Earlier this month, Louisville’s Development Review Committee approved a plan to create new buildings on a roughly 6-acre part of the Algonquin neighborhood, bordering the nearby Park Hill community.
Re:land Group, a local Black-owned developer, is leading a project to build affordable housing, commercial space and an outdoor area on the site.
The plan would transform the northern portion of a nearly 17-acre property that’s gone unused for three decades and has a history of chemical activity. The Rhodia company, which at the turn of the century owned the site, commissioned a 2001 report that found hundreds of spills and releases happened between 1974-94.
Jim Beckett, Re:land Group’s managing partner, associated the vacant land with a lack of neighborhood attention. Just across the property is Parkway Place, a public housing complex.
“The thought of having a brownfield that's been sitting across from people living in Parkway Place Apartments is kind of ridiculous, and so we're all complicit to that,” Beckett said.
Louisville’s government bought the Algonquin site in 2002 and sought out developers to revitalize the site in 2020. Re:land Group was the only applicant and has since been working with the city to hash out the property’s future.
The plan calls for 233 units of affordable housing spread across three five-story buildings, along with ground-level commercial space and open space outdoors.
Beckett said the specific affordability limits of the housing units haven’t been decided yet. The Kentucky Housing Corporation has already allocated the group more than $31 million in tax-exempt bond financing, an important tool for developers interested in building affordable housing.
Re:land Group also set up the Park Hill/Algonquin Community of Opportunity Advisory Board to seek resident feedback on the project.
Jeff O’Brien, the executive director of Louisville’s economic development cabinet, said he thinks Re:land Group has done great work engaging members in a “hard to reach” part of the city.
“Because of the large industrial land users there [in Park Hill], we've got pockets of residential that are disconnected from one another in some instances,” O’Brien said.
In 2022, Louisville Metro approved $10 million in American Rescue Plan funding for soil remediation efforts on the property. Cleanup on the northern six acres ended this past spring, and about $1.3 million left over is expected to be used for infrastructure on the site.
O’Brien and Beckett both said that a final development agreement, which would transfer ownership of the remediated acres, is expected early next year. Beckett said that would allow groundbreaking, originally planned for 2024, to begin “immediately after that.”
While his group looks to eventually remediate and use the entire Rhodia site, Beckett said their vision for success also includes the surrounding area, including Parkway Place. And he said existing residents are key to that.
“Re:land is not empowering anybody. They already have power. Our job is to put wind behind [those] already powerful, incredible, beautiful, resilient communities that we have,” Beckett said.
