Business View Magazine
9
downtown. We’ve built a $408 million state-of-the-art,
award-winning hospital (Owensboro Health Regional).
And the hospital is the largest employer in Kentucky,
west of Louisville. We built a new indoor ice arena; we
built a new outdoor tennis facility.”
In order to carry out its plan to make the city core more
pedestrian-friendly, Owensboro convinced the state to
give it the right to re-route U.S. 60, which used to run
through downtown. “We routed U.S. 60 around our by-
pass,” Payne explains, “so that we could ensure that
our downtown and riverfront would never be separat-
ed by highway. We took that road, and we squeezed
it by expanding the sidewalk so we could have a lot
of downtown dining outside and the opportunity for
people to walk up and down our downtown and our
riverfront.”
And the redevelopment shows no signs of slowing
down. Payne continues: “This summer, we have four
major projects that are going on. Right along the river
we had an old American Legion that was bought by
some developers and we’re going to put in a five-story
building with retail on the first floor, offices on the sec-
ond, and then three floors of condos. We’ve got an
old restaurant that’s coming down and the develop-
ers are going to put up a four-story building with two
restaurants on the first floor. Right across the street
from that, we’re getting ready to build the Internation-
al Bluegrass Music Center and Museum. The state of
Kentucky helped us a little bit with that, but most of it
was private.”
Another area ripe for redevelopment is the so-called
“Highway 54” section in the southern part of the city
that Payne says is “exploding with retail growth. We’ve
been able to get the state to turn this into a TIF district
(Tax Increment Financing). The anticipated tax growth
