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Updated: August 4, 2023 @ 8:22 am
“Okolona Center” is planned for the area right past the intersection of Preston Highway and Outer Loop. Aug. 3, 3023. (WDRB Photo)
“Okolona Center” is planned for the area right past the intersection of Preston Highway and Outer Loop. Aug. 3, 3023. (WDRB Photo)
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But the proposal still must get approved.
But the proposal still must get approved.
“Okolona Center” is planned for the area right past the intersection of Preston Highway and Outer Loop. Aug. 3, 3023. (WDRB Photo)
“Okolona Center” is planned for the area right past the intersection of Preston Highway and Outer Loop. Aug. 3, 3023. (WDRB Photo)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A Louisville developer has plans for retail space and four new restaurants on an area just off Preston Highway and Outer Loop in Okolona.
Documents call the project “Okolona Center.” The proposal includes room for four restaurants and a 23,000-square-foot retail space. It would include the area around the recently built CVS, across the alley to the old library, and back up to Carol Avenue, where there are several homes.
Right now, most of the land is filled with patchy grass and asphalt.
One Okolona resident who attended a neighborhood meeting about the proposal in January — and wanted to remain anonymous — said he believes the development would add too many lights and create too much noise. Others nearby, however, said they like the idea of seeing something new.
“Traffic is bad already,” Zac Stacy said. “So no, it’ll probably be about the same, honestly.”
Aside from adding restaurants and retail, though, Stacy believes this proposal should also include a resource center for the homeless population, helping people get IDs and paperwork.
“I hear a lot of talk about, ‘You can get help here. You can get help here,'” Stacy said. “But it’s not that easy. It never has been. So I’d like to see somebody put some action toward that.”
Earlier this year, after almost 18 months after public input on the future of Preston Highway — from downtown Louisville to Bullitt County — a plan was released calling for major improvements along the 13-mile stretch, such as wider sidewalks, center medians, high visibility crosswalks and better lighting, among others. The improvements to the corridor are in an effort to “decrease the number of severe and fatal crashes” on the roadway and “improve the number and availability of useful transportation options along the corridor,” the city said in a news release in March.
It also calls for a transformation of certain intersections, like Preston and Broadway, Preston and Eastern Parkway, and Preston at the Outer Loop, adding green space, better connecting retail, residential and office spaces, and making those areas more walkable.
For Okolona Center, the developer, Nance Realty Company, said this is a vibrant area of Louisville and hopes a proposed idea like this would add to that. However, declined to comment on camera for this story, noting these plans are still only in the proposal phase and must go through the approval process to move forward.
The city said the proposal will go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment later this month.
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