The commitment of tax dollars, however, was a powerful statement and prompted the private sector to get on board.
WAXWORKS OWENSBORO WINDOWS
The Glover Cary Bridge, now being painted after a $3 million rehab in 2011, is visible through the windows of the new Owensboro Convention Center. Like any proposed tax increase, it was hotly debated, controversial and unpopular – among the seven yes votes, two were defeated and three did not seek re-election in 2010 – at least until others began to see for themselves what Payne and his fellow newly elected commissioners envisioned. The 7-to-2 approval vote by city commissioners and the Daviess County Fiscal Court came just one month after Payne took office. One of the first items on Mayor Payne’s agenda when he took office in January 2009 was a doubling of the local tax on insurance premiums from 4 to 8 percent to generate $80 million for downtown investment. Little of this would have been possible without a huge political gamble.
Taken together, the investments represent a move from “the Dark Ages to the Renaissance” for the city, Payne boasts. Additionally, US Bank Home Mortgage has invested $30 million and added 1,982 jobs since 2009, and Metalsa Structural Products added 240 jobs with a $12.5 million in investment. There is new growth also outside the riverfront district – which, like many traditional downtowns, had declined after a beltway mall opened in the 1970s – such as the a state-of-the-art medical center. This project is a key element of plans to make Owensboro a magnet for bluegrass music as Nashville, 125 miles south, is for country music. Leaders in the city and Daviess County, population 97,234, are pushing for development of a limited-access north-south highway corridor along a route including Owensboro between I-65 in Nashville and I-196 in western Michigan if that vision is fulfilled, it would become Interstate 67.Īdditionally, fundraising is almost complete for renovation of a city office building that will become the International Bluegrass Music Center – the city will providing the building and $3 million if the center can raise $7 million. The six-acre Smothers Park and Promenade on the Owensboro downtown riverfront includes a large children’s playground.
$85 million to extend Owensboro’s bypass highway.$424.5 million for the 447-bed Owensboro Health Regional Hospital and medical campus that opened June 1.Investments there in the past five years have generated an estimated economic impact of more than $1 billion – much of that in the depth of the nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression. The award – which Payne calls the Nobel Prize for cities – is testimony to the massive change taking place in Kentucky’s fourth-largest city.
Investments in Owensboro in the past five years have generated an estimated economic impact of more than $1 billion. Less than 24 hours earlier he and 20 other community movers and shakers had returned from Denver, where the National Civil League on June 16 named Owensboro an All American City for 2013, one of only 10 towns nationwide to earn the coveted honor. Owensboro Mayor Ron Payne is normally exuberant, but today he is nearly levitating with excitement, the smile on his face brighter than his yellow-striped necktie.
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