David Hardy, managing director of CBRE|Louisville, knows that the industrial market is booming today in Louisville.
But that sector isn’t the only one that’s thriving today in this Kentucky city. Just ask Hardy. He says that Louisville’s multi-family market is a strong one, too, Hardy said.
“There is a lot of new multi-family construction underway today,” he said. “Rents are very high, while vacancies are very low. There is some talk that maybe there is more multi-family in the pipeline than we need. It’s always tough to predict the future demand.”
Hardy is even seeing strong improvement in the region’s retail market, one of the markets hit hardest during the days of the Great Recession.
The Middletown Commons shopping center is a good example. This retail center, located on Shelbyville Road between English Station Road and the Snyder Freeway, is being developed by GBT Realty Corp., which says the shopping destination should open in late 2014.
Academy Sports and Outdoors will serve as the center’s anchor, while other tenants will include Chick-Fil-A, Texas Roadhouse, Hobby Lobby, Rue 21 and others. Overall, the center will boast more than 225,000 square feet of retail space.
“Retail is really on the way up,” Hardy said. “It was the hardest sector hit during the recession. It’s been one of the slowest to come out of it. But we have had very good activity here lately. It is great to see new retail construction going on.”
In another sign of the health of Louisville’s retail market, the new Shoppes at Louisville, an outlet mall located on the edge of the city’s market in Simpsonville, will open later this year off Interstate-64 and Kentucky-1848. The outlet center is a big one, costing $80 million to develop and eventually featuring 80 stores. The mall is expected to open at the end of July.
“I think that Louisville is just a steady market. That’s what is attracting all of this activity,” Hardy said. “We don’t see the extreme peaks during the go-go times in the economy. We don’t see the big valleys when things slow down. We didn’t have as far to go to recover from the recession.”
