Downtown Louisville business owners excited for Yum! Brands' move into PNC Tower

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Yum! Brands' plan to move 550 employees to a new headquarters in downtown Louisville has downtown business owners excited.

Yum! signed a 10-year lease in the PNC Tower, using four and a half floors of the building. The company is moving from its long-time headquarters off Gardiner Lane, property that's since been donated to Jefferson County Public Schools. The restaurant giant also announced in February it's moving around 100 corporate jobs in Louisville to the company's office in Plano, Texas, combining the KFC Louisville headquarters with Pizza Hut's headquarters.

Company leaders said they chose downtown because it's close to restaurants, arts and entertainment. One of those restaurants is In Season Harvest Kitchen.

"It's been exciting for us, because, obviously ,when we sign leases in 2020 and 2019, this was a totally different landscape," Daniel Passafiume, owner of In Season Harvest Kitchen on Main Street, said Friday. "So it's nice to see a little of it coming back. It's obviously nowhere where it once was but it's exciting to see a little push back to more normal down here."

Louisville Downtown Partnership released a statement on the announcement, saying Yum! is "helping to create the pedestrian activity and street-level vibrance" that helps make downtowns thrive and grow.:

"Their relocation and investment signals strong confidence in the Downtown area reinforcing it as a premier business destination and contributing to the continued vitality of not only Downtown, but the entire city," said Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of Louisville Downtown Partnership.

In past years, downtown Louisville business owners have talked about the struggles of empty offices, which has caused some businesses to close.

"It's still a challenge to operate downtown, honestly," Passafiume said. "You kind of have to know how the ebbs and flows of the business are going to come, especially with us being live service and the food is always ready to go, fresh. It's a challenge that we love, though, and it's been fun to be here."

This isn't the only recent downtown business development. Earlier this month, our partners at Louisville Business First reported one of Louisville's largest law firms, Steptoe & Johnson moved into the PNC Tower.

Four floors of the LG&E Center will also soon be occupied by 750 employees from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"We are built for really high volume," Passafiume said. "We love to go fast. We love a lot of people. We love the line out the door. And so it's exciting for us to kind of have that potential that we always saw and that we thought was downtown start to come back to life."

After renovations are done to its new space at the PNC Tower, Yum! employees are expected to move in late-2026.

Louisville Business Coverage:

Old Louisville’s Renshoku Ramen closes after years of setbacks

New cocktail bar planned for East Market Street in NuLu

LG&E Center set for renovations as Army Corps of Engineers prepares to move in

More than 130 apartments coming to Louisville’s Portland neighborhood