Day 3/15 - Louisville, KY

This article is part of a series where we release all City Council + Planning Dep. decisions for the top 15 cities tracked nationwide. You can find all decisions for Louisville, KY here.

Welcome to Day 3 out of 15.

From July 2024 to July 2025, Louisville, KY, rezoned 377.96 acres, which include at least 39 distinct parcels, projected to deliver ~1,203 new housing units.

Findings

Many cities rezone and upzone liberally. A new project here, an expansion there, but often there’s no clear guidance on what area will be redeveloped.

The City Council of Louisville, on the other hand, has a very clear vision for their city. We see a lot of corridor-centric growth zones, focus on the industrial sector, and new multifamily developments.

The Old Bardstown Road / Beulah Church Road Corridor: A New Suburban Hub

Louisville focuses on “nodal density” and the development of “multi-modal” corridors. One of these areas is the Old Bardstown Road / Beulah Church Road Corridor. Decisions like the Windcrest Farms Section 3 (a 288-lot subdivision) or the 190-unit Beulah Crossings Townhomes mark a significant addition of housing in a suburban area.

To support these new developments, the City Council approved a new Taco Bell, a new restaurant, and is considering approving a 400-unit Self-Storage Facility in the area.

The Taylorsville Road Corridor: Commercial Intensification and Diversification

The Taylorsville Road corridor represents a more mature commercial artery that is now undergoing a period of strategic infill and intensification. Key commercial projects in the area include a 22,000 SF retail and fitness center, a contractor shop / showroom, and a private proprietary club / event space.

The Industrial & Logistics Corridor

Located at 8119 Minor Lane is the biggest rezoning we’ve tracked over the last 12 months. The emergency rezoning (a tool used to expedite the application process) turns 97-acres of residential & commercial uses into EZ-1 (Enterprise Zone).

This 1.2 million SF development seems to be an anchor for many adjacent, such as the 12.38-acre rezoning from C-2 to PEC (Planned Employment Center) to allow for outdoor storage and truck parking, or the 2.4-acre parcel on Old Fern Valley that was rezoned from R-4 Residential to C-M Commercial Manufacturing for the development of contractor shops.

Factory-Built Housing

Louisville passed an amendment to modernize and streamline regulations for factory-built housing. This change removes outdated barriers and simplifies the process for replacing these homes in residential zones, provided they meet HUD codes and specific design standards.

This is a clear pro-affordability decision intended to lower the cost of new housing construction and expand the range of available housing types.

Methodology

ReZone tracks all CRE-related City Council and Planning Department decisions. We meticulously categorize them (see data dictionary) and record decision details such as Size_Dollars, Size_Units, Size_Acres, Asset_Class, Property_Type, Long/Lat, Owner, Developer, etc.

It’s important to state that we only focus on City Council & Planning Department data. For example, if a developer were to build 1M+ SFR homes by-right (and thus wouldn’t have to appear in front of the City Council), then we wouldn’t track that.

However, we believe that zoning, which is mostly controlled by the City Council & Planning Department, has an incredibly large impact on local real estate markets and want to highlight some key decisions and accentuate some major trends/directionality.

We’ll be continuing to monitor the City Council & Planning Department decisions and if you want to get email alerts every time new CRE-related decisions in Louisville happen, then feel free to sign up here.

Bye now,
Daniel Heller
[email protected]

Our publishing schedule:

Day 1: Denver, CO
Day 2: Phoenix, AZ
Day 3: Louisville, KY
Day 4: Seattle, WA
Day 5: San Francisco, CA
Day 6: New York, NY
Day 7: Houston, TX
Day 8: Atlanta, GA
Day 9: Charlotte, NC
Day 10: Chicago, IL
Day 11: Columbus, OH
Day 12: Jacksonville, FL
Day 13: Los Angeles, CA
Day 14: Nashville, TN
Day 15: Philadelphia, PA