Shelbyville offering incentives for businesses to open downtown

SHELBYVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Shelbyville has a new plan to bring more business to its downtown.

"We're trying to promote the city and get people to move," Shelbyville City Councilman Shane Suttor said. "There's a lot of people looking to move out of larger cities. Small towns like Shelbyville are becoming more popular."

A new Reinvestment Grant District will help business owners renovate and rehab historic downtown buildings. The city will provide matching grants up to $100,000.

"It's important to the mayor and the council that we protect our buildings downtown and that we preserve them," Suttor said. "And some of these buildings need lots and lots of work."

The city is also looking to create an occupational tax rebate program to stimulate job growth.

If businesses hire at least three new employees making $45,000 or more, they would save 50% on the occupational tax paid on those positions for five years. The council modeled these incentives after successful programs in other nearby cities like Frankfort and Jeffersontown.

"Downtown is the heart of our county, our city, and so getting businesses and people downtown is what we feel is important as a council," Suttor said.

Shelbyville also has several other projects to improve the downtown area in the works and the city hopes those improvements will drive more people to consider calling Shelbyville home.

"We just finished work on a pavilion, and we're working on a convention center that's going to be opening up in the spring, and we're going to be doing an entertainment district on 6th Street," Suttor said. "We're just really trying to get people to look at Shelbyville as a place that they want to come and visit."