Museum Plaza Attacks Louisville

I love my hometown, but I sometimes wonder where we come up with our ideas. First we decided to build a football stadium for the University of Louisville. Thankfully, a little hometown establishment named Papa John's funded the project and it stands in all its glory along the newly-renovated Central Avenue. Years ago there was an ornate clock that sat on 4th Avenue, long before it went "Live" that would run a mock Kentucky Derby daily. After the death of the 4th Street Galleria, and the revival of 4th Street Live, a little cheesecake company, Adam Matthews, is still trying to restore the clock back to working condition.

About five years ago, eMain was born. A segment of downtown Louisville, located, ironically around the East Main area, to foster emerging businesses to locate downtown. My company now occupies some of the ghost town space that never got swiped up due to the slowdown of business growth in 2002 and 2003. Now, business in Louisville is booming again and voila - Museum Plaza was born.

Museum Plaza will tower 61 stories in the air and will house restaurants, a contemporary art museum, retail stores, luxury condominimums, office space and a hotel. This new monster will employ over 500 folks and is being funded by another little local establishment, Brown-Forman (for those non-Louisvillians - they are the liquor company around here promoting Jack Daniels among other lines of liquor and Lennox China). Construction begins in 2007, with completion slated for 2010.

At first glance, this is just stinking ugly to me, not to mention it looks a bit too much like the World Trade Towers. I suppose the concept is good, but take a look at the simulated skyline photo above. We've set ourselves up for the next Godzilla movie - Museum Plaza Eats Louisville.