Month: May 2016

Philanthropy

WFPL’s Louisville Public Media announces $7 million capital campaign
Louisvillel Public Media building
Louisville Public Media’s headquarters.

Money raised by the Raise Your Voice campaign will go toward renovating the non-profit’s headquarters and studios at 619 S. Fourth St. in Louisville; technology upgrades, and programming improvements. The building was last remodeled 20 years ago. The campaign has already raised $5.3 million. Here’s the press release.

The campaign committee’s co-chairs are District 8 councilman-elect Brandon Coan and his wife, Summer Auerbach, who manages the Rainbow Blossom natural foods company started by her parents, Rob and Pumpkin Auerbach. The other co-chairs are philanthropist and former Brown-Forman executive Bill Juckett and his wife Barbara Juckett. Other committee members are Tyler Allen, Charlie Barnsley, Todd Lowe, Ron Murphy, Ben Ruiz, Lee Smith and Peter Wayne. Naming rights range from $250 for a coffee station to $500,000 for an entire studio.

Founded in 1950, Louisville Public Media also is the parent of Classical 90.5 WUOL and alternative music station 91.9 WFPK Radio Louisville.

Latest Headlines

KFC in U.K. fined $126K after failed health inspection; and Mid-City’s renovation delay was ‘a disaster to my tenants’

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 8:42 a.m.

KFC: British authorities have fined the restaurant chain $126,000 after it pled guilty in Cwmbran Magistrates’ Court to three charges over hygiene issues at a Pontypool restaurant in Wales last year. An environmental health inspector found no hot water in the bathrooms or food preparation areas, meaning employees couldn’t properly wash their hands, and the premises and food equipment could not be cleaned. The problem stemmed from a boiler that had failed 10 days before the inspection. Janet Cox, head of health, safety and environment at KFC U.K. said the company accepted the findings, and noted that 97% of the 890 U.K. restaurants have a food hygiene score of four out of five or above (Wales Online).

Louisville Magazine June 2016In other news, Mid-City Mall’s $1 million renovation last year was slowed by the discovery of asbestos in the roof, delaying completion of the nearly 60-year-old Highlands institution past the critical Christmas shopping season. “It’s been a disaster to my tenants,” majority owner Sandy Metts told Louisville Magazine in the just-published June issue. Metts, whose family bought the Bardstown Road property in 1976, had to reduce rent, and plans for renovating the Baxter Street side are now on hold.

Metts had to please critics who weren’t happy with the design from the git-go. “This is lipstick on a very old pig,” Debra Richards Harlan told the Bardstown Road Overlay District during the planning stages last year, according to WDRB. This was the first renovation since the 1980s. The mall’s development started in 1959, and was built on the former site of the German Protestant Orphan’s Home; photo, below:

German Protestant Orphan's Home
The front entrance to the orphanage in 1927, in this photo from the University of Louisville Photographic Archives.

And finally, private-equity shop Blue Equity of Louisville bought 3 Kings Entertainment, a broadcasting talent agency in Washington representing more than 100 news anchors, reporters, sportscasters and other media personalities for an undisclosed amount. The deal comes as Blue Equity builds a new sports and entertainment platform (Sports Business Daily).

Entrepreneurs

Kindred is a home-grown Louisville company that almost wasn’t
Kindred headquarters
The hospital and nursing home giant’s headquarters at Fourth and Broadway.

Boulevard focuses on news about some of Louisville’s biggest employers, nonprofits, and cultural institutions. This is one in an occasional series about them.

Kindred Healthcare traces its history to the 1985 launch of a predecessor, Vencor, that ran long-term acute care hospitals. By 1999, Vencor had morphed into a much bigger enterprise, with 300 nursing homes and 60 hospitals — and too much debt. Then it got clobbered when the federal government cut Medicare payments at a time when they accounted for 30% of a typical nursing home’s revenue.

Unable to pay its bills, Vencor sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in September 1999 after suffering staggering losses: $600 million in the fourth quarter of 1998 and $64 million in the first half of 1999, according to The New York Times. Vencor warned shareholders that its very survival was at stake.

But less than two years later, April 2001, it emerged from court protection with a new name, Kindred, and a new business plan. It is now a stronger and bigger company that sums up its operations in a very long sentence:

“Kindred through its subsidiaries had approximately 102,000 employees providing healthcare services in 2,692 locations in 46 states, including 95 transitional care hospitals, 18 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, 90 nursing centers, 19 sub-acute units, 604 Kindred at Home home health, hospice and non-medical home care sites of service, 100 inpatient rehabilitation units (hospital-based) and a contract rehabilitation services business, RehabCare, which served 1,766 non-affiliated sites of service.”

Considerable growth came last year when Kindred completed its $1.8 billion takeover of Gentiva Health Services, a big Atlanta-based provider of hospice services, at-home nursing care and physical therapy. That deal was announced in October 2014.

Kindred is one of only four Louisville companies in the Fortune 500 list of biggest businesses. In June 2016, it was ranked No. 372 — a big leap up from 491 in 2015. (The other three in Louisville are Humana, No. 52; Yum Brands, 218; and Brown-Forman, 702.)

Benjamin Breier
Breier

Kindred is still growing. It broke ground this year on an expansion of its headquarters at Fourth and Broadway, to house up to 500 new employees in the years ahead. The company is led by CEO Benjamin Breier.

Not to be missed: Kaleidoscope, an online gallery of writing, photography, and other artwork created by Kindred’s patients and residents.

Real Estate

Visit this lovely jewel-box home in NuLu on the annual AIA architect’s tour

That photo, top, shows the gorgeous garden at the Gilbert house at 216 Preston St., designed by Louisville architect Jeff Rawlins.

This year’s annual tour showcases eight Louisville homes built or renovated by architects and designers, and chosen by the American Institute of Architects’ Kentucky chapter, according to Broken Sidewalk; the urban planning site has addresses and photographs of all eight.

When: June 11, noon to 6 p.m. How much: Tickets for all eight houses are $15 in advance via Eventbrite or $20 at the door of any of the houses. Proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity.

The tour also includes the historic Hendon House at 201 Crescent Court; architects for the project were Charles Cash and Mary Herd Jackson. The 1840s house is one of the best of The Courier-Journal’s weekly house features on Saturdays. The exterior:

Hendon House

Latest Headlines

DOJ trust-busters hint at ‘tough battle ahead’ for Humana; and Hut workers in U.K. show the name of the fan game is names

A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 8:23 a.m.

Pizza Hut employees Leicester
Those crazy kids: 12 British Pizza Hut employees show off their new names.

HUMANA: The U.S. Justice Department’s muscular anti-trust reviews in airline and other industries “suggests a tough battle ahead” for Aetna’s pending $34 billion takeover of Humana, and Anthem’s takeover of Cigna (Bloomberg). Aetna’s CEO last week said he expects their deal to close during the year’s second half.

PIZZA HUT employees in the U.K. celebrated their Leicester City Football Club’s unlikely victory over Tottenham in the Premier League championships in one of the most bizarre ways possible: 12 of them legally changed their names to those of club members (Telegraph). How crazy are Leicester fans? Watch this video. Note: It’s “football” there and “soccer” here.

In other news, Moody’s Investors Service has lowered its rating on the University of Louisville Foundation’s bonds, citing investment losses that have cut into the foundation’s endowment (WDRB); more about the foundation.

Finally, U.S. stock futures inched higher an hour before the opening bell, with investors hesitant to make major moves ahead of a speech by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen and a long holiday weekend (MarketWatch). The 11 big employers in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio mostly closed lower yesterday.