Developers Reveal Design for 60-Story Museum Plaza

Museum Plaza will be developed by Laura Lee Brown, Steve Wilson, Steve Poe and Craig Greenberg. Wilson and Brown, whose family has extensive holdings in Brown-Forman Corp., are Louisville investors and contemporary art collectors. Another of their ongoing projects, which is nearing completion, is the downtown 21C Museum and Hotel. It contains a 90-room boutique hotel, a new contemporary art museum and a restaurant called Proof on Main.

Steve Poe is the owner of Poe Cos., a Louisville-based real estate development firm. Poe is a partner in the recently opened $115-million Louisville Marriott Downtown and the planned 1,500-unit River Park Place development in Louisville's Waterfront Park. Greenberg is a local attorney with Frost Brown Todd.

Museum Place will be the first new skyscraper in Louisville since 1993, when work was completed on the 35-story Capitol Holding Center, now called the Aegon Tower. The centerpiece of Museum Plaza is the arts center--an acre-sized "island" 22 stories up that will be open to the public. Below the island are four "legs" and above it three towers. Glass elevators, operating at an angle, will transport visitors from Main Street to the arts center.

The designers of the building are Selva Gurdogan and David Chacon from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in New York. OMA-NY's resume of recent projects include the Seattle Central Library (2004), the Prada Beverly Hills "Epicenter" Store (2004), the Illinois Institute of Technology Campus Center (2003), the Prada Soho "Epicenter" Store (2001), and the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum (2001).

In addition to receiving the land from the city at no cost, the developers are asking the city and state to pay for $75 million in public infrastructure improvements in and around the site. The money would come in the form of a rebate on part of new taxes generated by the project over the next 20 years.

Scheduled for completion in 2010, Museum Plaza completes the public plaza area along the waterfront, between the Muhammad Ali Center at Sixth Street and the Frazier Historical Arms Museum at Ninth Street. To accommodate an expected increase in downtown traffic--the Museum Plaza is expected to attract 10,500 people daily--the development will include 1,000 parking spaces within the structure.