The kitchen and living room in one of the model apartments.
The Germantown Mill Lofts website is full of even more amazing pictures of the new 185-unit complex, now nearing completion by Underhill Associates at 946 Goss Ave. Apartments range from studios to one- and two-bedrooms. All are equipped with washers and dryers. Many feature floor-to-ceiling windows (photo, top) that flood apartments with natural light. Amenities include a swimming pool, a gym (now under construction) and the new Finn’s Southern Kitchen restaurant.
Options and prices:
Studios. 540-871 square feet: $752 to $1,165 a month.
One bedrooms. 685 to 1,180 square feet: $953 to $1,480 a month.
Two bedrooms. 926 to 2,376 square feet: $1,202 to $2,889 a month.
The lofts occupy what was once Kentucky’s biggest cotton mill, consisting of more than 250,000 square feet of beautiful brick buildings spread over nearly eight acres in the heart of Germantown and Schnitzelburg. Finn’s was built inside what was once the mill’s administrative office.
Ali’s funeral will be a publicity jackpot for Yum Brands and other companies. Some 15,000 mourners are expected at his memorial service Friday at the Yum Center.
Muhammad Ali planned his celebrity-packed Louisville funeral events this week in a two-inch thick document he developed in secret with his inner circle of family and advisors during a years-long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Ali signed off on the plan in 2010, according to NBC News, although revisions continued until just days before the prize fighter and globally famous humanitarian died late Friday in a hospital in Phoenix, his primary home; he was 74.
In other words, the Thrilla in Manilla and the Rumble in the Jungle are about to meet the Burial ‘n Louisville before a television audience of untold millions, plus hundreds of thousands more attending in person across the city. The multi-day lineup may well rival “Operation Serenade,” the grand finale President Ronald Reagan’s aides orchestrated for his funeral 12 years ago. (Latest Ali funeral news, plus Twitter updates.)
Ali’s plans are virtually without precedent in recent Louisville history. They will demand the coordination of scores of businesses and government agencies. Although the final cost may never be known, it could run well into seven-figures. The events will be a publicity boon to companies from Yum Brands and KFC to A.D. Porter & Sons Funeral Home; storied Cave Hill Cemetery; a local public relations firm — and even street vendors selling souvenirs along the funeral procession route. Others are trying to cash in, too: One Craigslist advertiser in Nashville is offering a pair of boxing gloves purportedly signed by Ali himself for $20,000.
Gunnell
Some proposals were scrapped, including having his body lie in repose at the Muhammad Ali Center downtown, according to long-time family spokesman and Boxcar PR owner Bob Gunnell. Ali’s wife, Lonnie, worried it would interrupt the center’s operations. “Instead,” says NBC, “Ali added a slow procession through the streets of the city, past the museum built in his honor, along the boulevard named after him and through the neighborhood where he grew up and learned to box. That will happen Friday morning, before the funeral service itself at the KFC Yum Center.”
Royalty in the house
Ultimately, a good portion of the cost will be borne by taxpayers for what will be a huge turnout of Louisville police officers, plus the U.S. Secret Service, FBI and other law enforcement needed to guard the Porter & Sons Funeral Home; control crowds, and protect visiting dignitaries — including at least one sitting king.
King Abdullah
Actor Will Smith, who played Ali in the 2001 film of the same name, will be a pallbearer. Former President Bill Clinton and the comedian Billy Crystalwill deliver eulogies at the massive public memorial service at 2 p.m. Friday at the Yum Center.
King Abdullah II of Jordan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been scheduled to speak. But yesterday, they were bumped to make room for two other speakers whom Gunnell, the Ali family publicist, said would be identified later. President Obama could be one of them, along with First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Yum service is open to the public, but tickets — there will be 15,000 — are required; (how to get them). That’s already spurred out-of-towners as far away as Ottawa to offer $200 — and possibly even more — to anyone willing to stand in line to get one on their behalf when they become available tomorrow starting 10 a.m.
“Willing to pay any amount!!!” a man named Adam says in this Craigslist ad. “I am flying in from Canada to pay respects to my childhood hero, Muhammad Ali.”
At least one company was advertising for street vendors to hawk Ali flags, buttons, and other commemorative merchandise from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday along the Muhammad Ali Boulevard procession route and in front of the Yum Center.
But are they real?
Earn $200-$300!
“Seeking outgoing sales team,” the Craigslist poster said, before taking the ad down. “You will be selling Muhammad Ali flags and buttons, celebrating the life of Louisville’s hometown hero (and world hero)! Your pay: 20% commission; average earnings $200-$300.”
In Nashville, a Craigslist advertiser is selling what they claimed are a pair of boxing gloves signed by Ali at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where Ali himself lit the Olympic Cauldron. Asking price: $20,000. “This is a treasure find,” the ad says.
Porter & Sons Funeral Home on Bardstown Road is coordinating at least some of the services. The public ceremonies will be followed by a private burial in Cave Hill Cemetery in the Highlands, a much simpler event planned in accordance with Ali’s Islamic faith. He’ll be among other prominent figures from Louisville and Kentucky history in the historic burial ground, says The Courier-Journal. (More about Cave Hill.)
