The recently vacated Humana Building will undergo a sweeping transformation into a dual-tower, 1,000-room hotel, marking a first-of-its-kind conversion of one of downtown Louisville’s signature office towers.
The 525,000-square-foot Humana Building, 500 W. Main St., a custom-built stronghold of the Louisville-grown health insurance giant, will be converted into a convention-oriented hotel with multiple ballrooms, over 100,000-square-feet of meeting space and multiple food and beverage concepts.
Under the $600 million to $700 million plan from Louisville-based development firm Poe Companies, much of the block will be remade.
The hotel would be the city’s second largest, by room count, behind The Galt House Hotel, 140 N. Fourth St., which has 1,310 rooms. Targeted at luring large conventions to Louisville, the hotel and its future guests would create a ripple of economic benefits, tourism, and new energy through downtown, officials said.
“We’re a local development group. We want to see Louisville thrive,” Hank Hillebrand, president of Poe Companies, told the Courier Journal. “Doing something with that tower, it’s not just that it’s an iconic tower, but the city needs something to happen to that building, and we think we can do it.”
As Poe Companies did with its development of Hotel Distil and Moxy Louisville Downtown in 2019, it is partnering with REI Real Estate Services, hotel management company White Lodging Services and HKS Architects on the Humana Building plans.
The emptying of the massive downtown office building presented a challenge for city leaders already facing elevated office vacancies downtown.
For Louisville-based Humana, an exit from and sale of its namesake tower that’s been its headquarters since 1985 called for a delicate transition as the company strove to ensure the building found a purposeful second life.
“Humana Tower is an iconic building that holds deep meaning and history for our company, our employees and our city,” Humana CEO Jim Rechtin said in a statement. “Humana is firmly committed to Louisville and we are excited to support the redevelopment of the Tower property by Poe Companies.”While the project is still in the design phase and important details, such as financing, are still being worked through, developers said they’re confident in the plan’s future.
“We have very high conviction that we have a real path forward here on this project,” Hillebrand said.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg also sees this redevelopment project as a turning point for downtown.
“When Humana first made the announcement that it was moving its employees a couple blocks down into the Waterside buildings, a lot of people, understandably, in the community were upset, but I immediately started thinking about how this could be an opportunity for our city,” Greenberg said. “… And the next chapter of the Humana building is going to be a really important project for our city.”
Convention hotel project to redevelop much of downtown block
Plans for the hotel conversion project go beyond preserving the 26-story Humana Building and encompass a majority of the downtown block, bound by Fifth and Sixth streets and Main and Market streets.
While Poe Companies is not yet releasing hotel renderings, Hillebrand previewed them for The Courier Journal, showing how the site will be laid out.
The project includes many of the historic buildings along Main Street that stretch west from the main Humana Building. These structures, from the tower up until the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, 528 W. Main St., are slated to remain and will become food and beverage amenities tied to the hotel.
The Humana Building itself, designed by world-renowned architect Michael Graves, will be converted into hotel rooms. An eighth-floor terrace will be converted into a gathering space, and a 25th floor balcony and observation deck space could host weddings, executive meetings and other functions.
A new-construction tower is planned just to the south of the former Humana headquarters. Renderings show a tall tower that approaches the height of but is still shorter than the current Humana Building.
Architects are still working through details, including the number of floors, but the 1,000 rooms will be split between the two towers.
On the southeastern corner of the block, the historic German Bank Building, built in 1914 and that is home to Vincenzo’s Italian restaurant, 150 S. 5th St., will remain.
Hillebrand deferred to Humana and Vincenzo’s for comment on the future of the restaurant’s location.
Kevin Daley, Vincenzo’s general manager, told The Courier Journal that the long-standing restaurant is “moving forward as if we’re going to be here forever.”
“We’ve had a great relationship with our landlords at Humana … almost like a strategic partnership of sorts,” he said. “Hopefully things will shake out and we can just sit tight and live here for another 40 years.”
Along Market Street, a new-construction structure will stack a 40,000-square-foot grand ballroom — which Hillebrand said will be the largest in Louisville — a smaller junior ballroom, as well as meeting and exposition space, stretching from the southeast corner of the block through the surface parking near the southwest corner. The Old Portland Building, 539 W. Market St., is not part of the development.
Atop this multi-story structure will be an amenity deck with a pool.
“Everything that’s being done in any of the new construction is with the mindset to embrace and complement the existing Graves architecture, the historic and iconic architecture,” Hillebrand said.
Architects, too, are working to incorporate historic Louisville architecture, namely Main Street elements such as iconic cast iron facades, into the new plan.
Hillebrand said his team will incorporate the legacy of Humana and the Louisvillians that founded the company as it designs the project.
“There will be tributes all over this place,” he said.
Poe Companies has contractual control in place for all properties not currently under Humana ownership, Hillebrand said. His company signed a “letter of intent” with Humana last year, though neither he nor Humana commented on specific terms or discussed details of the building sale.
A specific hotel brand has not yet been chosen for the site, with discussions with multiple hotel companies ongoing.
Humana hotel construction slated to begin in 2027
Poe Company’s plans for a convention hotel started months before Humana announced it would leave its current headquarters.
