Why are companies leaving Louisville?

The hits just keep coming for economic development in Louisville — most recently with the news that KFC is leaving town.

That's one of five recent examples of some absolutely abysmal economic news coming out of Louisville. 

Before that it was Papa John's flight from Louisville to Atlanta. And the news that Humana Inc. is vacating its Main Street tower in Downtown Louisville. You can throw the closure of the Brown-Forman Cooperage and Diageo's ending of bottling operations at Stitzel-Weller Distillery onto the bad news pile too. 

Those are just the big, semi-recent ones. Add it all up and it doesn't look good for the Derby City. 

So what's happening here? We give our best shot at an explanation on this week's Access Louisville podcast, which you can check out in the player above.

In short, it's not all just one thing. Louisville is on the wrong end of some recent business trends. 

Obviously, the trends that led restaurant companies (KFC and Papa Johns) out of town are different than those causing the distillers (Diageo and Brown-Forman) to shut down facilities. 

In the case of the former, it seems restaurant companies want greater access to the world than Louisville can readily provide (a few site selection professionals we spoke with gave us some great insight on this recently.) And in the case of the latter, there's a global spirits downturn and threats of a trade war that are impacting Kentucky's bourbon industry. 

As for Humana, it's in step with a lot of companies that are just needing less office space in the wake of remote work. 

So the question is less: What's going on here and more what do we do about it? 

More on this weeks show

We don't just lament Louisville's losses on this week's show. We also go over some good news that has taken place as well. It seems that  things are moving for a redevelopment project at Louisville Gardens, which will be home to the film industry. There's also new apartment building going up that could be a real boon for Downtown Louisville.

And we've got some news on massive upgrades planned at Churchill Downs.