Access Louisville Live: Our next live podcast is 4 p.m. Oct. 29. Join us as we talk money and college sports with University of Louisville A.D. Josh Heird and University of Kentucky Deputy A.D. Marc Hill. Details and registration here.

We've got a roundup of recent restaurant news on this week's Access Louisville podcast.

We start with Ramen House’s relocation. Reporter Michael L. Jones details how the popular eatery moved from its original spot in MidCity Mall to a new, larger location at 204 South Spring Street, previously home to Gary’s on Spring. The move was prompted by the expiration of the Ramen House’s lease and the owner’s desire for a long-term arrangement, which was complicated by the MidCity Mall's potential sale.

The owner, Jonathan Ham, took on the role of general contractor for the new space, facing numerous challenges including a flooded basement, the need to replace major appliances, and even a break-in that resulted in stolen tools.

Despite these setbacks, the new location offers expanded kitchen space, a parking lot, and plans for a cocktail menu once the liquor license is secured, Jones said.

After that, we chat about By Golly’s Bar & Grill, an Ohio-based pub-style restaurant chain, in Clarksville, Indiana, which opened at the site of a former Hooters. Jones explains that By Golly's is using the Louisville area as a launchpad for regional expansion

We also highlighted the growth of Parlor, a successful local pizza chain, which recently moved its New Albany, Indiana location to a more visible spot on West Market Street.

In other pizza news, we note that Louisville Pizza King recently opened a third location on West Oak Street.

Late in the show we discuss a new season of “Wrestlers,” a show that previously aired on Netflix and showcased Louisville’s Ohio Valley Wrestling organization.

And lastly Jones shares a story about Groundhog Archeology, in which Patrick Donley, a local artist, discovered valuable historical artifacts beneath his Germantown studio after a groundhog unearthed china and bottles dating back to the post-Civil War era.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Have you ever talked up the taste of Louisville's water to someone visiting the area? If so you wouldn't be alone.

On this week's Access Louisville podcast, Editor-in-Chief Shea Van Hoy speaks with Spencer Bruce about the reasons behind that — including the marketing effort that aims to make Louisvillians feel proud of the water. Bruce shares a story about a time that he overheard a restaurant waiter bragging about the taste of the water to a tourist — music to his ears, of course.

"It's important that the community, that our customers trust us," Bruce said on the show. He added that there's an educational effort underway as well, rather than just pure marketing.

"We like to say we want to raise next the generation of children to understand the value of water."

Bruce also shares some updates on a few milestones from the Louisville Water Co., including a bond it just took out to fund some new infrastructure projects.

In August, Louisville Water announced it sold $233 million in bonds, the largest sale in the company’s 165-year history. This bond sale was the first issuance since 2022 and more than 75% of the funding supports four projects: upgrades to the Crescent Hill Water Treatment Plant (the largest treatment plant in Kentucky), installing new residual lines for water treatment, supporting regional growth along the Interstate 65 corridor and relining the Crescent Hill Reservoir.

"Like every utility it's critical that we reinvest in ourselves," he said.

Louisville Water supplies drinking water to nearly one million people in Louisville Metro and surrounding communities. On average, the company produces 131 million gallons each day.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Louisville's fall music festivals are bigger than ever — but is that a good thing or not?

We discuss that question this week on the Access Louisville podcast.

Danny Wimmer Presents’ two annual festivals at the Kentucky Exposition Center — Bourbon & Beyond (Sept. 11-14) and Louder Than Life (Sept. 18-21) — look a lot different this year. The festivals now have 2.4 million square feet of space. They also utilize some indoor space at the Expo Center for merchandise sales, cooling off and bathrooms.

Going in, we admit we had our worries.

The Expo Center is massive and there's a lot of concrete that can hold in heat. On the show we give our takes on how the first leg of the two consecutive festivals went. We recorded this show on Thursday, Sept. 18, just hours before Louder Than Life was to start, so we couldn't weigh in on that one just yet. We also talk about how the festival experience was — everything from the sound mix to the artists we watched.

