LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Less than a week before Election Day, the leading candidates vying to be Louisville's next mayor are discussing their vision for downtown Louisville.

Whether you're attending a concert, basketball game, bourbon tour or want to visit the birthplace of the Hot Brown, all of it can be found downtown.

"It's the heart of our city," said Craig Greenberg, the Democratic candidate for Louisville mayor.

But despite a rise in foot traffic downtown after the pandemic, restaurants and businesses continue to struggle. There are also concerns about the number of people who call the city sidewalks home. 

For the district to grow, both Greenberg and Republican candidate Bill Dieruf say the area needs to feel safer. Both candidates support hiring more Louisville Metro Police officers to work toward that goal, but say it will take more than that.

"Downtown has two problems. You have the perception of safety, and the reality of safety," Dieruf said. "So, we have to make sure that changes."

"We need to make sure that the streets are clean, graffiti is removed, abandoned cars are removed from the street in a matter of days, not months," said Greenberg.

Events and conventions have made a post-pandemic comeback, but both candidates say day-to-day downtown still needs to work on bringing locals back. 

Greenberg wants to re-envision how to use space.

"We must work to take these extra surface parking lots that we have and turn them into mixed-income, mixed-use opportunities that have commercial activity," he said.

Meanwhile, Dieruf said he's talking to state lawmakers about potential office space incentives for local companies.

"I'd rather help the people here grow first, and then attract people to come here," he said. "Because I can grow your business here because you're already here, faster than I can anything else."

As for the office buildings, according to commercial real estate company JLL, the Central Business District has a vacancy rate of more than 18%.

"If you take your offices and change them to where people are living in the tower, working in it, and it just so happens that on one of the floors the business is there. So that if you go to meetings, they are there, live, work, play," said Dieruf.

"We need to look at the vacant office space and see if we either recruit new tenants or if we have residential people that move in," Greenberg said. 

Both candidates also express a concern for the city's most vulnerable. Despite initiatives and millions of dollars pushed by Mayor Greg Fischer's administration, there are still many people sleeping on city streets or in tents under overpasses leading into downtown.

Dieruf said programs in Jeffersontown, where he currently serves as mayor, have produced results such as the Angel Program that can help those struggling with drug addiction get placed into a treatment facility.

"We have to help them get off the street, to get to a life where they have a home, they have a job, and they understand how to deal with society," he said.

Both Dieruf and Greenberg say it's important to not just find those without homes somewhere to live.

"More mental health services, with addiction treatment services for those individuals in need. We need to help them get driver's licenses and ID cards, get signed up for Medicaid so that they have access to the services they need to have a new path in life," Greenberg said.

However, there's also the need for more transitional and affordable housing. The city is thousands of units, and billions of dollars, short. 

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