Tourism: Creativity Over Corruption

How do you remove the stigma of being a sundown town?

Call it out. Write a book. Buy a bus. Run for mayor. Relentlessly create.

Take the argument to the people.

TANK, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky, hosted a community meeting to discuss ways to expand its services. My circus freaks and kids fresh out of jail used the bus all the time. Transportation was essential to what we were building in Ludlow.

I would fly artists in from around the world through Chicago, buying their tickets in their home countries where fares were cheaper, and visa requirements were easier to manage.

From O'Hare, they'd take the Blue Line to the Union Station/Sears Tower neighborhood, then board the Megabus, sometimes for as little as $1.50, for the six-hour ride to downtown Cincinnati.

From there, they'd board the #3 bus to Ludlow and get off at Elm Street and Kenner. If it were open, they'd get a meal on us at the Folk School Coffee Parlor.

Sometimes, we could accomplish the entire journey for less than $500.

Young African American men learned circus skills as vocational training while locked up at Hillcrest, the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center. Sharon, an artist from Mexico who made a three-hour bus commute each way to Ludlow, met these young men in Bond Hill and taught them how to transfer buses into Kentucky.

Judge Karla Grady permitted them to cross the state line. We had an electronic monitoring unit in the Ludlow Theatre, and I checked in weekly with their probation officer.

These young men earned more than minimum wage teaching circus skills to 18 people in wheelchairs through Catholic Charities.

We even got them bank accounts.

When TANK called for public input on improving services, I booked a spot to present. I lobbied hard for the Southbank Shuttle to extend its weekend service into Ludlow.

I love props. I even brought a door from the old Greenline trolley that once connected Ludlow to Cincinnati. The Greenline predates TANK, and my general contractor, Albert Fedders, had that door at the old Bus Depot headquarters.

I wanted the TANK board to understand the importance of Ludlow's streetcar heritage and what transportation could mean for our future.

Their response?

"There's nothing to do in Ludlow."

I'd been working hard to change that perception since 2009.

"Wrong! We have a circus, a brewery, a distillery, and the Ludlow-Bromley Yacht Club, which, legend has it, sells more beer on a Saturday than the Cincinnati Reds or Bengals."

No luck.

I asked City Hall to stop paying into the Southbank Shuttle. Why should Ludlow taxpayers subsidize transportation for Bellevue, Newport, and Covington when the shuttle won't come to Ludlow?

I believe the answer lies with the people who influence our riverfront.

Wayne Carlisle owns the Ludlow Lagoon, the former town dump. He had the contract to demolish the old riverfront stadium and floated concrete downriver on barges to fill the old lagoon.

Today, giant trucks regularly haul fill dirt into the site, giving Ludlow's roads a serious workout.

I fear this property could become another development receiving millions in real estate tax benefits through a City of Ludlow industrial revenue bond, giving tax breaks to people who can afford to pay their taxes.

I failed to get the Southbank Shuttle extended to Ludlow.

So, instead of complaining, I did something about it.

Working with some of the more than 100 investors Bircus Brewing Co. had at the time, I found a Kenton County school bus with a clean title.

Most school buses have Caterpillar engines that can run a million miles, but schools often retire them after six or seven years.

We bought the bus.

We hired four school bus drivers with CDLs and paid them more for the day than they would earn driving a bus or working for Lyft or Uber.

We made a plan and executed it. We built a website, secured the social media accounts, and collaborated with two distilleries and five breweries to create the Northern Kentucky Brewing and Distilling Tour and brought people to town!

Every hour, the bus left Ludlow from Second Sight Spirits, stopped at the Hofbräuhaus in Newport, followed by Braxton Labs/New Riff, then Darkness Brewing in Bellevue, before returning to Ludlow.

The tour ran from noon until 9 p.m.

It was a real hit on Groupon and brought visitors into Ludlow.

We lost our bid for the bank parking lot, but we didn't sit around waiting for somebody else to solve our transportation problem.