The developer originally intended to bring the 1,000-room hotel to several parcels along Washington and Main streets, near the Muhammad Ali Center. The plan was in response to a Louisville Metro Government solicitation for redevelopment of city-owned lots in May 2023.
But when Humana listed its building for sale, Hillebrand and Poe Companies CEO Steve Poe started considering an alternate location for their project.
“It’s moved quite quickly because we’ve kept finding things that we liked about the site and reasons why it can work,” Hillebrand said.
Because the hotel-focused plans for the Humana site were derived from the earlier plans for the Main and Washington site, residential use for the office tower was never part of the discussion for Poe.
Greenberg, who has a background in development, said the Humana Building was not well suited for residential use due to its preexisting structural design and lends itself to a hospitality development that can help anchor downtown.
“The convention hotel works out wonderfully. It’s also very needed. We have a very strong hotel market, a strong convention and events market,” Greenberg said. “This will bring more people to our market, not compete with the other hotels that are already here.”
Construction is tentatively targeted to start next year, with opening roughly set three to four years from now, Hillebrand said.
Addressing the 2023 lawsuit by Humana against the tower’s architect, Michael Graves and Associates, alleging structural defects, Hillebrand said “there’s a path forward.” The suit was resolved in mediation late last year.
“Us and Humana have a plan in place to address all of that, and we’re confident we can execute on this project,” he said.
Over the next year, the development partners will further flesh out architectural and structural plans, solidify the project’s financial arrangement and pursue necessary permitting.
Funding for the project is expected to come from traditional debt and equity financing as well as a request for public funding via tax increment financing, also known as a TIF.
“Humana has been a great Team Kentucky partner, both in its employment of so many Kentuckians, but also in all the ways it works with our state and the city of Louisville,” Gov. Andy Beshear told The Courier Journal. “This is a really exciting project that could further breathe life into downtown Louisville. There’s still a lot of details to work out, I don’t have all of them but I’m excited about it.”
That ask for a state-level TIF has not yet been made, as project particulars are still being designed, affecting project totals and the ultimate financing structure.
Historic tax credits might also be sought, Hillebrand added.
Humana remains committed, reshaping downtown
When Humana announced in February 2024 it would vacate its eponymous tower and consolidate its Louisville footprint at its Humana Waterside and neighboring Clocktower buildings located at 101 E. Main St., there was concern the insurance giant would soon abandon the city.
Joe Ventura, chief legal officer at Humana, however, said the company remains fully committed to Louisville and understands the significance of moving out of the building once deemed one of Time Magazine’s best buildings of the 1980s.
“It’s something that while you have to make the right business decision with your head, our hearts were very much trying to find what the next life of the tower could be,” Ventura said.
For Humana, the decision to bid farewell to its pink granite tower came because of shifting workforce needs, with Ventura noting that nearly 5,000 Humana employees were coming downtown on a daily basis but divided between office buildings. As the company looked for ways to continue a hybrid work environment while simultaneously spurring collaboration and energy at the office, it decided a consolidation into the larger Waterside building would better serve associates.
Additionally, Ventura said the consolidation of the roughly 10,000 Louisville metro area workers into one downtown building helps Humana save on maintenance and service costs as well as some intangible benefits such as employee engagement and productivity.
Ventura said Humana had a “competitive process” that involved lots of potential, and very different proposals for what the building could become before landing on the redevelopment vision shared by Poe Companies.
“I think when it came down to it, it was the one that had the most certainty of moving forward as a project,” Ventura said. “It was the one that was the best vision for what downtown could need.”
Humana sought the advice of the Louisville Metro Cabinet for Economic Development as it looked for new owners for the tower, seeking to arrive at a next chapter for the building that was a win for both the company and downtown Louisville.
“I think working with the city to envision the next life of this tower is just one example of our feeling of responsibility of this town,” Ventura said. “What I want folks to know is our commitment to Louisville is not diminished, and will not diminish.”
Another downtown hotel a bid for larger conventions
While downtown Louisville is already home to about 30 hotels and nearly 7,000 rooms, tourism officials say having increased room capacity, particularly under one roof, will help Louisville land additional, larger conventions, and retain long-standing clients.
“Inventory means growth opportunity for us,” said Doug Bennett, executive vice president of Louisville Tourism. “It repositions Louisville in a stronger, competitive position to compete with Indy, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, some of our A-list competitive cities.”
Meeting planners booking hundreds, if not thousands, of attendees prefer to work with larger hotels that can more easily accommodate their headcount, he said.
Hillebrand said some groups won’t entertain planning a convention in a market where they don’t see a modern convention hotel.
“We’re missing those opportunities as a city and state,” he said, noting Louisville’s convention and exposition venues have recently been or are now undergoing renovation. “Between the downtown convention center and the (Kentucky Exposition) Center expanding and being modernized, we need to have the hotel facilities to support that, and so that’s where a lot of this has stemmed from.”
Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of Louisville Downtown Partnership, sees the project spurring economic impact beyond the redeveloped block with new visitors that stay and spend within the area.
“I cannot overstate the impact of redeveloping such an architecturally significant building, located near the epicenter of our downtown’s tourism, which puts unused office space to great use, and delivers a much-needed convention hotel drawing larger conventions therefore more people to our downtown,” she said.