When quarantining began nearly a year ago and the workforce went home, the lights seemed to have gone out. They didn’t just “seem” to go out. They were turned off. You can’t blame building managers for managing their energy bills in such a manner – why have the lights/heat on if no one was going to be in their offices utilizing those services? Might as well save on the energy bill, right?
In Louisville, so much of our downtown is taken up by office buildings and commercial space. So when the employees of these companies went home last March, so much of downtown looked like a ghost town. With the lights off, it’s even worse. Nothing could possibly seem as desolate as an empty, dark downtown. It reminds me of those photos of deserted shopping malls.
Our customers have started going another way with this. Our city has been in the news a fair amount in the past year, and our downtown in particular. What the people of our city needed, and continue to need, is a sign of resurgence. They want hope and to know they have not been abandoned.
What we have seen over the past few months is companies stepping up to provide a glimmer of hope through the glimmer of a return to turning the lights on – to making downtown come back to life.
In Kentucky terms, it seems we’re in the “third turn” of this pandemic and soon enough… we’ll be at the finish line. When that time eventually comes and the workforce can once again enter through the turnstiles and ride up that elevator to their cubicles, we’ll want the downtown ambiance to be bustling and “happening” again. We believe that it will be.
