LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville Collegiate School won permission Thursday to demolish three 1960s apartment buildings in Cherokee Triangle to build a 56-space parking lot to serve the private school.
The Louisville Metro Historic Landmarks & Preservation Districts Commission, a body whose members are primarily appointed by the mayor, voted 6-2 to approve Collegiate’s appeal of an earlier decision denying the school’s application to demolish the buildings, which contain 48 units.
Collegiate, which has owned the Yorktown Apartments for more than a decade, already emptied the buildings of tenants earlier this year upon lease expirations.
"Thank you to the Metro Louisville Planning and Design Staff for their dedicated work and guidance during this multi-year process," the school said in a written statement Thursday through a public relations firm. "Collegiate would also like to thank members of the ARC, Landmarks Commission, and the greater Louisville community for their input and thoughtful deliberation."
The school’s plan drew criticism because Louisville faces a shortage of housing affordable to low- and moderate-income people.
"How many homeless encampments did you pass on your way to this meeting this morning?" Catherine McGeeney, director of communications at Louisville’s Coalition for the Homeless, asked the commission members during Thursday’s meeting. "Homelessness is a complicated issue. But experts across the board agree that it is mostly caused by a lack of low-cost housing for poor people. We are short thousands of units of rental housing in Louisville for our poor citizens, which means we must maintain the existing low-cost units that we have."
The commission’s decision turned on a narrower and more technical question, however. That is, whether another group, the Cherokee Triangle Architectural Review Committee, made factual errors in March when it denied Collegiate’s original application.
The committee ultimately agreed with Louisville Metro’s professional planning staff that the three Grinstead Drive apartment buildings don't contribute to the historic character of the Cherokee Triangle Preservation District.
"We are supposed to make sure that the ordinance is followed, and the definition of '(historically) contributing structures' does not include if the present use is affordable housing ... That's not what we're here to decide," said commission member Morgan Ward, a business litigation attorney.
