Terri Burt is tired of focusing on the negative. The good news for the owner of The Nitty Gritty, which has been a staple retail shop on Barret Avenue since it opened in 2000, is that now there is reason and opportunity to be positive again about her neighborhood.

When she opened her vintage clothing retail and rental store located where the Highlands and Germantown meet, Burt knew that the location she had chosen was ideal for her market.

“When I was looking to open, I wanted to be next to or in the same block as something that was kooky but also had a draw. And that’s why it was such a perfect spot for me because Lynn’s was kooky and really brought people from all over the world,” Burt recalls.

“She would go on a wait on the weekends, and it was great for people to walk and hit the little stores while waiting to eat at her restaurant,” she remembers of the time when Lynn’s Paradise Café was thriving.

Burt is blunt about the effect that the closure of Lynn’s in 2013 has had on the neighborhood that she has loved for almost two decades. She uses words like “devastating” and “depressing” and recalls going with other owners to plead to the city for help after break-ins started in the businesses that her friends had been forced to shutter or move.

For someone who has witnessed the decline of a neighborhood from such an intimate vantage point, it might seem surprising that she now speaks from such a positive perspective.   

The thing is: she is not the only one who is seeing a tide shift for Barret Avenue.

Though she admits that Lynn’s was an anchor during its time, Jennifer Rubenstein, director of the Louisville Independent Business Alliance (LIBA), believes that some other businesses in the area have stepped into that role to a degree.

“The Monkey Wrench is like an anchor there now because they’ve been there for so long, and The Barret Bar has really changed with the new owners and that has become a new destination as well,” Rubenstein says.

The Appeal of Barret Ave.

Fueled, in part, by lower rent prices in the area, new businesses have opened or moved their locations to the street. One of which is Hound Dog Press, a full-service custom letterpress shop owned and operated by Nick Baute and Robert Ronk, located at 1000 Barret Avenue.  

Baute admits that the primary reasoning behind their move from Market Street to Barret Ave. was financial, but it was the realization of a desire that they’d had since the beginning of their business.

“We looked at Barret five years ago before we moved to Market Street, and we couldn’t afford it then; Market Street was cheaper five years ago,” says Baute. “It’s always been on our radar—it’s not like we ever thought it was not a good place for us by any means—we’ve always actually kept an eye on it.”

For Hound Dog Press, the move that finally put them where they wanted to be was a win for several reasons.

Baute ticks off the street’s advantages for his business: the “tons of traffic” grants the store visibility, the location is central for his customers to visit the shop, and it is convenient for he and Ronk, who both live in the Highlands.

Right now, Hound Dog Press doesn’t rely on foot traffic, though Baute says they certainly welcome retail sales out of the front of their shop. He is optimistic that the new businesses opening around them will generate an uptick in walk-ins.

“We’re hoping these new places that are popping in are just going to encourage the neighbors to get out more,” he says.

New Businesses Bring New Life

Among the new places that are opening in the neighborhood are a new bakery, a new coffee shop and perhaps a new brewery.

According to Barrett Tasman of Tasman Properties Group, perhaps the best new thing that Barret Avenue has going for it is the apartment complex planned on the site of the old Mercy Academy on East Broadway, which was purchased by Edwards Communities, an Ohio development company based in Columbus.

“The real positive for the neighborhood is the company out of Columbus that is investing all the money with the apartments,” Tasman says. “Maybe it’s not on Barret, but it’s a couple of blocks on Broadway and on Baxter. They are pushing a lot of mixed use and an influx of people,” he adds.

Tasman’s group, which includes his brother Aaron and his father Ronnie, has a pretty high stake in the success of Barret Avenue. They own several vacant properties on the street and, along with other investors, are working to repurpose those. For Tasman, it’s a business model that goes much deeper than the financial.

“We like to focus on urban infill redevelopment and investment,” he says. “It might not be the big names that come in there with the big splash, but we like to cultivate a neighborhood and see it redeveloped.”

For the Highlands natives, their Barret Avenue investment is the latest in a long line of redevelopments in their neighborhood, dating back to their father’s hand in the revitalization of Baxter Avenue nearly two decades ago. Their newest investment—The Pointe, is a mixed-use development located in a nearly 90,000 square feet manufacturing facility in Butchertown.

Tasman hopes to follow up the company’s win with The Pointe with yet another victory on Barret Avenue, where his brother is already in lease negotiations for some of their properties. He believes the odds of that are in their favor.

“With Lynn’s being purchased and hopefully a good restaurant going in there and with the influx of the apartment complex, it just could become more of a walkable, higher traffic area. It just will give it more viability and vitality,” he says. “I see it succeeding. What everybody in the neighborhood has done to keep what they have and all this new stuff coming in will further drive them,” he adds.

For Burt and the other business owners who have weathered the storm on Barret Avenue, the rainbow can’t come soon enough.

“I think we are just right on the cusp of it exploding again,” she believes.