project has not been submitted to Metro Louisville’s Planning & Design Services for review and Hill said the team is working hard to make the project easily understandable since it’s such a new concept for residential use in the city. He said the site shouldn’t need rezoning to accommodate the apartments.
Conceptual mockup of the Schnitzelburg Container Apartments. (Courtesy development team)
The development was unveiled by Bella Portaro Kueber in a Facebook post Wednesday that has since gone viral. In it, a series of renderings show the early design of the scheme.
If the approval process goes smoothly, the team hopes to have a model unit—or perhaps even the entire complex—built as soon as October.
“It’s a radical concept,” Hill said. But one that’s very much possible in Louisville. “This is cool,” he continued. “It’s not going to be cheap windows and doors and trying to stuff everything in a shipping container. It’s going to have modern finishes and designed for today’s lifestyle.”
The site, red, in the larger neighborhood context. (Courtesy Google)
The area has seen a lot of change in the past couple years. A block north, the group called Three Points, for the confluence of the Schnitzelburg, Germantown, and Shelby Park neighborhoods, continues to beautify the area with landscaping, new trees, and murals.
Farther north in Shelby Park, several groups including impact investment firm Access Ventures, have been revitalizing that neighborhood with new retail including the just-opened Scarlet’s Bakery at Shelby and Oak streets.
Closer to the development site, the Art Sanctuary is providing studio space for artists and the Dairy Del is welcoming crowds for ice cream in the summer.
“There’s just something terribly dynamic about this area—a heightened tension from a variety of elements,” Byron Hoagland, a property owner in Germantown, a private developer, and urban advocate, told Broken Sidewalk. “The original city street grid meets the eastern growth pattern, the train tracks cross Shelby Street and gently curve to the grid, the large industrial structures huddling close to the tracks, Shelby’s slight meander toward Burnett as it breaks free from the grid, the old hospital on Shelby (now a men’s treatment center), the City Incinerator.”
The area is distinctly a border condition and the shipping container proposal is taking full advantage of that. With the momentum the neighborhood is seeing with the completion of the Germantown Mill Lofts and new retail and restaurants, the Schnitzelburg Container Apartments might be just what this part of town needs.
“That urban tension will only be heightened by new high-modernism utilizing older industrial materials,” Hoagland added. “I’m kinda giddy here!”
Louisville is experiencing something of a residential boom as we enter 2016. Hundreds of new apartments are popping up in the city’s urban neighborhoods seemingly every week, from Germantown to Downtown and Clifton to Butchertown to Nulu, there’s no shortage of privately developed housing just wrapping up or just getting started.
We rounded up 16 of the most exciting apartment projects taking shape across Louisville and listed them below. While each individual development by itself might have a dozen or a hundred units, when you add them all up, we’re talking some serious numbers. These 16 projects alone comprise over 2,500 new residential units. We’re building a city here.
The Germantown Mill Lofts. (Courtesy Underhill Associates)
Developer: Underhill Associates Location: 946 Goss Avenue Neighborhood: Schnitzelburg Number of residences: 187
One of the most exciting renovations in the city is shaping up in Schnitzelburg. Underhill Associates have been converting the former textile mill into the Germantown Mill Lofts, and the results have been stunning. The first tenants have already begun moving in and developers are rolling out the rest of the building in phases this year.
The Bradford Mill Lofts. (Courtesy Marian Development)
Developer: Marian Development Group Location: 1034 East Oak Street Neighborhood: Germantown Number of residences: 150
Ask anyone in town: Germantown is having a moment. Construction will begin soon on a major conversion of the Bradford Woolen Mills into 150 loft-style apartments. The older brick building will house one-bedroom units while the newer concrete site will have two-bedroom residences. A pool and community space sits in between and a restaurant is even planned along Oak Street.
Rendering of Bristol’s Main & Clay development. (Courtesy Bristol Development)
Developer: Bristol Development Group Location: 637 East Main Street Neighborhood: Butchertown Number of residences: 260
The Main & Clay apartments are under construction on, you guessed it, the corner of Main Street and Clay Street in Butchertown. The 260-unit, seven-story development is pricey but it includes underground parking and some of the most luxurious amenities Louisville has ever known. Nashville’s Bristol Development Group is incorporating the facades of four old buildings into the building’s design.
Rendering of the 800 Tower City Apartments. (Courtesy Village Green)
Developer: Village Green Location: 800 South Fourth Street Neighborhood: SoBro Number of residences: 286
Detroit developer Village Green is taking on one of Louisville’s mid-century masterpieces. The company is converting the 29-story tower built in 1963 into some of the most modern apartments in the city. Village Green is restoring some of the old, like the facade and a long-gone fountain, and adding a bit of the new, like a ground-floor restaurant and a rooftop yoga studio.
Developer: Hudson Holdings Location: 455 South Fourth Street Neighborhood: Downtown Number of residences: 100
Florida-based developer Hudson Holdings has big plans for the Starks Building at Fourth Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard. The company announced last year that the mixed-use renovation will bring 200 hotel rooms, 100 apartments, and a lot of retail including rooftop bars. This one should bring some real vibrancy to South Fourth Street.
Developer: Taurus Capital Management Location: 305 West Broadway Neighborhood: Downtown Number of residences: 40
Built in 1927 with skyscraper ambitions, Downtown’s Fincastle Building at Third and Broadway is undergoing a conversion from office space to 40 apartments over retail. Developers are keeping mum on the details, but this is an exciting project for making Downtown a more walkable place to live, work, and play.
