Louisville's Waterfront Botanical Gardens preparing for multimillion-dollar expansion

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Louisville's Waterfront Botanical Gardens is planning a multimillion-dollar expansion, but there are several obstacles in the way.

The expansion will bring a conservatory, a Japanese garden and a visitors’ center to the popular attraction, which has seen 10,000 visitors since opening in October of 2019 — 1,000 of those just last weekend.

"Things have just changed, and so we wanted to send out a redesign and let the community know what we are thinking," said Kasey Maier, president of the Waterfront Botanical Gardens.

The expansion includes plans to add permanent parking but will require a massive clean-up of an old homeless camp just off Interstate 64 and Frankfort Avenue. Waterfront Botanical Gardens will purchase the 4.5 acres from the Waterfront Development Corporation in the next five weeks, but no trespassing signs were put up in December.

Homeless camp near Interstate 64 and Frankfort Avenue — Louisville's Waterfront Botanical Gardens plans to clear an old homeless camp off Interstate 64 and Frankfort Avenue to make room for a new parking lot. (WDRB photo)

"We will clean it and clear it and we will be putting gravel down but we won't develop," Maier said. "We need the funding to develop the parking lot to its final form."

The area of trash is roughly the size of a football field. It will be a tricky development project, because Frankfort Avenue at River Road is often prone to flooding. To help combat that possibility, many of the larger trees will stay, and additional ones will be planted in and around the lot.

"The parking lot land will be leveled and then planted to help — we're working with MSD on the engineering to help manage those flood waters we don't want to contribute to that," Maier said.

"Moving the earth around really doesn't take as long as you might expect, but the big earth movers here will rearrange this in a nice way," said Jeff Cummins, director of finance and operations. "It's a lot of work and it's not cheap, either. It takes funding and things like that, so we've been securing the funding every day to build this botanical garden."