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Bringing people back
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Attracting former residents back to Louisville — boomerangs, as they're known — could potentially be a way to increase the city's population. But there are challenges to it.
LBF Senior Reporter Joel Stinnett joins us to talk about some of those issues on this week's Access Louisville podcast.
Stinnett just wrapped up a cover story on the topic of boomerangs and how they fit into Louisville's growth strategy. The biggest stumbling block is the job market.
In spite job gains in some sectors, Louisville doesn't have a lot of options for people holding advance degrees. Those jobs are often confined to bigger metropolises. Stinnett also looked at programs that small cities like Topeka, Kansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma have implemented in order to address a similar problem.
After the boomerang discussion, we chat with Reporter Michael L. Jones about the financial troubles being experienced by Memorial Auditorium in Louisville and how a looming Metro budget cut may impact it. We also chat about an upcoming move by The Whirling Tiger, the closure of the Bristol Bar & Grille restaurant in Downtown Louisville and a pending relocation for Texas Roadhouse in Clarksville.
Access Louisville, sponsored by Baird, is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. You can also follow it on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
People move away from Louisville after college. How do we get them back? We'll chat about it next on Access Louisville. Thanks for joining us. My name is David Mann, and joining me today are Michael L. Jones. How are you doing out there? And Joel Stinnett. Hello, everyone. Access Louable is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. Each week we bring you the latest news and plenty of sharp opinions on what's going on here in Louisville, Kentucky. Of course, this podcast is sponsored by Baird. Discover the Baird difference at rwbaird.com slash Louisville. We'll talk about Baird. We'll hear more from Baird later in the show. For now, let's get into this bringing people back to Louisville. They're called boomerangers, Joel. So uh you yourself are a boomeranger. Uh tell us what you uh I guess what got you thinking about this story you just write wrote about this topic.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like you said, uh I moved away to Nashville for over six years uh and worked at our sister paper uh in Nashville Nashville Business Journal. Also moved to New York when I my early 20s for a year. But what got me thinking about this story was um actually when I talking to some friends down in Nashville who had talked about how they wanted to move back to Louisville. They're Louisville natives as well. I actually grew up with them. Her and her husband wanted to move back, and she knew a lot of friends that wanted to move back, but they just couldn't find the job here in Louisville to equate to the ones they had in Nashville. He's in has does some more digital media. Uh she does communications for some really large healthcare companies. And obviously they, you know, make more money in Nashville than they would probably make in Louisville, but also just the the level of job uh that they have in Nashville either doesn't exist in Louisville or it's just very scarce.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then so you reached out, uh, kind of talked to Louisville about what they're doing, and you also talked to uh Topeka, Kansas about what they're doing, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Um what were were you surprised to hear some of the incentives that they were offering? And I guess did Louisville give you anything for moving back?
SPEAKER_04Well, uh uh like I said, yeah, I talked to Trevor Paul of one Louisville, and you know, they were just formed a few months ago. So they uh he said that they're it's something that's on their radar um to create some incentives, but they don't really have a plan yet because they're so new.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh Topeka, it's really interesting what they do. They will offer uh boomerangs uh $10,000 if they move back to go towards buying a house and put it for like a down payment. So you have to prove that you've gotten a new job in Topeka. You can't just uh have a remote job, and you have to buy a house when you come inside the county. So that's kind of how that program works. They also do that for military veterans as well. Uh no, Louisville did not give me anything when I came back whatsoever.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh you know, but I always knew I was gonna move back. I uh I even if Louisville had to give me $10,000 put down on a house, I already owned a house in Louisville. When I m when I moved, I kept my house in Germantown and uh always knew I was gonna come back to Louisville. Probably would have never left if uh Business First had just hired me in the first place.
SPEAKER_02No, we shouldn't we made a mistake there. Yeah, uh initially Joel was uh intern here at Business First. Uh we didn't have a position open, so we went to work for our sister paper in Nashville before he moved back up here. So uh yeah, so Tulsa um I guess Top was it Tulsa that had 10,000 if you bought a house and then Topeka had five five.
SPEAKER_04Topeka had the 10,000. Uh Tulsa is a little bit different. They actually have a program that is for remote workers.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it's not just for people who are from boomerangs, but they they've gotten a lot of people to move back to Tulsa through this program because and if you when you read the story, it'll be out, I guess, Friday. Um when you read this, our story, uh it's kind of a similar situation. We profiled a couple that um the the woman's from Louisville is a Louisville native, and they moved back home recently from Boston. Uh but they didn't really try to find a job in Louisville because she just knew that uh she's in biotech. She knew that you know there wasn't a lot of people who are very little biotech in Louisville. She wasn't gonna find a job um to equate to one she had in Boston. But her company let her uh work remotely uh from Louisville. Her husband, on the other hand, who's not a Louisville native, he's from Maine, um, his company let him work remotely from Louisville for a while and then basically let him go because uh they did they wanted somebody in town. Uh but if you know if Louisville had some of those remote incentives, which I think Topeka uh does is either ten or fifteen thousand dollars for a remote worker to put down on a house, and when they move back to Topeka, uh I'm sure they would have it would have helped them make that decision a lot easier.
