Steve Wiser wants to save the Odd Fellows from the Omni Hotel pickleballers

The Louisville Historical League is not pleased with the Omni Hotel's announced plans to raze the classic Odd Fellows building and recreate the area as a pickleball complex.

Architect Steve Wiser speaks on behalf of the Louisville Historical League.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Week and so go, and then suddenly there was a
press conference yesterday the Louisville Historical League, Steve Wiser stepping
up to the microphones yesterday to talk with folks about
why this is not the best location for pickleball courts
indoor and outdoor next to the Omni Hotel in downtown.
Mister Wiser, welcome, well, thank you, Terry. It's been a

(00:22):
couple of months since I was last year talking to
some sort of preservation i'm sure, or history, but yeah,
not so much the pickleball, but the Odd Fellows Hall.
That's what it is. It's a building that's standing there,
that's in the way. It's a beautiful, ornate structure. It's
been actually occupied for one hundred and twenty five years,
believe it or not. It's very rare for the Historical
League to try and save a well built building that's

(00:45):
still occupied, if you will. Normally these buildings are deteriorated,
ready to fall down, and we try to save them.
And people think we're crazy. But here's a good building
that people want to tear down. So our intent is
we just a back up at a little bit. Why
are we taxpayers involved in this? Well, we gave Omni
over one hundred and forty million dollars a few years

(01:09):
ago to build their hotel, and they promised to do
several civic amenities for us. One was a grocery store.
Have you seen that grocery store downtown? I have none?
And other amenities which I don't think they've fulfilled their
promise on either. So we gave them one hundred and
forty million dollars, which I don't think they fulfilled their
promise on. So that's why we taxpayers are involved in

(01:30):
this fight. Not only that we were giving. We're going
to give Omni another four hundred thousand dollars to demolish
that building. We taxpayers are. Omney's not paying a penny
to tear that building down. We the citizens in Louisville are,
which is totally crazy for me as a taxpayer point
of view. I'm not sure how you feel about it,
but I don't only see my taxpayer dollars to tear

(01:51):
it down perfectly good building. And you said it's occupied,
so there are people with offices are It was occupied
up to twenty nineteen and then Omni took it, has
vacated it. It's basically been empty for about six years.
For one hundred and twenty five years of its life,
between eighteen ninety five to twenty nineteen, fully used Louisville

(02:12):
Ballet was in there for a number of years. They
used that as a practice facility. Numerous other organizations have
used it there. There was a restaurant there as well,
so it's been in fairly good condition for many of
its use. And by the way, I'm not opposed to
demo wing buildings. I'm more of an urbanist instead of
a preservationist. My philosophy is, if you tear down a landmark,

(02:36):
you build a landmark back. Let's don't devalue the city.
Let's don't build something when you tear down a beautiful
building or a nice property like Odd Fellows. Let's don't
value the investment in downtown Louisville with something of lesser value.
To me, pickleball courts are a lesser value than that
Odd Fellows building. So as part of this pickleball or complex,

(02:58):
they're proposing a full food court venue. They're actually building
a new building right almost where the Odd Fellows building is.
So why not we take that four hundred thousand dollars
and renovate it for their food court venue. If they
don't like it where and by the way, I've proposed
several options on this how to reconfigure their design. But

(03:19):
if they don't like it where the building currently is,
we can easily shift it over to the corner of
Second and Muhammad Ali fairly easily and move the building.
Just move the building. How do you do that? They
do that regularly on a regular basis. We move buildings,
believe it or not. You put it up on rails
or something. And there is Edwards moving company. They do
things around that here. Yeah, there's been substantial buildings moved.

(03:41):
But a building built in the late eighteen hundreds, how
would that with stand the rumble of move this is?
They don't build them like that nowadays. I wouldn't trust
them trying to build move a building nowadays, But back
in those days, very solid building. Not that we've had
movers look at it and it can be moved. In fact,
we almost had a deal of moving it across the street,
which didn't quite happened, but the movers looked at and

(04:04):
did not foresee any issue in doing so. Okay, so anyways,
that's a possibility as well. But again, if you were
going to tear down a landmark building, replace it with
a equal quality or better quality building. Unfortunately, downtown Louisvio
has had sort of the bad history of we all
tear down these beautiful buildings and replace them with surface
parking lots. In fact, a lot of people are saying,

(04:25):
why are we putting pickleball courts where a building exists?
We have plenty of lots downtown. In fact, Museum Plaza
if you know where that used to go there on
West Main Street, they didn't build that building. They put
pickleball courts at that location, which is now and they're
hardly used. You can go down there at any time
and play pickleball at the old Museum Plaza site where

(04:46):
they did build those courts. There is a plan, though,
I think, to redevelop that land now. Yes, eventually that
will happen. By the way, and people say, well, why again,
why are we into this? Well, not only are we
taxpayers funding all this, but also the Convention Bureau has
done a survey of why visitors come to Louisville. Another

(05:07):
the top five reasons they come to Louisville. Three involve
historic properties. The omni guests. People that go to Omni
Hotel do not come here for pickleball courts. They come
to see our historic properties, our bourbon distilleries, our West
Main Street historic district. Churchill Downs is a historic property.
They come here. Our restaurants are all in historic properties.

(05:29):
Go up and down Bartstown Road. They're all going to
repurpose the buildings there. So that's and in fact, I
call it a wall of shame inside of Omney. You
go inside the Omni lobby and they got these black
and white photographs of all these magnificent buildings which used
to be in downtown Louisville but have all been demolished.
Now they want to add another Liberty Hall or Odd

(05:50):
Fellows to that wall of shame in the Omney Lobby.
So anyways, that's why I, you know, I don't want
to understand why we want to do a suburban development.
Pickleball to me is a suburban project in downtown Louisville.
It doesn't add to the vibrancy of downtown in my estimation.
But again, we can save Oddfellows incorporated into the Pickleball

(06:12):
complex if they would like to do that. It's easily
done as an architect. We've done similar things easy. It's
not a biggie and we taxpayers are funding it. Anyways. Well,
they're going to shut down I sixty five for two
months next summer, so maybe we could roll the Odd
Fellows building down sixty five and put it at the fairgrounds.
We'll see how it works out. I was I was
glad you spoke out though. Yes. On social media, ninety

(06:35):
five percent of the post we've had over three hundred
posts up in the last week of supporting what we're doing.
We've had hundreds of more in the past few days.
Everyone is supportive of this. We hope the mayor and
the council will do the right thing and say, hey,
let's repurpose Oddfellows within the Pickleball complex. Steve Wiser, Louisville
Historical League, appreciate your insights. Coming right back. Fan test

(07:00):
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