Rendering of the Phoenix Hill Apartments. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)
Developer: Edwards Companies Location: 648 Baxter Avenue Neighborhood: Phoenix Hill Number of residences: 280
Slated for the site of the former Phoenix Hill Tavern, the so-called Phoenix Hill Lofts will bring some serious urban energy to the northern end of the Highlands. Most of the massive complex will be built on surface level parking lots, but a few houses and historic commercial buildings will make way for the 280 apartments over retail. The facades of one house and one commercial building will be incorporated into the design.
The Mercy Apartments. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)
Developer: Edwards Companies Location: 1170 East Broadway Neighborhood: Original Highlands Number of residences: 200
Although we’re bummed that the Mercy Apartments will take out the beautiful former Mercy Academy Convent on East Broadway in the Original Highlands, we’re happy to see 200 new apartments elbowing up to the street to create a feeling of being in a city. The project was the first announced in the area by Columbus, Ohio–based Edwards Companies, and it’s expected to get under construction this year.
The Ice House Lofts. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Developer: Mike Schnell and Dave Steinbrecher Location: 217 East Main Street Neighborhood: Downtown Number of residences: 29
Since the project was first announced eight years ago, construction progress has repeatedly been put, well, on ice. Construction picked up in a big way last year and the Ice House Lofts are well on their way to occupancy. The project includes 29 apartments over retail and event space.
Rendering of 111 Whiskey Row. (Courtesy 111 Whiskey Row)
Developer: Main Street Revitalization Location: 111–115 West Main Street Neighborhood: Downtown Number of residences: 12
Despite a heartbreaking fire last year that all-but-leveled the historic Whiskey Row Block, developers are pushing forward with plans for a mixed-use conversion of three former whiskey warehouses into retail, office, and 12 apartments. Stabilization work is ongoing to repair what’s left after the fire and a new structural system will later rise behind the historic bones. The development is next door to another exciting project, the future home of Old Forester Distillery, directly west of this site.
Rendering of the Axis Apartments. (Courtesy Cityscape)
Developer: Cityscape Residential Location: 1373 Lexington Road Neighborhood: Irish Hill Number of residences: 300
Once planned as a strip mall, a forlorn patch of land sandwiched between Beargrass Creek and Lexington Road will up the density in Irish Hill with 300 new apartments. No retail is planned and the area isn’t the most walkable yet, but with this kind of influx of people, surely good things will follow.
The Amp Apartments. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Developer: Milhaus Development Location: 2030 Frankfort Avenue Neighborhood: Clifton Number of residences: 93
The Amp Apartments just wrapped up construction on Frankfort Avenue. Developed by Indianapolis-based company Milhaus, the project brings 93 new residences to the bustling Clifton neighborhood. Built on the site of a former parking lot, a new urban presence completely changes the streetscape along this part of Frankfort Avenue.
Developer: Omni Hotels & Metro Louisville Location: 400 South Second Street Neighborhood: Downtown Number of residences: 225
Only the top half of the 30-story, $300 million Omni Hotel & Residences will be residential. The other half is, of course, the hotel. Despite a fraught public review process, this mega-development will change the face of Downtown Louisville, pushing development momentum east to the largely ignored Second Street corridor. A groundbreaking has been set for the end of January, but it’ll be a little while before tower cranes punctuate the city skyline.
RiverPark Place apartments. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Developer: Poe Companies Location: 1500 River Shore Drive Neighborhood: Waterfront Number of residences: 162
The second apartment building at the massive riverfront development known as RiverPark Place is up and running. The 167-unit Waterside West has been completed and occupied for a while now, but the 162-unit Waterside East is brand new and welcoming residents to the brave new world on the waterfront. Development will continue at RiverPark Place as retail and more residential towers and apartments buildings are planned for the site.
Developer: City Properties Group Location: 310 South Hancock Street Neighborhood: Nulu Number of residences: 173
City Properties Group’s 310 @ Nulu apartments are helping connect Nulu to Louisville’s Medical Center in a big way. City has been developing market-rate housing and apartments in the Hancock Street corridor for years, but this is by far the group’s largest to date in the area. Located on the corner of Jefferson and Hancock, 173 new apartments make Nulu an even more walkable place.
Developer: City Properties Group Location: 601 East Jefferson Street Neighborhood: Nulu Number of residences: 12
We know it better as the Louisville Chemical Building, a grand corner commercial structure deteriorating for over a decade on the corner of Hancock Street and Jefferson Street. The building will soon see new life as the Lofts on Hancock after Bill Weyland’s City Properties Group gets ahold of it. Plans call for 12 apartments over retail.
Renowned Kentucky farmer-author-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry will receive the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, the organization has announced.
“Now 81 and still productive, Berry is the author of eight novels, two short story collections, 28 volumes of poetry and 31 volumes of nonfiction,” the group said in a statement. “Set in the imaginary town of Port William, Kentucky, his fiction constitutes a cycle about themes of life in rural America. An outspoken environmentalist, organic farmer and pacifist, Berry has written about and engaged in civil disobedience against industrial agribusiness, ecological destruction and militarization.”
The National Book Critics Circle also named the 30 finalists six categories—autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry—for the outstanding books of 2015. Awards will be presented on March 17 at the New School, in a free ceremony open to the public. For a complete list of finalists, as well as winners of other awards, click here.
[Editor’s Note: This article has been cross-posted from The Rural Blog. Top image of Wendell Berry by Guy Mendes.]
