We’re pleased to share recent coverage by the Courier Journal of important community work in the Park Hill/Algonquin neighborhoods that we’ve been working on since mid-2021.

Once left behind, this Louisville neighborhood is on the verge of a comeback.

Louisville Courier Journal, Keely Doll, published on February 23, 2025

For decades, the nine neighborhoods that make up Louisville’s West End have suffered from disinvestment. But as efforts to improve the communities have made strides in recent years, one neighborhood has been left behind.

Not much is said about Park Hill, the dozens of blocks bordered by Hill and Oak streets between Parkland and Old Louisville. It’s devoid of parks and public green spaces. Local businesses are few and far between, except for a stretch of Dixie Highway cutting through the neighborhood’s western side. Nearly a third of the area is filled with heavy industry, crisscrossed by railroads and dominated by trucking routes.

Even Park Hill’s eponymous community center lies outside city-identified bounds of the neighborhood. Parkway Place, the public housing complex commonly associated with the community, also lies just across the border in Algonquin.

Throughout the years, Park Hill has suffered from environmental contamination, pervasive violence and other issues that residents say have helped hold the community back.

But for the first time in its history, the community has a neighborhood association. A major manufacturer moved into the area in November, and a mixed-use development with housing and commercial space is expected to break ground on the border of the neighborhood this spring. After decades of broken promises, there’s an air of cautious optimism in Park Hill.

Community leaders believe the neighborhood is primed for redevelopment, with its proximity to downtown and plenty of properties ready to be renovated. While some worry new industrial developments could take advantage of the area or harm residents, like in decades past, they also see potential economic opportunities in the place they call home — and they’re ready to get to work improving it.

“I’ve been here about 40, 50 years in this community,” said Ron Hargrove, president of the new neighborhood association. “I’ve seen where it was and [it] had me down. I’m 68 years old and before I leave this earth, I want to see changes.”

A history of neglect
While other Louisville neighborhoods are rich in history, with unique identities formed over generations, information on Park Hill’s past is sorely lacking. It’s often grouped with the nearby Algonquin neighborhood, with about 6,300 residents living between the two communities, according to a 2022 profile from Metro United Way and the Kentucky State Data Center.

The few historical references to the neighborhood are about the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, a community center that operated in the neighborhood before moving to Old Louisville, where it continues to provide youth programming.

Even the Filson Historical Society found it had little knowledge of the neighborhood.

“I’m afraid no one on staff had any immediate knowledge of the Park Hill neighborhood, nor do we have any reference material on it specifically,” an email from the historical society said in response to a Courier Journal inquiry. “It seems like a bit of an enigma in terms of being sandwiched between better-known neighborhoods like Algonquin, Old Louisville, Parkland.”

While the history of the neighborhood is vague, one man has laid claim to its name. Louisville arts and business leader Ken Clay spoke about his involvement with the origins of the neighborhood in a 2022 interview with the University of Louisville’s Oral History Center.

Clay said he was working in the programming department at the University of Louisville during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War On Poverty.” As part of his job, he was instructed to select the areas where poverty funds would be directed. As Clay described it, he used school district boundaries and “redrew what’s now called Park Hill.”

Park Hill’s proximity to downtown Louisville and the railroad system made it uniquely poised for heavy industrial growth, with several companies continuing to produce packaging, bourbon barrels and other items there. But while manufacturing brought jobs to the area, it also brought long-lasting environmental impacts.

A 28-acre property in the center of the neighborhood was formerly home to Black Leaf Chemical, a pesticide manufacturer. The property was identified as a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011 after a soil sampling found high levels of arsenic, pesticides and cancer-causing agents. A 2014 analysis by the University of Louisville also found two people who lived near the site had elevated levels of lead or arsenic in their blood or urine. A multi-year effort promised to remove contaminated soil from the land, as well as on 70 residential properties.

Blocks away on the border of Park Hill and Algonquin is nearly 17 acres of land that was once home to the Rhodia chemical plant and other manufacturers that produced chemical lacquers, enamels and coatings throughout the 20th century. The area has been vacant since 1994 and began environmental remediation in 2023 to remove contaminated soil.

Despite cleanup efforts at both sites, residents say the memories and mistrust remain. Park Hill residents have been burned by industry before, and environmental harms remain a barrier that the community struggles to overcome.

Kathleen Parks, a longtime Park Hill resident and member of the Park Hill/Algonquin Neighborhood Association, said the impacts of sites like Black Leaf and Rhodia cannot be underestimated.

“Historically, as you are aware, environmental racism does exist, and as much as we don’t want to use the R word — it cannot be erased,” Parks said. “Environmental, systemic toxins and cancer-producing agents from different industrial companies permeate in Black communities and communities of color — we’re no different here in Louisville, Kentucky.”

Barriers to economic growth

Despite lingering environmental concerns, heavy industry and manufacturing remain some of the hallmarks of the neighborhood. The eastern half of Park Hill is dominated by warehouses, manufacturing centers and other industrial spaces, many bordering neighborhood homes.

In the early 2000s, the city commissioned a study on the area’s potential for redevelopment, focused on an industrial corridor roughly bordered by Algonquin Parkway to the south, Seventh Street to the east, Broadway to the north and 22nd Street to the west.

The plan identified 97 goals for the area. But by 2015, less than 10 had been accomplished or moved beyond the planning stage, according to reporting from WDRB. A decade later, it seems the once ambitious plan to invest in the neighborhood has been largely forgotten.https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/plou/sf-q1a2z3584c02f3.min.html

Victor Yarbrough, co-owner of Brough Brothers Distillery, said Park Hill’s industrial nature used to be an economic benefit to the neighborhood. But over the years, that’s fallen aside.

