Business View Magazine
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“sleepy” Kentucky town? Payne talks about the early
days of his first term: “When I got elected mayor, be-
fore I took office, I had a chance to meet with some of
my commissioners,” he begins. “And all of us said ‘It’s
time that we move this community forward.’ We were
doing nothing, downtown. They were boarding up our
downtown. We were not taking advantage of our loca-
tion on the Ohio River. We were spiraling downward
and all of these elected officials agreed that we were
going to take bold action. We were going to do what
was necessary to move this community forward.”
Payne and his commissioners understood that in or-
der to see their vision through, they would 1) have to
have a plan; 2) figure out a way to pay for it; and 3)
succeed at selling that plan to the public and other
necessary allies and stakeholders. Regarding number
one, Payne took a lesson from much older cities he
had been in that had vibrant and bustling downtowns.
“I travelled a little bit in Europe, before I became may-
or, and I noticed these areas in Paris, and Prague, and
Vienna, where people come to ‘gather and gab,’ I call
it.” Based on those models, Owensboro’s downtown
created plans to make itself very walkable with dining
and entertainment venues, and the ability to wander
between the city core and the riverfront, unimpeded
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Owensboro, Kentucky
WHAT:
A city of 58,000
WHERE:
Northwestern Kentucky on the banks of
the Ohio River
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