Gerth: Humana Tower's closure is another death knell for downtown Louisville
Pretty soon, all that will be left in Louisville’s downtown core will be tumbleweeds, coyotes and homeless people.
Just a few months after LG&E announced it was abandoning its longtime headquarters at Third and Main, Humana announced Monday it was walking away from its iconic home at Fifth and Main and putting all its workers into a couple of buildings farther east on Main Street.
Mayor Craig Greenberg’s response came with a wisp of smoke blown up our collective rear end.
“(W)e view this as an opportunity for future growth,” he said in a statement. “The mayor’s office is looking forward to ongoing conversations with Humana and other partners about how this property’s next chapter will continue to be an asset to our beautiful, vibrant downtown.”
An “opportunity?”
Are you kidding me?
That’s like saying the 1974 tornado in Louisville provided a chance to plant new trees at Cherokee Park and to put a new roof on Freedom Hall.
Gimme a break.
It’s horrible news and it makes Louisville’s downtown anything but “vibrant,” the same term Greenberg used when he hailed the opening of the Churchill Downs slot machine parlor in December.
(Here’s a hint – a windowless slots parlor that depends on zombified gamblers staring blankly while they push a button on a computer does not make a city vibrant. Neither does empty office buildings.)
The day after Humana’s announcement brought word that Fifth Third Bank plans to move its Louisville offices from the Brown & Williamson Tower to Nulu, stripping more workers from the central business area.
So much opportunity.
What’s going on is sad but true.
Downtown is dying.
More: How Fifth Third Bank's departure adds to downtown Louisville's office vacancy rate
The Courier Journal reported in December that based on cell phone usage data, Louisville’s downtown has had the second worst recovery from the pandemic of all the major cities in the United States. Only St. Louis has been worse.
What is so disheartening about this latest turn of events is the biggest hits come from Humana and LG&E, two homegrown corporate giants that played such huge roles in Louisville’s growth, that are turning their backs on the city’s core.
But we should have expected this.
Both are now only nominally based in Louisville.
LG&E is owned by Allentown, Pennsylvania-based PPL Corp. after a series of mergers and acquisitions that began when PowerGen bought the utility in 2000.
And Humana, the city’s only remaining Fortune 500 company, which has been downsizing in Louisville nonstop since the Pandemic, calls Louisville its home, but its CEO doesn’t even live here.
The company’s headquarters is really in Arlington, Virginia, where Humana has an office closer to the Potomac than to the Ohio.
Both LG&E and Humana are abandoning high rise buildings in moves that will pull thousands of workers away from restaurants and other businesses that relied on them and were already struggling because of the pandemic. They are leaving workers downtown, but not along the main corridor that runs within a block or two of Fourth Street.
I can't imagine what the late David Jones Sr., the Humana founder who was a cornerstone of Louisville's civic community, would have to say about this.
LG&E will be leaving 14 floors of its building, the 11th-tallest building in the city, vacant and sending most of its workers to the old Sears building on West Broadway. Its executives are moving to a new East End campus.
Humana is completely abandoning its 27-story home, the fourth-tallest building in Louisville and what may be the city’s most architecturally significant modern building.
Its emptiness isn’t an opportunity. It’s an albatross.
What’s even more troublesome is that by moving workers out of the city’s core, it’s leaving streets empty and making it easier for crime to flourish.
We’ve seen a small uptick in crime downtown since COVID struck but unless the city can stop this bleeding of jobs and people from downtown, expect crime to increase the more businesses move out of downtown.
More: What is the Humana Waterside building? Everything to know about the new Louisville HQ
And the more crime increases, expect more businesses to leave – especially after the half-billion dollar black hole of tax dollars that will be known as One Park is built at the intersection of Lexington Road and Grinstead Drive.
It feels like Louisville is stepping back in time to the 1970s after urban renewal decimated the city and bad city leadership paralyzed the downtown shopping district for years.
After a couple of decades of improvements downtown, including the construction of hotels, an arena, museums and businesses that actually brought people to the city center, it feels like we’re going backward.
It will only improve if we’re honest with ourselves and acknowledge this is a problem and not an opportunity.
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Humana building's closure a nightmare for downtown Louisville