“There used to be a ton of manufacturing in that part of the city, a lot of jobs opportunities,” Yarbrough said. “And over the years, of course, those manufacturing centers have closed down or moved to other parts of the country or town, and that’s leading the void of economic opportunity.”

Yarbrough, along with his brothers Bryson and Chris, opened the distillery on Dixie Highway in 2020 — one of the few businesses that have opened in the area in recent years.

Yarbrough said although the area has historically been economically oppressed, more local businesses were in operation there before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the years that have followed, several have shuttered, leaving the remaining businesses stranded.

“We’re still hanging in there, hoping to bring some additional economic output to the area, but it has been difficult,” Yarbrough said. “It’s like most things — we can’t do it ourselves. Basically, we need some other people, other groups to come in.”

Bruce Sherrod, a longtime resident and member of the neighborhood association, recognizes Park Hill is in a prime location, being so close to the University of Louisville, railroads and the downtown business district. He worries that if the community doesn’t work to have a foothold in development, vacant land and properties could be easily bought up, and the character of the neighborhood could change.

“If you look at this neighborhood probably in a 3-mile radius — you look at an aerial view of it, it’s just made to be redeveloped,” Sherrod said.More: What’s coming to Louisville in 2025? Track all the new developments, by neighborhood

Park Hill is beginning to see some new investments, like from gourmet pretzel maker Stellar Snacks, which opened a production bakery on the former Black Leaf site in November. The facility is expected to create 350 jobs and bring $137 million in investment to the neighborhood over the next 10 years.

As more businesses consider the community, though, some residents are concerned they’ll be shut out of the process or growth. That’s part of the idea behind the neighborhood association, a group formed to help encourage businesses that look to enter the area to engage and interact with residents, rather than widen the divide.

“In 2025 moving forward, we want to put a stop to that,” Parks said. “Not to say we want to put a stop to development — we don’t want to do that, but let us know, you know, give us a buzz. Let’s have lunch, sit down, let’s meet together, and you share with us what you’re doing. We’ll share with you what we’re doing.”

One issue that may be keeping businesses from coming to Park Hill is the crime and stigma associated with the neighborhood, several residents said. The neighborhood has had 18 homicides and 41 non-fatal shootings since 2022, according to the city’s gun violence tracker. The majority Black Park Hill and Algonquin neighborhoods have a median household income of $27,560, with 42% of residents living below the poverty line, according to the 2022 data profile.

Bobby Payton, who owns Hilltop Chicken and More, said he’s lived in neighborhoods across Louisville, and Park Hill has a “mindset that is totally different” than other neighborhoods.

“You go to bed with a tragedy, and then you wake up to a nightmare just about every day over here,” Payton said.

Payton said the people in Park Hill do have strong community ties, but the stigma of the neighborhood can wear them down, especially the younger generations. He feels once changes are made to the neighborhood, specifically at the Parkway Place apartments, people will feel more pride in their community.

The Louisville Metro Housing Authority manages Parkway Place and recently hired a managing coordinator to start redevelopment planning efforts for the barrack-style complex.

“The people in Park Hill, they do stick together, you know?” Payton said. “I mean, they’re happy, they have good times, and they know how to have good times. It’s the atmosphere, it’s the look of Park Hill. It’s the stigma that they have on Park Hill.”

New beginnings

The issues that have long plagued Park Hill have also made the neighborhood resilient.

With the creation of the new neighborhood association, longtime residents hope to channel that resiliency into lasting change.

Formed in 2024 by Sherrod, Hargrove and Parks, the association is heavily involved in both improving the neighborhood and guiding the Re:Land development, a planned 233-unit affordable apartment complex with space for a daycare center, café and other businesses on the Rhodia site.

Re:Land won a bid to develop the city-owned property in 2020 and has worked to involve the community in the process. The neighborhood association members said the development is expected to break ground in late spring, and developers are already speaking to businesses that may be interested in operating in the commercial spaces.

Other local businesses have also been working toward progress within the neighborhood, even if on a smaller scale. Yarbrough said that in the five years Brough Brothers has operated in Park Hill, its section of Dixie Highway has improved.

“[The community] rallied around us,” Yarbrough said. “And we’ve seen quite a bit of — I  mean, there’s still things that happen — but we’ve seen a quite a bit of decrease within our particular block, or a couple of blocks, in terms of negative interactions.”

Stellar Snacks also hopes to improve the area by making a commitment to hiring residents from the neighborhoods surrounding the 434,000-square-foot plant. Co-founder Gina Galvin said 23 of the 52 positions at the Louisville location are staffed by residents of the West End.

“When we hire locally, we’re not just building a workforce — we’re strengthening the community around us,” Galvin wrote in an email to The Courier-Journal. “We want to create jobs that offer stability, growth, and a sense of pride for people who live here. It’s important to us that our presence in Louisville has a positive impact, and that starts with investing in the people who make this city great.”More: From hospitality to health care, 4 of the biggest Louisville development projects of 2024

Community members understand one company or development alone can’t improve an area. Revitalizing Park Hill is going to take a village — and likely both community and corporate buy-in.

“We hope that as more and more businesses come in, more people with the neighborhood association comes into play, [the Re:Land project] comes into play — that will help get the revitalization sustainable, make it a sustainable point to where people can really see Park Hill transform into the thriving community that it should be,” Yarbrough said.

Despite the long road ahead, residents are optimistic.

“There is hope,” Parks said. “I always believe. I’m an incurable optimist. Bruce is too, Ron too. We’re all incurable optimists, and we want to see change. This community deserves economic change and economic justice.”

Reach reporter Keely Doll at kdoll@courierjournal.com.