LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) -- There is a new attraction coming to Main Street in downtown Louisville. And it involves bourbon.
The building Heaven Hill Distillery owns at Sixth and Main soon will become the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience.
Everyone is familiar with the giant iconic baseball bat outside the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum.
Soon the facade of the Heaven Hill Building will have a five story high bourbon bottle.
"We will have a giant Evan Williams bottle, it will be the way we will identify this as the Evan Williams Heritage Center, it is going to be a great addition to the city of Louisville," says Heaven Hill president Max Shapira.
The family owned spirits company is spending almost $10 million do turn the 120 year old Main Street historic building into a first class tourist attraction.
At a news conference on Thursday at the Kentucky Center, across the street from the new attraction Heaven Hill Executive Vice President Harry Shapira explained the concept of the project.
"It will combine a state of the art artisanal pot still distillery where our master distillers will be able to craft some unique and outstanding bourbons and American whiskeys," says Harry Shapira.
The attraction will also take visitors back in time with high-tech displays showing the history of bourbon in Louisville.
It will celebrate the legacy of Evan Williams, the first commercial distiller in Kentucky and the namesake of Heaven Hill's flagship brand.
Heaven Hill already has a popular visitor's center in Bardstown that attracts between 60 and 70 thousand people each year.
"It will have some of the elements of the center in Bardstown," says Max Shapira, "but with the addition of the distillery itself people will have the ability to see exactly how the product is made."
Heaven Hill will be getting some state economic incentives for its Main Street attraction.
"The Commonwealth is very excited about investing $500,000 to assist in this project,"Lieutenant Governor Jerry Abramson told the news conference.
The new Evan Williams Bourbon Experience joins several other bourbon attractions planned along Main Street.
The Heaven Hill project is scheduled to open in the fall of 2013.
It is expected to attract about 100,000 visitors each year.
It will create 14 new full time jobs and nine part-time ones.
