LOUISVILLE, Ky. — As some downtown businesses move to new locations, citing violent crime’s impact, one longtime Louisville business is re-opening its doors in the heart of the Metro.
“Jerry Green and Friends” has operated in, now, three separate Louisville locations for 27 years.
Entertainer and owner, Jerry Green, said his business closed its Breckinridge in July 2021, citing the Covid-19 pandemic’s squeeze on the hospitality industry.
“It’s just like any other business,” Green said. “We all had issues with what was going on in the city, but we managed to live through it.”
However, many other downtown businesses did not survive the pandemic.
According to Louisville Downtown Partnership, in 2020 the Downtown Louisville saw the most business closures across the city since 2003.
In 2021, it found 17 businesses has closed their doors for a number of reasons, including the pandemic, civil unrest in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death and rising crime rates.
This year, the downtown area continues to see some business bid it farewell. Most recently, Melba’s Culinary Canvas, located on Fifth St., has closed.
Owner Charlie Reed told WHAS11 last week he is moving the business to NuLu, because of, what he described as, a string of recent violence he faced downtown.
In recent months, the downtown business district has seen incident of bomb-scares, countless break-in and assaults at “Fourth Street Live!” and outside the Brown Hotel.
“Well, this stuff happens everywhere you go pretty much,” Green said. “We have security around here. [Hotel Louisville] has security, we have security. So we feel pretty safe.”
Green said that added effort is more than enough, and having a downtown location comes with massive upside.
“We have more traffic going back and forth—-I think we have something between 50,000 and 70,000 [cars] a week, passing by the front, taking a look at our building,” Green said.
That payoff, Green said, was palpable the night they opened, Nov. 4.
“It was packed. Most of [the customers] were our regulars,” Green said. “[They] couldn't wait for us to open up.”
Green acknowledges violent crime, among other incidents, can hinder a business’s success—especially for small businesses—but he said he does what he can’t to mitigate the impact.
Doing so, Green said, allows for packed houses like opening night, and he hopes, for packed houses to come.
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