Today’s track: “Brand New Colony” — The Postal Service
Here’s my promise for this one: by the time you’re done reading, you’ll know every major project moving — or not moving — in the state of Kentucky right now, and exactly where that tells you to put your money.
Not a project some YouTube clip covered two years ago. Not a press release nobody ever followed up on. The current, funded-or-it-doesn’t-count list, region by region, statewide. I pulled every date myself.
We’ll do it in order. First, what already fell through, so you stop chasing it. Then what’s actually happening, region by region, with my one-line read on each.
What already fell through.
Hardin County bet the farm on BlueOval SK. Ford and SK On’s $5.8 billion joint venture — two 4-million-square-foot battery plants in Glendale — was supposed to bring the county 22,000 new residents. Plant One broke ground, hired about 1,600 people, and started rolling F-150 Lightning batteries off the line in August 2025. Then Ford and SK dissolved the venture. I knew this was going South early on. This kind of bait and switch situation has become all to common with international joint ventures. Recently happened with one of the big players and a Canadian company as well. From what I’ve heard….basically the SK company installed the older version of the batteries. Ford received them and was like yo, this is last year’s model. We want the model we ordered. SK: Sorry, declaring bankruptcy. See ya! Essentially. Plainly, this sucked for the area…..but on the long game I think Ford getting more in the energy space is collectively a good move for Ford collectively. I think we will find Ford’s dip into energy will be a major catalyst for expansion in Kentucky down the road. Hold me to it!
Layoffs hit that December, final paychecks ran through February 14, 2026 (Happy Valentines Day!) . Plant Two, another 4 million square feet, has never opened. Ford Energy is retooling Plant One alone to build stationary storage batteries instead — about 2,100 jobs whenever it restarts, currently penciled in for late 2027. In the meantime, the county spent hundreds of millions getting ready for people who never showed: a $25 million workforce training center, a $200-million-plus hospital expansion, a new I-65 interchange. Actual population growth, 2020 to 2024: 2,100 people. Projected: 22,000. Only about 3,000 of a needed 8,000 housing units ever got built. That’s the risk on the other side of this newsletter — infrastructure and rooftops built on a headline instead of a paycheck.
Hopkinsville lost its grant. Ascend Elements’ battery-recycling plant is still being built, but the Department of Energy canceled its $164 million cathode-material grant, and the company cut a chunk of the planned production line. Smaller plant, smaller promise than the one that got announced.
Oldham County’s data center is dead. The $6 billion, 267-acre “Project Lincoln” got withdrawn in 2025 after local pushback, resurfaced smaller at a different site, and by everything I can find, that version’s gone too. If anyone’s still pitching you Oldham County on a data center, they’re pitching you a headline that already expired. I can see a data center in Oldham Counties future…..but you won’t be able to see it. 😉
Woodford County isn’t waiting around. On September 8, 2026, it became the first county in Kentucky to permanently ban data centers, landfills, and large battery-storage sites — full stop, no specific proposal even had to be on the table. Versailles passed its own temporary moratorium back in July. Mercer County is fighting over one in Burgin right now. Translate that for your buy box: some counties in this state are closed for that kind of project, on purpose, indefinitely….but not really. There are a significant amount of loopholes to this, it can be gamed and will! But I don’t think that has to be a bad thing….think nuclear energy. Deep Fission is my pick. 😉 I told friends about Bloom before they took off as well….
And Louisville has its own zombie. One Park, the $554 million tower planned for Grinstead and Lexington Road, has been “approved and financed on paper” for 10 years now, with up to $114 million in local TIF and state incentives lined up. No construction start.
Why does a project like this take ten years to start in Jefferson County? Embarrassing, there is a lack of vision, leadership, and getting things done in this city. Who wants in invest here if it takes this long to make this come to fruition? Think Louisville Top Golf.
And why don’t we have a professional sports franchise to rally the state behind (polarized between UK and U of L, Go Cats!)? Why are we losing the little we have? Racing Louisville. Part of the answer is not enough billion dollar anchor companies. Why don’t we have enough billion dollar anchor companies? Income taxes, OLD MONEY, and bad leadership. But the OLD MONEY is hurting in this economy…can’t maintain the status quo.
Now, what’s actually happening.
Shelby County — and this is the one I’m most fired up about. e-STORAGE, a Canadian Solar subsidiary, just finished a $712 million, 1-million-square-foot battery manufacturing plant on Logistics Drive in Shelbyville — 1,572 jobs, 6-gigawatt-hour capacity, the single largest investment in Shelby County history and the third-largest jobs announcement of the entire Beshear administration. It’s running now. At the same time, the state is putting $118 million into widening I-64 through the same corridor — six miles, four lanes to six, three bridges rebuilt, the interchange at KY 53 redesigned — and here’s the detail I love: the finished highway runs three lanes each direction all the way out to KY 395. That’s Waddy Road. That’s also one big reason I especially love Waddy, Kentucky. 😉 Tiny, unincorporated, sits right at the literal end point of a $118 million highway expansion feeding a $712 million plant that just hired 1,572 people. My take: BRRRR territory, plain and simple. Buy now while it’s still just a plant and a plan to most people, rent it through the build-out, and let rental appreciation stack right on top of the equity bump once those paychecks need somewhere to live.