Later in the show we shift from music to bourbon with Reporter Stephen P. Schmidt telling us about his recent visit to Bardstown, Kentucky for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. He talked about how a change in the footprint of that festival changed the experience. While he was in Bardstown, Schmidt also visited a new tasting room for Old SteelHouse Distillery. And, around the same time, he visited Heaven Hill Distilleries brand new office.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Several Louisville companies are led by CEOs that have chosen not to live in Louisville.

But how much that matters seems to be up for debate — and we chat about that on this week's Access Louisville podcast.

LBF Senior Reporter Joel Stinnett is on this week's show to talk about an in-depth report that he just finished on CEOs leading Louisville companies from somewhere else. Humana Inc., Yum Brands and Papa Johns International Inc. are a few big examples, but there are others as well.

For the story, Stinnett talked to executives who said that not having the CEO present can impact both the community and the workplace culture.

“When company leaders reside here, things get done,” including building stadiums, zoos, parks and so on, John Schnatter, former CEO of Papa Johns International Inc. told Stinnett. Others, such as Scott Catlett, formerly chief legal officer at Yum Brands Inc., spoke about how it can impact morale inside the workplace.

On the other side of the issue, we heard from local executives like Trever Pawl, head of the Louisville Economic Development Alliance, who said the Louisville companies that have CEOs based elsewhere are among the largest and best-run in the world.

‘We’re just fortunate to have the global companies here that are reinvesting the way they are at a pretty rapid pace.”

Also on this week's show

Later in the show, Stinnett tells us about a new bourbon development coming to Broadway. Von Payne Spirits is planning to open a “Gothic-inspired” distillery and tasting room inside the former Whiteside’s Bakery Co. building at 1400 W. Broadway, according to a news release.

We also chat about the Courier Journal recently announcing plans to move out of its building. The news outlet's longtime home on Broadway is still for sale, however.

Additionally, we discuss Bourbon & Beyond — one of two music festivals planned in Louisville in September (the other being Louder Than Life). Danny Wimmer Presents, the company behind those festivals recently struck an interesting deal with University of Louisville Athletics, which we talk about on the show.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify (which are linked above.) You can also listen in the player above.

A plan to tear down Liberty Hall in Downtown Louisville, also known as the Oddfellows Building, in order to build a new pickleball facility is attracting the ire of preservationists.

We talk about the plans and the response on this week's Access Louisville podcast. LBF Senior Reporter Joel Stinnett is on the show to share details of a press conference he attended on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

Steve Wiser, of the Louisville Historical League, said during the press conference that he was shocked by the plan for pickleball courts, calling it 'a joke."

Louisville Business First broke the news recently that the Omni Louisville Hotel is planning to build a $12 million pickleball-focused entertainment venue on the property, according to a permit filed with Louisville Metro Planning and Design. The 14,000-square-foot venue would feature four indoor pickleball courts, four outdoor pickleball courts, an indoor restaurant and bar, outdoor yard-game areas and flexible event and gathering spaces, according to the filing.

The Oddfellows building is one of two downtown structures we chat about on the show.

Reporter Olivia Estright is also on the show to talk about the recent acquisition of the 800 Tower apartments. The residential building, at 800 S. Fourth St., was purchased by FNMA for just over $20 million, according to a deed filed in June, following foreclosure proceedings against the previous owners.

We also chat about listening sessions for the proposed revamp of the Belvedere in Downtown Louisville; and a site in Downtown Jeffersonville, Indiana where the mayor wants a grocery store to be built. We also discuss a new tavern that's heading into space in New Albany.

And at the very end of the show, I mention a report that Isaacs & Isaacs has a new CEO. That gets us talking about our favorite TV lawyer commercials.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify (which are linked above.) You can also listen in the player above.

A building in the heart of Downtown Louisville could be up for a revamp, which we chat about on this week's Access Louisville podcast.

LBF Senior Reporter Joel Stinnett is on the show to share his latest reporting on the Kentucky Home Life Building at 239 S. 5th Street.

He notes that the Mississippi-based Thrash Group — plus an unnamed local partner — are planning to convert the building into a mixed-use development with residential units, a hotel and first floor retail, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the project. There are some legal hurdles to clear first, however.

The Thrash Group has submitted an application to Mayor Craig Greenberg’s Downtown Louisville Building Conversion Program to help fund the project, Louisville Metro Government Press Secretary Kevin Trager confirmed. The project is one of four finalists still being considered for funds.

