Ice cream shop, pizza restaurant opening in Shelby Park neighborhood

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- An ice cream shop and pizza place will be the newest restaurant ventures to plant roots in the Shelby Park neighborhood.

The Sugar Room opened last week, dishing up clever soft serve ice cream concoctions. If you’ve dreamt of piling Fruit Loops on top of key lime pie ice cream or graham crackers crumbs on top of ice cream that tastes scarily like blueberry cheesecake, this is the place for you.

“It’s a play on something we’re all familiar with,” said Emil David, the owner of Sugar Room. “So instead of doing chocolate and vanilla, we did a play on flavors that are familiar. For example, we did s’mores. So we did a burnt marshmallow ice cream and put it with chocolate sea salt. And when you swirl it, it tastes just like s’mores.”

David is the mastermind behind all the crazy flavors. Sugar Room is a tiny shop on South Shelby Street with just enough room inside for three ice cream machines, a fridge packed with root beer and a display case bursting with every candy topping you can imagine. In just the first week, David said the response has been great and all the neighboring businesses have shown their support. But the sweet concept was an afterthought.

“We actually put two concepts in this building,” David said.

Sugar Room is in the garage of what used to be a bakery, which shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, at the corner of Shelby and Oak Streets. David decided the building would be the perfect spot to launch his pizza shop, Square Cut Pizza. As his team started building out the space, he realized there was more storage in the back than they needed. So he decided to turn the empty garage into an ice cream shop.

Square Cut Pizza, which will focus on Roman style pizza, is still about four weeks away from being ready to open. Crews are finishing some last renovation and design details. David said he plans to open with a selection of pizzas along with beer and wine, and he eventually plans to ramp up with charcuterie, home-made vinegars, a full bar and seasonal dishes.

David, who has traveled the world as a chef for decades, is no stranger to the restaurant industry. He opened the popular Hot Buns food truck in Louisville a few years ago to keep himself busy while he started looking for the ideal brick-and-mortar location. He had an eye on Shelby Park since about 2019 after several of his business friends started opening their own successful bars and restaurants in the area.

“I think Louisville is an up-and-coming town,” he said. “I paid attention to the neighborhood, and it seemed like it’s the perfect fit for us.”

David is opening his eateries in the middle of a neighborhood business boom. Several new restaurants and shops popped up in the last few years, from Logan Street Market to Trouble Bar, Lovely Earthlings and many more.

Louisville Forward, the city’s economic development organization, monitors and supports growth throughout Metro Louisville. The group’s co-chief, Jeff O’Brien, said the city is seeing “year over year doubling of property values.” It’s hard to tell right now how much of that is due to low inventory, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, or how much of that is due to recent redevelopments. However, there’s “a lot of excitement and business coming into Shelby Park,” O’Brien said.

He said one thing that helps set Shelby Park apart is that much of the historic building stock is still in tact, and that is a big plus for entrepreneurs. It just takes a quick drive down South Shelby Street to see many of the empty buildings have new “for lease” signs in the windows or have construction crews preparing the property for possible new ventures. O’Brien said the neighborhood’s central location is attractive to developers, providing connectivity to downtown and other neighborhoods.

“There is a really good opportunity for housing and redevelopment in this neighborhood," he said. "Shelby Park is really at a tipping point with recent investment."

Property values are on the rise in Shelby Park as new homes are being built, older homes are being renovated, and businesses are moving in. O’Brien said when property values start trending up, Louisville Forward monitors that to make sure locals aren’t getting priced out of their homes.

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