SPEAKER_01Right. We saw a lot of that during COVID.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And that's where Topeka kind of I think I think Topeka had kind of started this a little bit before COVID, and then when COVID hit, they got saw a huge success. I mean um because I mean even people that work from Topeka, you know, saw that maybe they wanted to get out of the coasts or or out of the large cities, move somewhere uh a little more uh quality of life and family friendly, and uh Topeka was a good option for them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. All right. Well, uh Michael, uh you wrote about one Louisville forming, and um there's still pretty early days. I can't remember when that was. I guess it was right at the beginning of the year.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, uh March, I think, is when it was official. But uh I've been writing about it since January. And I remember uh last year you had a story about GLI trying to attract people, and it was it was uh they had an initiative that's yeah, they had the Live in Lou program and then uh they did their five-year plan. It was uh Prosper 2030, and they were gonna expand Live in Lou, which was talent attraction, to focus on boomerangers because uh just like Joel said, they found that there were a lot of people who wanted to work, wanted jobs in Louisville. They wanted to move back to Louisville, but they couldn't find jobs, you know, especially in areas like tech.
SPEAKER_02And I guess as they were getting that ramped up, then GLI wanted to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and GLI and Lita ended up merging. And so, yeah, a lot of those uh initiatives that GLI started, we don't know if they're gonna continue or not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess uh it they'll continue on in some form, it sounds like, but uh still figuring out the particulars. Uh I guess that's a question for anyone. If you had a magic wand, what's one thing you would do to attract people to Louisville? Because Louisville's population really isn't growing. We just had a story, it's uh it was up about uh two percent. I'm gonna look it up while we're talking here, but uh it was either one or two percent. It just it's been pretty slow for the last I would say decade or so.
SPEAKER_04So uh I I I actually think uh a professional sports team would would not necessarily just attract people, but attract corporate companies and things like that. Some of those jobs that we um that we need. We you know, we've created a lot of jobs here in Louisville and in the region um over the last few years. Uh but like if you read the story, a lot of them are um in that you know, manufacturing or logistics or or healthcare, healthcare jobs are being created everywhere, but they're not really those those uh knowledge-based jobs that people leave Louisville for and then want to come back. Um, you know, we saw a Yum, or not Yum, but uh uh KFC move its corporate headquarters out. You know, Humana's um gone more remote and and uh lessened its uh employee count here a little bit over the last few years. So just some of those jobs just don't exist. Uh I think professional sports, having been in Nashville, you know, the Titans are really what signaled Nashville's growth when they got that NFL team. That's absolutely and then the predators and then everything that's come over since it um and so I think that just it brings more corporate citizenship and more companies relocate and bring some of them more of those jobs.
SPEAKER_01It's funny. Uh one of the things when I talk to people from out of town, usually they tell tell me that they married somebody from Louisville and ended up moving back, but other than uh, you know, sending people out and to bring bring them back to Louisville, I think that uh we have a problem to uh marketing ourselves as a city. And something that site selectors always tell me Louisville has a problem telling its own story. Yeah. And uh, you know, we're so when people think of Louisville, they think bourbon and horse racing. Yeah. But we're a very artistic community, and we have um, I think it's a great place to raise a family. And I think that we need to uh, you know, have do a better job of of telling people uh what our assets are besides bourbon. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, good point. Yeah. No, I mean, uh everyone I talked to um inside the city and out, you know, talked about how just Louisville is very sticky. It's like once you live here or you come here, people love it. Yeah. There's lots of great things. Cost of living, the um just the quality of life, the parks, the how friendly people are, the restaurant scene, the food, everything. It's great. Um, it's just trying to, I think, just create those jobs, get people to to be able to move back here. Yeah. But um, yeah, I mean, once you I think that's why Trevor Paul even talked about this as like the boomerangs are the low-hanging fruit because they already know how great Louisville is. We don't even have to tell the story to them. Yeah. Because they already know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, but we just gotta have the the jobs for them to come back to moving on, we'll we'll talk about a few other things here. Um, Michael, you just had a story about Memorial Auditorium. Uh, it is facing um financial constraints. Uh, what's been going on there? That's uh it sounded like they were trying to raise some money, but they they had some trouble doing that, and and now that a match, a potential match from the city um you know didn't come back.