Bowling Green and Glasgow. Envision AESC’s $2 billion, 3-million-square-foot EV battery gigafactory in the Kentucky Transpark is still moving — the company reaffirmed the full $2 billion, 2,000-job commitment as recently as last summer, even while pausing construction at its South Carolina site. An hour south in Glasgow, Tate Inc. — part of Kingspan — is putting up a $76 million, 400-job plant building the containment systems and liquid-cooling gear that data centers actually run on. It doesn’t build data centers itself, which means it skips the exact fight Woodford and Oldham counties are having. Largest jobs project in Barren County in 18 years. My take: two different plays on the same trend. Bowling Green is the long-hold rental-appreciation story — buy and hold while 2,000 jobs slowly show up over the next few years. Glasgow is the picks-and-shovels version: a manufacturer feeding an industry other counties are busy banning, sitting in a county that isn’t fighting it at all.
Paducah and Western Kentucky. Global Laser Enrichment’s $1.76 billion depleted-uranium re-enrichment facility, next to the old Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, is the single largest capital investment in Western Kentucky history — 240 jobs averaging $62 an hour with benefits. It’s in front of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its license right now, so nothing’s broken ground yet. My take: watch it, don’t underwrite it yet. Come back to this one once the license clears.
Georgetown and the Bluegrass. Toyota just put another $204.4 million and 82 jobs into hybrid production in Georgetown — one more expansion in a string of them since the plant opened in 1988. Not flashy. Also never once been a headline that didn’t land. Compare that to Nucor’s $1.7 billion steel plate mill down in Brandenburg: announced, built, and rolling actual steel since 2023. Two reminders of the same thing — the biggest number in a press release isn’t always the one that pays off. The one backed by a decades-long track record usually does.
Louisville metro, the recap for anyone who missed last issue. The $840 million VA Medical Center on Brownsboro Road finishes construction April 2027, holy traffic. The $180 million in interchange and highway work wrapping around it wraps up that same fall. GE Appliance Park is now three investments deep in five years — over $1.9 billion combined, 8,000-plus people on campus. Ford’s roughly $2 billion retool of the Louisville Assembly Plant, building the electric Fathom pickup, targets 2027. Three Wawas are open with dozens more planned statewide. And $15 million has already gone out the door from the West End Opportunity Partnership into actual buildings — apartments, homes, a distillery build-out in Portland. None of it has hit the rent roll yet. My take on all of it: same as always. Buy the badge, not the headline.
Here’s where it lands for me. The state’s biggest wins right now aren’t the flashiest headlines — they’re the ones with a shovel already in the ground: e-STORAGE in Shelbyville, Tate in Glasgow, GE and Ford in Louisville, Nucor in Brandenburg. The state’s biggest traps are still living in a press release: Oldham County’s data center, One Park (TEN YEARS WAITING), BlueOval SK looked exactly like this before it collapsed.
Buy where the paychecks are landing. Rent through the build-out. Let the equity show up on its own schedule. And date-check this email, six months from now.
📊 Yesterday's poll: Cherokee ran away with it — 50% of you call it home turf. Tyler, Central, or Chickasaw took second at 23%, “I didn’t know Olmsted did Louisville” pulled 14%, Iroquois 9%, and Shawnee brought up the rear at 5%. Half this list is die-hard Cherokee people — checks out, it’s the one everybody actually walks.
Which of these matters most to your portfolio?
🏆 New here this week? Every morning I screen the whole Louisville MLS and rank the five best deals and the five most ripe for a lowball, with the number I'd offer on each. Readers get it by replying "FIVE." One-to-one only — rules are rules — and if there aren't five great ones, I don't send five.
With Enthusiasm,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
PS: August’s numbers back this up. Homes sold: 1,372 (down 7.3% YoY). Median price: $300,000 (up 1.5%). Average price: $366,825 (up 5.4%). New listings: 2,174 (up 3.5%). Pending sales: 1,054 (down 26.3%). Days on market: 46 (up 21.1%). Inventory: 4,490 (up 33%). Months of supply: 3.5 (up 29.6%). More houses, sitting longer, fewer going under contract — that’s leverage…. Winner Realty Offerings.
PSS: I meant to say this last yesterday: thank you to everyone who came to the Steal My AI Stack webinar. I hope it was useful, and it looked like people walked out of it feeling pretty fired up. I wasn’t able to catch up with everybody one-on-one, so if you’ve still got questions, I’m glad to hop on a call. There were a lot of agents on that call too, and I hope you got real value out of it as well. And if you couldn’t make it, reach out — I’m glad to walk you through what we’re building at Winner Realty.
PSSS: Matt Carroll (Tuxedod out in the header), with Kentucky Bred Insurance bopped by The Party in The Woods and asked me to join his event tonight at Churchill. It was great. Met lots of great people, great room. Was shocked by the amount of people I met that were avid readers of The Morning Bergeron. Lots of kind words. Felt great! It’s nice seeing the city merry and coming together. KBR is getting in on the BIG Christmas Party. Get hyped!
PSSSS: Sat with Harry Borders yesterday afternoon. We discussed the market and the need for further understanding of assumable loans and seller financing. Which is fantastic because leads into next weeks series focused on empowerment through knowledge! That starts Tuesday…I have one more Louisville post coming because I thought it was important.
On Monday we’ll highlight the great successes that have come from the area. I want you to really notice how these impactful people were just regular old Louisvillians like you and I……and they didn’t have AI and all the incredible resources we have now to make it happen. Let’s fricken do it! Take the weekend to do some reading up on it. Perhaps I can talk Harry into doing a live Q & A with me on it.