LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The rusted skeleton of a building that has towered over West Broadway for years has a storied past but may see new life coming soon.
Molina Healthcare owns the vacant lot near Broadway and 18th Street near the Republic Bank Foundation YMCA and Perry Elementary School.
Jefferson County Public Schools and Molina are expected to make a "special announcement" Friday morning about the site's future, according to an invitation sent to WDRB.
For decades, Jackie Floyd has lived just a few blocks away from the vacant lot on West Broadway.
"We try to say 'Hey kids, you should be proud of where you come from,'" Floyd said Wednesday. "But how can we when we got this ugly thing?"
She's been through all the ups and downs associated with this property.
Nearly two decades after Philip Morris closed its cigarette plant and donated the West Broadway site to Louisville, the land's future has remained a question.
In 2014, Walmart announced it would build on the vacant site but walked away in 2017 because of parking lot squabbles and delays.
Eventually,Passport Health Plan, a locally grown nonprofit health insurer, introduced plans to develop the site. In late 2018,work began on a four-story office building for hundreds of its employees. It was the first part of a "health and wellbeing" campus on about 20 acres at Broadway and 18th Street.
But construction stopped in 2019 as finances worsened.
"That was it," Floyd said. "There was no more information about it."
Molina, a California-based health insurance company, later took over Passport and the site.
Now, an invitation is circulating with Molina and JCPS advertising a "special announcement."
"Our children deserve a brand new school," Floyd said.
In July 2022, JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio expressed interest in the site when discussing a new west end middle school.
"Currently talking with Molina Healthcare for this project right here. It's about 25 acres," Pollio said in 2022. "We believe, with our conversations, Molina Healthcare is going to build a health care facility or building on the property using 5, 6, 7 acres of that property, most likely on West Broadway, similar to the plan Passport had ... Our request is we would purchase the remaining land. Molina is very interested in that."
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The west end middle school is now named Hudson Middle School and opened for the 2023-2024 school year, the first middle school to open in west Louisville in 90 years.
It spent its first year of existence in the former Wheatley Elementary School building with just sixth-grade students. Hudson will spend this upcoming school year in Young Elementary to accommodate for additional grades.
Grace James Academy is also in a temporary space and in need of a permanent spot.
But just last week, Pollio hinted at Hudson School's permanent future.
"Will soon beak ground on Hudson Middle School," Pollio said in a May 2024 JCPS meeting.
What's still unknown is if the land once owned by the city will be gifted or purchased by JCPS.
When Philip Morris donated the site to Louisville in 2002, then-Mayor Jerry Abramson's administration gave the site to a company formed by local construction businesspeople Frank and Teresa Bridgewaters, who paid to demolish the cigarette factory buildings.
The Bridgewaters sold part of the land to neighboring Brown-Forman for $1.2 million in 2010. In 2013, Mayor Greg Fischer's administration gave their company $1.1 million to purchase more property around the site to allow for the Walmart Supercenter.
Once Walmart fell through, Passport paid the Bridgewaters' company $7.1 million for the land, but when the organization ran into financial problems it was shuffled from Evolent to Molina in a pair of fire sales in 2019 and 2020.
WDRB then reported, an organization containing the remnants of Passport paid the Bridgewaters' company another $2.27 million in January to settle a claim from their 2018 real estate sale to Passport.
The settlement cleared the way for Evolent, and eventually Molina, to take control of the site.
If JCPS ends up purchasing the site, this means taxpayers could end up buying a lot that Louisville originally owned.
“I’m at the point now whatever it takes for us to have a beautiful development on 18th and Broadway let’s work it out," Floyd said.
Neither JCPS, nor its board members, will comment about the upcoming announcement. Molina also didn't respond to a request for comment.
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