Though ornate, the building has not been with out its difficulties.

Earlier this year, police converged on the vacant 20-story structure, which is across the street from Louisville Metro Hall, after intruders allegedly cut a gas line while trying to steal copper wire, as WDRB News reported. WDRB is Business First's newsgathering partner. Officials told WDRB that the inside of the building is covered with trash, debris, glass, scraps of copper and various discarded tools strewn everywhere.

That's just the top of the show.

We also discuss a building in the Highlands that formerly housed Bakersfield and Hopcat, which Stinnett reported is on the market. That gets us into a talk about restaurant turnover in the Highlands.

Additionally, Reporter Olivia Estright is on the show to talk about a potential new Aldi location in Southern Indiana and the potential sale of a golf course in New Albany. We also chat about the latest with the Monon South Trail, a vote to unionize at the BlueOval plant in Glendale, Kentucky, a looming shutdown of I-65 next year for road work and the news that VSimple is moving to Louisville.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify (which are linked above.) You can also listen in the player above.

A couple of major projects that the Louisville area has been watching for years appear to be inching forward — and we chat about them on the latest episode of the Access Louisville podcast.

The two projects are the One Park development effort in Louisville and the redevelopment effort around the former Colgate-Palmolive Co. plant in Clarksville, Indiana.

One Park is a massive mixed-use high-rise development from Jefferson Development Group planned near the intersection of Lexington Road and Grinstead Drive. Final state approval for tax increment financing, or TIF, for that project is “a couple weeks away,” the One Park team told Louisville Business First and WDRB News in a joint report. Nothing has really happened with the project since Kentucky’s incentives board gave the first of two approvals needed to provide state support for the estimated $554 million development in early 2024.

The news on Colgate is a new development team with Louisville-based Weyland Ventures at the helm.

Weyland Ventures says it has plans for the historic former toothpaste factory, which closed in 2007. It's been used by businesses since but town officials have long wanted to see the riverfront property developed for something greater. Weyland joins the effort as an eminent domain case — brought by the town of Clarksville to acquire the former plant — has been dismissed in the wake of a settlement.

“Their expertise in working collaboratively with communities to create vibrant and economically sustainable districts anchored by historic properties will result in a project of which we will all be proud," a statement from the town reads.

We also chat about the latest with a new middle school being developed at the former Passport Health Plan site at 18th and Broadway, a new housing development in West Louisville and a new science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) building in the works from Simmons College. To wrap up the show, we talk about a new Five Iron Golf simulator coming to Downtown Louisville and the latest with a plan to build a new whitewater attraction at Origin Park in Clarksville.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify (which are linked above.) You can also listen in the player above.

We chat about Louisville's peer cities on the Access Louisville podcast this week.

Louisville Business First Reporter Stephen P. Schmidt recently wrapped up a story on the topic. While the list of Louisville's peers definitely varies depending on who's being asked a few things were clear.

First, Cincinnati, Indianapolis or Nashville, Tennessee — who we often like to compare ourselves to — are not really our peers because they are much bigger now than they used to be. Instead Memphis, Tennessee, Birmingham, Alabama and others are closer comparisons to Louisville.

During the show, we also discuss some ideas that Louisville could steal from other cities. Removing I-64 from the Downtown Louisville riverfront is one suggestion we come up with, as other cities have had success opening their riverfronts. Another suggestion we land on is a riverwalk in the vein of San Antonio — something Louisville has looked at in the past, including on a recent Greater Louisville Inc. trip.

In the second half of the show, we talk about Kentucky's resurgent manufacturing economy.

Schmidt recently visited Ford Motor Co.'s Louisville Assembly Plant to cover news of a new electric vehicle manufacturing process that's being launched in support of Ford's upcoming (and yet unnamed) midsize EV truck. We talk about how Ford's launch compares with what Toyota is doing at its plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. During the show, I reference a recent interview I did with the president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, which you can read here, in which we discussed EVs.

Schmidt also visited GE Appliances's Louisville operation to check out a recently unveiled manufacturing line there. And we chat about the news that Corning will begin manufacturing 100% of iPhone and Apple Watch glass at its facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

Does this mean that the manufacturing industry is finally making a comeback? We chat about it on the show.

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.