Louisville opts for more of the same ol’ Cordish chain-think.

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You work hard for years to cultivate a unique local presence as a bar, restaurant, entertainment venue and retail establishment, then watch as your elected officials reward your efforts by handing millions of dollars to an outside developer to install cookie-cutter chains and corporate lookalikes at the very center of your city.

Or, as the Cordish Company describes it, Center City, coming soon to downtown Louisville, whose metro council belatedly approved the project last week.

As noted among Monday morning’s table setters at The ‘Ville Voice blog, the Courier-Journal’s editorial board, no doubt looking foward to multinational advertising dollars from the likes of Fourth Street Live’s current occupants, is bought and paid. Velocity’s gonna love it.

Least Surprising Editorial: The C-J Editorial Board really likes the Cordish Center City project, and is handing out free criticism to Republicans for opposing it. The copy reads like it was lifted from a Jerry Abramson speech.

[editorial link at C-J]

The ‘Ville Voice also provides this helpful link to video describing the viewpoint of truly local business people.

At WHAS-TV:

The debate went on for months, but now the Cordish Company, the company that built Fourth Street Live, has the green light to start developing the area known as the water company block. That fact has local business owners like Nancy Shepherd, owner of Cafe Metro, concerned.

For the flip side, consider this comment from the discussion board at Robin Garr’s Louisville Restaurants Forum:

I think there is a painful reality to deal with here: locally operated and owned small business can’t rehabilitate an entire area of downtown, including making Louisville Gardens an up-to-date location, pushing a large tenant into the Starks Building, etc. While I’d prefer that locally owned business take on larger and more important downtown projects, the capital required to do a major task can be huge, and a company like Cordish has the ability to bite off big chunks of downtown development. There are very few companies that do what Cordish does, and we are fortunate to have them as partners in this venture. It doesn’t mean that I won’t prefer – and frequent – locally owned business, but we also have to be realistic about how, as a community, we can get capital invested into our downtown.


Me? I hate chains. My Philly beer writing buddy Lew Bryson says it best here: Death to Chain Restaurants, and he quotes Arnold Toynbee, to boot:

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.

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