SPEAKER_01Well, um, so a memorial auditorium has been getting $132,000 from the city uh every year uh to help with his $400,000 budget. But uh in the latest uh proposed budget, Mayor Greenberg would cut that to $20,000. And so I went and talked to uh the CEO Kelly Green of the auditorium, and he said they'll put us out of business. Yeah. You know, uh that is not uh enough to uh sustain us. And um, you know, in in uh Merck Greenberg's defense, they did the city did give them five hundred thousand dollars two years ago that to for uh renovations. But uh Kelly told me that money is being used for um uh uh HVAC system. Yeah, yeah, it's like 800,000. But see, uh the the uh auditorium is uh in a unique position because it's a war memorial too, so it's not like a venue like the palace or something. So uh it is uh restricted on like going in the debt and certain things that other places could do to raise money.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so um they uh technically, I guess there was a statute that was passed by the legislature in the 20s that said the city was responsible for maintenance. Yeah. So uh memorial auditorium is like, you know, we were gonna ask for $200,000 more. And they got a cut. You know, and they and we got a cut. So they are threatening to sue and test out this uh a hundred euro statue, you know, that's never been tested in court. Yeah. And so it's kind of interesting. Um, you know, because it's so old and um it it also during uh the COVID and the social justice protest, there was some damage there done there, uh windows are boarded up and things like that. Uh, you know, it has a lot of needs. Yeah. And so um, you know, the CEO was like either fund us or like rewrite the law so that we could find partners and you know, get this going again. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and you know, I I hadn't heard of it. I'll get into that later, but um what are what what kind of events do they usually have out there?
SPEAKER_01Um graduations, uh, they host uh a lot of uh plays, uh a few concerts, but you know, it has a really deep history. Uh when I was looking around, they had uh posters of the Rolling Stones playing there and things like that because like back in the Tayday, if a band was going to Chicago or Indianapolis, Louisville was just an obvious stop. Yeah. And you know, I said that they had a $400,000 budget, but they have uh an estimated uh uh imp economic impact of $3.7 million.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it is still sputtering along, but it's not like uh the palace or something like that, which has that partnership with Live Nation. Yeah, God help us. Live Nation, don't get involved.
SPEAKER_02All right, well, uh moving on, talking about venues anyway. Uh you had a story about the whirling tiger this week. They're moving. Uh, what's what's behind that move?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh their lease is up and they are going to move a little closer to Nulu. I guess where all the action is. That's true. Um uh I talked to the owner, uh, Mark Evans. He could not uh tell us where he's moving yet, but he says it's gonna be a campus uh with different vibes and things like that. And so because they are moving, um the their landlord, uh Brian Goodwin, is putting uh their building, it's at uh 1335 Story Avenue on the market because Brian he's doing he works on a lot of projects, you know. He's co-owner of Darlings, uh, he's doing the former Ida Down building. There's a lot of bars and restaurants. Yeah, building but most of it is in Shelby Park or the Highlands. And so this uh the Butcher Town building is something that he inherited from his father, Jim Goodwin. And Brian did run a recording studio there, but you know, Butcher Town is just not the focus for him. Yeah. So he wants to move on and and try and find a better steward of the the property uh because he so much is going on uh around Lynch's family stadium. Oh, sure, yeah. And so he's looking for 2.25 million for that building.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I said it yesterday. May our tigers always be whirling. So uh Joel, you just did a story about Bristol downtown. Uh that is closing, and it sounds like dwindling lunch business was the factor there. There were several factors, it sounded like.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I talked to uh their manager, uh TJ Oakley, he's actually vice president of operations for Bristol. Uh he was my manager when I worked at this Bristol.
SPEAKER_02I thought you I thought you said you had worked.
SPEAKER_04I worked at uh yeah, full disclosure, I worked at the Bristol inside the old Jewish hospital hotel on First of Jefferson. That was my first restaurant job, bus tables, moved up to bartender there, and then uh did a couple other things, and then went back to Bristol and worked at the one downtown for a while. Um so yeah, um I remember back, you know, 15 or 16 years ago, however long ago, I worked there. The lunch business was always good. Yeah, always packed. Um, you could always make you know a solid, you know, easy hundred bucks and working for two or three hours and go home uh when I bartended there. But uh actually Olivia and I went in there just a few weeks ago to have lunch, and we were us and one at the table. Yeah. And so I kind of after seeing that, I was worried, kind of worried something like this might happen. And I'd heard from sources, uh several sources, over the last few months that that the Bristol was looking at moving, closing that location and moving um to one of the downtown towers. Um apparently that deal is not gonna happen. So the Bristol went ahead and closed their downtown location. Um, the lease was up, and the owner of the building apparently uh is not sure what they're gonna do with the building. Uh apparently all the offices above the Bristol that used to be there have all uh vacated, all the tenants are out, and uh so he would only offer them a short-term lease. And Oakley basically said that um it didn't make sense for them to do a short-term lease just to keep on losing money. Yeah. And so they're uh gonna start looking for another location downtown.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I it it seemed like they were only busy when something was going on at the Kentucky Center, because you know, I live on 7th Street, and so occasionally we would stop in there, but um it it kind of seems like um the Bristol was one of the first fine dining or white tablecloth restaurants, but they kind of felt left behind, like you never heard anybody talking about, you know, like the Bristol in the same way that they talk about a mishmiche or something like that.
