March 29, 2024

Henderson, Kentucky’s Riverwalk Along the Ohio River Shows Value of Public Investment

HENDERSON, KY — The 981-mile Ohio River Valley, which extends from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill. is full of surprises these days. Pittsburgh shed its sooty industrial coat of the 20th century to emerge as a center of engineering and biomedical innovation. Cincinnati, battered by race riots and disinvestment, is building a $1 billion riverfront neighborhood and a streetcar line. Louisville’s days as a meatpacking hub are long gone. Now it’s the growing capital of the …

Owensboro’s ROMP Bluegrass Festival: “The Best In Any Real Radius.”

OWENSBORO, KY — When Gabrielle Gray was recruited ten years ago from Somerset, KY to direct the International Bluegrass Music Museum here, and to found an annual bluegrass music festival, this was a comfortable southern city stuck in a mid-American mustiness, a city in need of a fresh scrub. Two hours downriver from Louisville, Owensboro’s populous, 54,000 residents in 2000, was barely growing. Its downtown largely consisted of parking lots and empty turn of the 20th …

Benzie County’s Summer and Fall COVID Tourist Economy – Surprise! – Was Very Strong

BENZONIA — On May 15, persuaded that COVID-19 infections and deaths were convincingly low, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) lifted the executive order that for eight weeks had closed most businesses in Benzie and neighboring Northern Michigan counties. Six months later, as COVID-19 infections and deaths mounted as never before in Benzie and the rest of the state, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reinstated parts of the shutdown—calling for a three-week “pause”—from November …