Access Louisville

This week on Access Louisville we open the show with some new about restaurant innovations and talk about what we'd like to see next.   We also bring you the story behind the Buff City Soaps deal. Reporter Haley Cawthon talks about the company's growth plan as well as why the company owner has stuck around in Louisville even though the soap company is headquartered elsewhere.  On our fin...

What are Louisville's wealthiest neighborhoods? We discuss on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Louisville Business First Data Editor Allison Stines recently finished researching our annual list of the area's wealthiest ZIP codes . She tells us about the top five and gives a bit of information about each: population, income and so on. As usual, we don't just cover one topi...

We cover several different topics on the Access Louisville podcast this week. First off, we note that Hopcat, a large bar and restaurant in the Highlands has closed. We discuss ideas for this now open space. And note some restaurants we've lost over the years that we're now sorely missing. After that reporter Marty Finley gives us an update on a redevelopment project involving a 13-story...

There's been lots of action taking place in Louisville's restaurant scene during the last few weeks. We chat about new spots to check out as well as reopenings on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Haley Cawthon, restaurant reporter for Louisville Business First, gives us the scoop on a new Cuban spot in NuLu , La Bodeguita de Mima. She tells about the group behind the eatery an...

Churchill Downs announced this week that the Kentucky Derby is coming back with fans in September . That's a surprising development considering sports have been slow to comeback even without fans and cases of Covid-19 are surging across the U.S. We've not been told how many fans would be allowed to attend the Derby, which was delayed from its usual May date because of the Covid-19 pandem...

This week we’re talking about Oldham County and its future development plans. Oldham County is known as the educated and wealthy Kentucky county that empties out during the day. But a pair of blockbuster developments could change that narrative in the future. Reporter Marty Finley breaks down the proposed project at the Close Family Farm and discusses other recent projects in the county. We also d...

Surely this race discussion many of us have been taking part in during the last two weeks in America can lead to change. That's what we talk about on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Uncomfortable as it can be, talking about race relations is a key part of fixing the problems that have festered in America and Louisville for far too long. From a coverage standpoint, we realize that...

A special guest joins the Access Louisville podcast this week. Kyle Henderson, of Angel's Envy Distillery, is on the show to talk about how his company has continued production during the Covid-19 outbreak. During the discussion he tells us how the company was able to keep all of its staff even while big parts of the business (namely the tourism part) was shut down. And we talk about what the...

The silver lining during the Covid-19 outbreak has been that a lot of us have become pretty good at working remotely (that, and margarita deliveries.) When things get back to normal, should we just keep on doing it? We discuss on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Could it be possible that office workers split time between home and the office. Design and Multimedia Editor Brooke Timmons m...

The losses are starting to mount for Louisville's restaurant scene as the coronavirus shutdown lingers. We talk about that on this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. During the last few weeks we've reported that Scarlett's Bakery and Verbena Cafe have closed as a result the social distancing measures put in place to stem the spread of the virus. There's also...

The economy is reopening — now is that a good thing or not? We talk about it on this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. Reporters Marty Finley and Haley Cawthon are on the show this week. Finley has been closely following government restrictions and reopening plans in Kentucky and in Indiana. Cawthon has been keeping close tabs on our restaurant businesses, which have suffered a...

It's nearly the first Saturday in May, but alas no Kentucky Derby . On this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast we chat about our favorite Kentucky Derby memories from over the years as well as what appears to be the slow return of sports. Horse racing, sans the spectators, comes back on May 16 . There's also talk about bringing back Major League Baseball and NBA basketb...

So when can Kentucky's economy reopen? We talk about that on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Reporter Marty Finley, who covers government (among other things) for Business First, talks about the benchmarks that have been set and Gov. Andy Beshear's guiding philosophy on reopening. We already know that some health care facilities are going to reopen as soon as April 27 . Stati...

There's still new construction developments being proposed, even as the coronavirus shutdown continues into its second month. We talk about that on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Reporter Marty Finley tells us about one Louisville developer, LDG Development LLC, that has proposed 1,300 new apartments and an industrial building since quarantine really started in March. Finley talk...

The coronavirus outbreak has given us plenty of reasons to drink. But that doesn't mean that it has been kind to local breweries. We talk about that on this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. Reporter Haley Cawthon recently penned a story on how breweries have been hurt by the outbreak, primarily as a result of restaurants, bars and tap houses being closed to encourage soci...

News about the coronavirus outbreak is seemingly inescapable but we've stumbled upon a few good distractions over the last few weeks. We talk about those and more during this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. Everything from catching up on sports movies, discovering TikTok and playing "Animal Crossings: New Horizon" comes up.  Access Louisville is a weekly podcas...

The new novel coronavirus again dominates our Access Louisville podcast this week. We chat with health care reporter Chris Larson about what is possibly the scariest aspect of this pandemic: Hospital readiness. Larson recently penned a story about how the Louisville area's three largest health care systems are getting ready for the outbreak, which you can read here . On the show he talks abou...

Much has changed during the last week or so as the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has expanded across the U.S. We talk about Kentucky's move to shut down restaurants, bars , movie theaters and other places in order to slow it down. This is obviously taking a huge toll on business with many restaurants having to layoff their entire staff so they could collect unemployment benefits. Restaurant R...

**AUDIO QUALITY WARNING** Like everything during the second week of March 2020, this week's podcast is a weird one. A panel of Louisville Business First employees talks about working remotely and living through the massive coronavirus effort of 2020. The audio quality isn't all here. Because coronavirus has many people working from home we decided to record online instead of in our usual...

We cover everything from Toy Tiger to Topgolf in this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. Topgolf has been back in the local news during the last week as a legal appeal appears set to move forward this summer. A group of residents had sued the company over its plans to build one of its signature driving range/bar hybrids at Oxmoor Center. The Kentucky Court of Appeals has assigne...

You could probably call this the bourbon edition of the Access Louisville podcast. On the show we talk about Louisville area bourbon attractions — distilleries, visitors centers and so on. This discussion is timely considering Business First recently published its list of local bourbon attractions . Digital Editor David A. Mann and Design/Multimedia Editor Brooke Timmons talk about the best and wo...

Plans are in the works to add a new 11-story tower at the Seelbach Hotel in Downtown Louisville. Business First reporter Marty Finley tells us all about the project on this week's episode of the Access Louisville podcast. This is a major addition for a historic downtown hotel. While we're talking about hotels, we have a little fun by ranking Downtown Louisville hotel lobbies. No, this is...

A special guest joins the Access Louisville podcast panel this week: Louisville City Football Club President Brad Estes. We cover a lot of different topics with Estes, including favorite sports venues and the team's soon-to-be open stadium in Butchertown. He also chats with us about how he got into his current role and the recent kerfuffle over the team's logo . We've had a lot of n...

We've had a flurry of restaurant news in Louisville during the last week or so, including the closure of an East Louisville Italian eatery . On this week's Access Louisville podcast Reporter Haley Cawthon gives us on update and several comings and goings, including a new concept called Doc's Bourbon Room on Main Street; a new location for Carali's Rotisserie Chicken ; a new con...

As usual we cover a bevy of topics on this week's Access Louisville podcast. Reporter Haley Cawthon gives us an update on a St. Matthews shopping center that has been closed for months following a roof collapse last summer. The latest news is that a contract is pending on the building, meaning it could change hands soon. What happens next is still the subject of speculation. We also talk abou...