We bought the bus. Insured the bus. Hired the drivers. And brought people to Ludlow.

Year-round, we took the initiative.

The last day of our bus tour came when Disney World announced it was shutting down because of COVID.

My staff had been asking, "When are we going to close?"

I'd told them, "As soon as the government forces us to, or Disney shuts down."

On Saturday, March 14, 2020, my bus driver Don called.

"Paul, you said we'd shut down when Disney did."

"Let me see how many Groupons we have today."

Sold out.

Clearly, some people weren't ready to stay home.

"Don, I don't have a CDL. If you've got it in you, please drive one more day, and we'll pause operations moving forward."

I had one more request.

"Just please be in Ludlow at 1:59 on 3/14. We celebrate Pi Day, and I always take a pie to the face."

This time, a sold-out bus watched as a socially distanced pie sailed into my face.

That's tourism. That's creativity. That's bringing people together.

And we did it ourselves.

Now, let's talk about Ludlow's riverfront. Ludlow’s past two years have seen over $ 1,000,000 more spent than budgeted, but we bought the old trailer park at Sleepy Hollow and Route 8 for $500,000.

Now we own it and as mayor of Ludlow, I want to develop this site into a Viking River cruise ship terminal.

Look at Paducah, Kentucky. Viking Crusielines stops there.

Paducah became a national model for artist relocation and earned international recognition for its creative economy. Its National Quilt Museum and UNESCO recognition have helped put the city on the tourism map.

Artists and Tourists saved Paducah.

I shared that example with the Kentucky Department of Tourism, which approved funding of up to $250,000 for our project, ultimately coming to about $100,000 based on the appraisal of the former Duro Bag headquarters for our circus artist-owned live-work space.

I attended the 2024 Ohio River Way Conference in Maysville, Kentucky, and asked organizers to include Ludlow in their next promotional materials.

They did.

A Kentucky Blue Waterways initiative also offered to cover half the cost of public river access.

I intend to challenge the Beshear administration to do two things: defend the Kentucky Department of Tourism's interests in the ongoing City of Ludlow v. Circus lawsuit and make a major investment in Ludlow's riverfront.

Steve gave us an award for restoring the Ludlow Theatre. I'll remind the state that Kentucky reportedly spent $150 million in taxpayer money on a NASCAR track; Ludlow could use a fraction of that to bolster our tourism appeal.

And yet we struggle to get support for creative projects that bring people and business into our communities.

I also want to turn 2 Highway Avenue into a Sundown Town Museum by partnering with ROOTS 101 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Our current museum celebrates the Confederacy, including the story of Mary Ludlow helping Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan escape imprisonment.

As Seen In the Ludlow Heritage Museum.

If our town is going to celebrate that history, I want to create space for the people who were driven out.

Robert E. Lee lost.

The so-called War of Northern Aggression is a false telling of history.

White supremacy is false.

I work in Germany nearly every year. Germany has museums documenting the Nazis and their crimes, but they don't celebrate the Nazis.

I've been to Bogotá twice, and we're developing a circus in partnership with Don Vicente Brewing and Distilling, which produces beer and spirits from locally grown quinoa.

Colombia has a long history of violence involving FARC guerrillas and drug lords who killed innocent citizens. That history deserves to be confronted, not glorified.

Bircus East Africa Branch has been registered in Kigali with the Rwanda Development Board.

Rwanda endured a genocide in which over a million people were murdered in roughly 100 days. Its museums remember the victims and confront those crimes. They do not celebrate the killers.

Why on earth would we celebrate the Confederacy in Ludlow?

We can tell a different story.

We can create a cruise terminal. We can build a museum that confronts our history. Expand tourism. Support artists. Create opportunities for young people and bring visitors and money into town.

We can offer better options.

But first, we need to account for the millions leaving Ludlow's coffers, demand transparency, and put people with a bold, proven track record in charge of development.

We need to take control away from Planning and Development Systems of Kenton County, and the people who have been limiting us.

Creativity over corruption.

That's what I want for Ludlow.