Since the pandemic, Louisville has struggled to bring workers back to businesses downtown. It's also struggled to increase the number of people living downtown. LPM's Bill Burton spoke with the executive director of the Louisville Downtown Partnership, Rebecca Fleischaker about what the city is facing.
Bill Burton: Let's start with the business aspect. The city's been trying to lure workers back downtown. Where do things stand at the moment?
Rebecca Fleischaker: Well, there are more workers coming downtown. It is just very slow progress. When I started this job at the very end of 2021, people were still basically working from home. If you remember the Omicron variant, we were still wearing masks and getting tested every week, which just seems like worlds away now. But we have more people working in downtown today than we did in 2021. It's just been kind of a slow, slow increase, definitely not what we were pre pandemic. And the city is encouraging, and Louisville Downtown Partnership is encouraging workers to come back. We obviously want the foot traffic, but it's the employer's decision, and they have to be the ones who decide what they want their employees to do and what they're willing to make their employees do.
BB: The parking authority of River City recently announced a $5 a month increase to their monthly parking rates at garages. Does that just make it harder to lure people back to working downtown?
RF: I don't think so. Our parking rates are much lower than almost all of our competitive cities, actually. There hasn't been an increase since 2018. So, I don't think that's a reason why people wouldn't be coming back. The monthly rate is not what most employees are paying for at this point, because there are remote schedules people are paying for it when they're using it.
BB: At this point, a little over 20% of downtown office space is vacant. There's a program to convert some of those empty spaces. Where do things stand with that project?
RF: I think you're talking about the conversion fund that the mayor announced.
BB: Correct.
RF: We are still waiting to hear what those projects will be but there is going to be some money for conversion to residential and that is really important for a couple of reasons. These buildings that would be converted are old office buildings that are probably class B, class C space. That's just not the highest and best use for that space. But we don't want to lose those buildings. They're architecturally important and significant for our streetscapes and for the legacy of how our city was built. So, we want to keep those. I think it's really important that we figure out how to reuse them. Hospitality is still a very strong industry and growing, so that means more hotels. To get that number of people in downtown up to where we really want it. It does mean having more people living in downtown, and only then would you have that 18 to 24 hour activity that you want that makes a vibrant downtown.
BB: And if you do want more people living in downtown and get more people living downtown, you're going to need more services. One thing people always say they want in downtown, it's a grocery store.
RF: How did I know you were gonna say that?
BB: Where do things stand with possibly bringing a grocery store in?
RF: So, retail follows rooftops. That saying is very true, because the profit margin on a grocery is so slim. So, you have to have people who are going to shop there and make it reduce the risk for somebody who's operating a grocery store. I have heard talk of probably two or three different stores. We're not talking about 60,000, 75,000 square feet grocery store, that's not going to happen in downtown simply because cost of land is too much. Doesn't make sense. And you don't have that much land to create that kind of store. But you've got smaller bodegas, market type grocery stores that will serve a smaller area. So, you don't have to look at the three mile radius of people that would be shopping there, it's going to be more of like a half mile to a mile.
BB: That is Rebecca Fleischaker. She is the executive director of the Louisville Downtown Partnership. Rebecca, thank you so much for coming down and making time for us.
RF: Thank you, Bill.
This transcript was edited for clarity