Ali training at Churchill Downs in 1963 in recently surfaced photo.
A news summary, focused on big employers; updated 3:32 p.m.
BROWN-FORMAN reports fiscal fourth-quarter results tomorrow by 8 a.m. Analysts expect earnings per share of 72 cents vs. 66 cents a year ago, on $899 million in revenue vs. $947 million. There will be a conference call with management and analysts at 10 a.m.; details. Also, Newsweek magazine ranked the company the “greenest” beverage alcohol company among U.S. publicly traded firms (press release).
CHURCHILL DOWNS: Muhammad Ali is seen on a training run at Louisville’s iconic race track in a 1963 photograph that has just surfaced. It’s one of thousands photographer Curt Gunther took of the Louisville native during the years he accompanied the prize fighter in and out of the ring (CNN). Ali died late Friday in Phoenix at 74 after battling Parkinson’s disease for decades. The funeral he planned for himself in secret this Friday may be without precedent in recent Louisville history.
KFC: Chick-fil-A’s skip-the-line ordering app is no longer No. 1 in Apple’s App store, but it’s still holding a respectable No. 3 — enough to continue embarrassing rival KFC, which launched its own app the same day. More than 1 million people have downloaded Chick’s One app since it was announced last Wednesday. How they pulled it off (The Atlantic). In France, KFC says a video purporting to show a customer finding a whole, cooked chick in a bucket meal is a hoax; video of the alleged incident has been widely shared across social media (Express).
PAPA JOHN’S is offering pan pizza for the first time since 2005 in select markets, including parts of Kentucky; Evansville, Ind., and Denver (Courier-Journal). In Winston-Salem, N.C., an armed man robbed a Papa John’s Sunday at 3:40 p.m. after forcing an employee to open the cash registers. The man, said to be in his 30s, left after ordering the employee and two other workers to the back of the store (Winston-Salem Journal).
PIZZA HUT: A restaurant in Huron, S.D., was destroyed in a fire early Saturday morning the appeared to have started in the kitchen area (Plainsman). In New Zealand’s North Island, as many as three men armed with a machete robbed a Pizza Hut of $298 U.S. at 11 p.m. yesterday, leaving two employees shaken but unharmed. Police said the men were “heavily disguised” with balaclavas and one wore a hi-visibility vest during the incident in Palmerston North (News Hub).
In other news, U.S. stocks were mostly flat after government data showed first-quarter business productivity fell (Google Finance). The 11 big employers in the Boulevard Stock Portfolio were mixed; Ford was up 1.8% to $13.41 less than 30 minutes before the closing bell.
per share in after-tax gains, according to GE, which announced the closing of the $5.6 billion* sale to China’s Haier. The deal includes the 61-year-old Appliance Park in Louisville.
* the final price was about $200 million above the originally announced one to account for increased working capital.
The world was a very different place on Jan. 17, 1942 — the day Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on Grand Avenue in Louisville’s West End. Employers were free to discriminate on the basis of sex and race, as these help-wanted ads make clear from that day’s Courier-Journal.
The first ad, for junior stenographers at Louisville City Hospital, was aimed at both white and “Negro” women — and at a good salary, too: $71.50 (a month, no doubt). Adjusted for inflation, that would be equivalent to $1,050 in 2016 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In 1942, Odessa Grady Clay was herself a 25-year-old household domestic, who might have sought work in one of these jobs-offered ads. Many years later, of course, she became famous, as the mother of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated sports figures: Muhammad Ali.
The value of U.S. Senator Rand Paul‘s stocks, real estate and other investments rose as much as 15% last year, according to a new analysis of his latest annual financial disclosure report.
Paul
The Kentucky Republican and former White House hopeful reported assets valued at between $670,000 and $2 million, based on the pre-set ranges members of Congress use in their public reports.
On the low side, that’s up 15% from $585,000 in 2014. On the high side, it’s up a smaller 11% from $1.8 million that year, according to the report and the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan campaign finance watchdog group in Washington. In 2014, Paul, 53, ranked No. 67 among the wealthiest senators, according to the center, which hasn’t published 2015 figures for yet. Boulevard arrived at the 2015 numbers in a recent review of his latest report, filed last month.
Paul’s report, as with other members of congress, also includes assets held by his wife Kelley Paul (photo, below) and their children. Most of the family’s investments were in stock and money market funds and real estate, with four valued as high as $250,000. There was one notable exception: a collection of silver coins valued at $15,001 to $50,000. Here’s Paul’s 2015 report, plus his 2014 report.
Paul is an ophthalmologist and U.S. senator since 2011. Earlier this year, he suspended his White House campaign after poor results in the GOP primaries.
His portfolio is dwarfed considerably by Kentucky’s other senator, Mitch McConnell. He and his wife valued their assets at between $9.6 million to $43.2 million last year. In 2014, he ranked 11th among the wealthiest members of the upper house. And Paul’s assets hardly amount to a rounding error compared to the overall richest member of Congress: Republican Rep. Darryl Issa of California, with an estimated $437 million. He built that fortune making car alarms.
per share in after-tax gains, according to GE, which 
Boulevard 