LOUISVILLE, Ky. — One week before the 150th Run for the Roses, Louisville's downtown corridor is brimming with activity.
Over at Merle's Whiskey Kitchen on Whiskey Row, capacity is at standing room only, which they've come to expect.
"It's very walkable, there's plenty of hotels, there's plenty of dining," Wayne Sweeney, the restaurant's director of operations, said. "We're just now getting back to what we call the normal...We were seeing it all of '22, all of '23, we were seeing the foot traffic, people coming in, people being around."
While downtown Louisville has been dealing with fleeing businesses, what it's lost in storefronts, it's made up for in foot traffic.
"We're seeing a lot of out-of-towners, a lot of people from around the world," Sweeney said.
That's backed up by a new University of Toronto study, which looked to rank the recovery happening in downtowns across America since the pandemic.
"We know that we're better post-COVID, so I believe the numbers but we can't replicate it, simply because we don't use the same platform that they use," Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of Louisville Downtown Partnership, said.
The University of Toronto study ranked Louisville third in downtown recovery out of 54 cities, finding between March 2023 and February 2024, the area saw a 33% increase in visitor activity.
"I think what they're saying is true, you know--I just, you know, to compare and come in third is just--I'm going to say thanks to bourbon," Fleischaker said.
"With bourbon taking off the way it took off, the micro distilleries taking off the way they've taken off, that's really helped grow the business," Sweeney said.
Though it's not just Louisville's bourbonism.
Over the last 12 months, the district's seen a steady level of investment from companies moving in, like Derby City Gaming.
But during a conference call with investors earlier this week, Churchill Downs CEO Bill Carstanjen, said recovery is a work in progress.
"I'd say (business) started relatively modest. It's not a material contributor to the Kentucky engine that we've established but it's moving in the right direction," he said. "(It's) about where we thought we'd be but let's get some of these spring and summer months under our belt."
Next week, Derby City Gaming Downtown will also see its first Derby week, open for business.
Fleischaker agrees that recovery has some ways to go.
"We had office workers walking around downtown every day. We don't have that number back at all. We're probably about 2/3s of where we were," she said.
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