LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Louisville's iconic Humana Tower on West Main Street will be renovated into a 1,000-room convention center hotel, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced Tuesday.
The project has been rumored since late-2025 with Louisville-based Poe Companies behind it, a vision for renovating the Humana Tower and constructing an additional tower just south of it, near Vincenzo's.
"It's going to attract people from around the world to Louisville," Greenberg said Tuesday. "It's going to attract bigger and better events and conventions and festivals than we have already. It's going to help re-energize downtown. Downtown is truly back, and this project is reflective of that."
According to our partners at Louisville Business First, Poe Cos. signed a letter of intent to purchase the building and the land just south of the tower, including The Exchange and Vincenzo's. Construction on the project, which could cost as much as $700 million, is expected to begin sometime in 2027.
In February 2024, the state's only Fortune 500 company announced it would vacate the building in a cost-cutting move. Humana said at the time it no longer needed the building as it embraced hybrid and remote work amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The company announced plans to sell the tower a year later.
"There are a lot of projects, a lot of events across the country, where a requirement is to have a hotel this large," Greenberg said. "And now that we're going to have it, it's going to help bring even more things to Louisville."
The pink granite tower at 500 West Main Street designed by the late, renowned architect Michael Graves who, in his 2015 obituary, the New York Times called "one of the most prominent and prolific American architects of the latter 20th century."
The building has been a symbol of Humana's homegrown roots since it was built about 40 years ago under the direction of the late Humana co-founder David A. Jones, a lifelong resident and champion of the city.
Humana for decades has been the largest office tenant in downtown Louisville, but it's vacated 800,000 square feet of leased office space in the Central Business District, commercial agents have estimated. In 2022, it donated an entire office building the University of Louisville.
In 2023, Humana said it discovered structural defects in the bowels of the building, leading the health insurer to sue Graves’ firm as well as others involved in the 27-story building’s construction in the early 1980s.
The suit was partially settled in 2025.
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