HUD Letter Renews Hope For Museum Plaza Loan

Kentucky officials say they are on the verge of receiving a one hundred million dollar loan to help kick-start Louisville’s Museum Plaza project.The state applied for the loan through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which uses private investments to help finance projects that will benefit multiple communities. Congressman John Yarmuth says he recently received a letter from HUD officials that said they were optimistic the loan could be arranged."I've never worked on one of these before so I don't know whether it's normal, but I will say that the letter would not have been sent if there was not a strong commitment that, if all the things falling into place outside of HUD, that HUD would make the commitment. They wouldn't have sent the letter otherwise," he says.The loan largely hinges on whether Museum Plaza's developers can secure 140 million dollars in construction loans. Yarmuth says with federal dollars likely on the line, the construction loans may be easier to obtain."My guess is that we will see the formalization of the HUD commitment before the end of the year. I would anticipate work would begin on Museum Plaza sometime in the first half of 2011," he says.Work on the 62-story Museum Plaza was stalled indefinitely in 2008 when the project became too difficult to finance.