LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Louisville developer Hagan Properties is reviving plans for an empty field the company has long owned at 2020 Herr Lane near Ballard High School.
A development called Providence Point now calls for 520 “high-end” apartments spread among 12 buildings, each three- or four-stories tall, according to plans filed with Metro government earlier this month.
City planning officials say Hagan Properties will be required to hold a neighborhood meeting before proceeding with plan approvals and that no meetings have been scheduled as of Tuesday.
The 19-acre site sits in the middle of a built-out, busy suburban corridor, but a previous plan to develop it fizzled in the Great Recession. Hagan got approval in 2006 to build an office-retail-condo development. Now the plans calls only for apartments.
Hagan said in planning documents that the forthcoming Veterans Administration hospital at Brownsboro Road and the Watterson Expressway will create demand for rental housing in the area.
The site is also close to schools, stores and “arterial and interstate highways which help move traffic to and from other major employment centers,” Hagan said in a Metro filing.
Meanwhile, the proposed development will generate less traffic than the one approved in 2006, Bill Bardenwerper, the attorney for the project, said in an email.
The company described the development as “luxury” rental housing that will appeal to people with school-aged kids and empty-nesters:
By bringing brand new, high quality apartments to this area, Hagan proposes to serve a different, single purpose than the previously approved mixed use purpose at this site, which now will be luxury rental housing, where otherwise the main living opportunities are mostly (not entirely) family houses and patio home style condominiums nearby. Also, because of the number of contemplated bedrooms, it’s likely that renters, taking advantage of proximity to the aforementioned schools, will have children. And because of the lifestyle changes that the Great Real Estate Recession of 2009-2014 and COVID crisis of 2020 have caused, moving ever more people from ownership to rental housing communities, Hagan apartment buildings will be multigenerational. Thus, this community can probably expect empty-nesters to be among its diverse occupants.
Bardenwerper said the community will be “top-notch,” but it’s “too soon” to say what the rents will be.
“What we do know and can say is that the prior plan approval had a combination of multi-family, office and commercial, whereas this plan proposes just multi-family, even though the zoning districts allow by-right more intensive use of this property,” Bardenwerper said.
A few neighbors told WDRB on Wednesday that they're concerned about the apartments adding to traffic congestion.
"I love this area, have lived here for a long time, and know that people want to live here. And we welcome people coming. But we just think that's a really large number to be adding to the traffic and we're worried about safety," Jackie Gedrose said. "... I think it would be a disaster to have 500 apartments."
