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Archive Louisville

Cancelled

Museum Plaza

Main Street between 6th and 7th Streets, Louisville, KY 40202 approximate location

REX designed a 703-foot tower with an art institute suspended in its middle. After a 2007 groundbreaking, limited site and foundation work began but no vertical tower construction followed. The development team announced cancellation on August 1, 2011, attributing the decision to the recession and an inability to assemble financing.

What got built

Current photograph of Museum Plaza in Louisville.
Photograph by Seicer at English Wikipedia, 4 February 2007 (original upload date). Source. CC BY-SA 3.0.

This photograph was verified against the project and published with recorded first-party, public-domain, or reusable-license rights. How the visual evidence works.

What changed

  • Proposed as a 62-story, 703-foot mixed-use tower with a contemporary art institute suspended mid-building.
  • The program included a University of Louisville MFA program, a 250-room Westin hotel, condos, lofts, office space, retail, and an 800-car garage.
  • A groundbreaking was held October 25, 2007, and limited site and foundation work began in 2008 before stopping; no tower superstructure was built.
  • A 2010 HUD loan commitment briefly revived the financing picture.
  • The developers announced on August 1, 2011 that the project was cancelled.
  • No part of the tower was built. The site sat vacant for years and has since drawn separate, unrelated redevelopment proposals.

Why it changed

In its August 1, 2011 cancellation statement, the development team attributed the decision to the recession and its inability to assemble a workable financing package, including private matching funds alongside a proposed HUD loan. These are the developers' stated reasons rather than an independently audited causal finding.

Details

Status
Abandoned. None of the design was built.
Where
Louisville, KY
Neighborhood
Downtown / West Main District
Developer
Steve Wilson, Laura Lee Brown, Steve Poe, and Craig Greenberg (Museum Plaza Louisville, LLC)
Architect
REX, design architect (Joshua Prince-Ramus). Kendall/Heaton Associates, executive architect.
Rendering credit
Luxigon for REX
The built result
Photographed by Seicer at English Wikipedia, 4 February 2007 (original upload date)

Sources

  1. LPM: Developers Cancel Museum Plaza (Aug 1, 2011) lpm.org
  2. REX: Museum Plaza project page rex-ny.com
  3. ArchDaily: Museum Plaza update archdaily.com
  4. The Architect's Newspaper: developers scrap plans for tower archpaper.com
  5. Wikipedia: Louisville Museum Plaza en.wikipedia.org

Research checked . Status and figures are updated when a source changes.

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