SPEAKER_02It's kind of uh kind of one of those legacy restaurants. So I think it also speaks to the fact that just lunch has changed the way uh people used to go get a long lunch, and now lunch meetings aren't as much of a thing as they used to be. Everybody just well, I wrote about that in the Vincenzo story, you know, they're suspended lunch for the summer, yeah. And you know, it's just the way everybody works anymore, it's hard to find a whole hour to do vote for lunch, you know.
SPEAKER_04I think it's changed a lot since COVID too. I feel like because I mean I Nashville, I used to get invited out by sources to lunch all the time. I mean, once a week at least. Yeah, and in Louisville, I don't think I've invited out to lunch by the source once at all.
SPEAKER_02I have always had the policy that that lunch is never worth it. Like breakfast is okay, coffee's great, a beer's good, but lunch is like just a huge time investment.
SPEAKER_01So especially with our deadlines.
SPEAKER_02I know we got yeah, we got deadlines in the middle of the day, and it's just like it's it's hard to make a lunch work. Um, and then there's I mean, if there's a place to be in downtown, I would say it's Main Street, which that's where they were, but um, you know, it obviously the office traffic has gone down. That's something we've all written about over the years. So uh okay, let's see here. Uh one more story before break. Uh Michael, you just had a story about Texas Roadhouse uh moving its first location, which Texas Roadhouse is a weird company based in Louisville, named after Texas, first restaurant in Indiana. In the Green Tree Mall. They're moving out of there, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. They are gonna close down their Green Tree Mall location. So uh uh Texas Row House also owns Bubba's 33, and uh that's a fast casual concept. And so when they opened on Veterans Parkway, um they bought some adjacent land and they are gonna do a stand-along uh restaurant there now. Yeah. And so uh they didn't have the timeline when uh I talked to them about it, but um they are hoping the new restaurant will be open in November. But the funny thing is that the way that this got out was there was a false message on uh Facebook saying that they were having a going-away party and Willie Nelson was gonna uh perform because uh Shay actually sent it to me and said, like, you know, uh find out if this is real or not. Yeah. And so I reached out to Texas Roadhouse and they were like laughing. They were like, Yeah, Willie, we are moving, but Willie Nelson has nothing to do with it. And so they think that maybe somebody saw them uh uh moving dirt around and just figured out what was happening and just put that on Facebook.
SPEAKER_02But well, it's uh yeah, led to something, I guess. Yeah. Willie Nelson was an investor in uh Texas Roadhouse for a while. I don't know if he still is or not. No, I didn't know that. Maybe that's why that's probably why because he had some kind of uh he he made an investment in the company. I I don't know if he still that was years ago, but um anyway, with that we're gonna take a break. We'll get a word from our sponsors at Baird, and we'll be back after that to give you something to think about.
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SPEAKER_02All right. Well, that is the show this week, except we just started this news segment where I asked people to give us something to think about. This replaces our old uh we decided to do away with the the old uh social media plugs. Um so anyone want to go first?
SPEAKER_01Well, I will because I'm working on a story about I-65 closing right now. Yeah. And people should be thinking about alternative routes to get to uh the places that they uh want to get to regularly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. I was set on, I think I was on a few weeks ago, I said, oh, it might help me because all the I-65 traffic won't be on 64. I was wrong. The detour takes you onto 64. So all the I-65 traffic is gonna be on 64. So it's not gonna help me at all. I'm gonna be stuck just like everyone else. How about you, Joel?
SPEAKER_04Well, uh, I'm getting married in seven days, twelve hours, and twenty-eight minutes. So uh looked up uh a couple marriage laws in Kentucky that maybe we should think about. Apparently, you can marry and divorce the same person in Kentucky three times. Only three. But the law strictly prohibits marrying the exact same person four times.
SPEAKER_02That's terrific.
SPEAKER_04So if anyone out there has married and divorced your wife or your husband three times and is thinking about divorcing him again and getting married again, you might want to hold off on the fourth divorce because you won't be able to marry him again.
SPEAKER_02Fourth times the job. And congratulations on the uh the wedding too. Thanks coming up. All right. Well, that is our show this week. Uh, if you like what you hear, please consider subscribing to the Access Louisville Podcast on popular podcast services, including Apple and Spotify. Thank you very much, Michael and Joel. Thank you, Baird, for the support. And of course, thank you guys out there for listening to us, and we'll see you next time. Bye.