Wick's Pizza is expanding to New Albany, by Grace Schneider (Courier-Journal).It's big, all right. Whether you like Wick's Pizza Parlor & Pub or not, there's no disputing the company's iconic Louisville status. To many people, Wick's epitomizes the Highlands (its original location) and is significant in a way that chain-mad Bearno's or Joe's OK Bayou simply are not. Iconic Louisville businesses tend not to come to New Albany. This is groundbreaking, indeed.Wick's Pizza Inc., a locally owned chain in Louisville, is preparing to open a restaurant in downtown New Albany.
The store, the fifth Wick's location, is expected to open by late July at 225 State St., the former location of Speakeasy, a restaurant and live jazz club.
This announcement is wonderful, but it doesn't come without red flags. I hope to see the Highlands vibe, not the atmosphere cultivated at the Wick's location on Dixie Highway, with its Ms. Miller Lite bikini contests, karaoke and fight club promos. One does what one must do to survive. Let's hope that survival in New Albany can be achieved along a, er, higher road.
Make no mistake: I'm for Wick's being downtown.
I look forward to selling them beer. And, as IAH noted earlier today, the owners of Wick's noticed all those people congregating around the YMCA, a observation that puts the lie (as if we needed more proof) to the persistent troglodyte urban legend that the Y itself could not draw people downtown.
Private investment is doing its part. Now, the city needs to do its part: Two-way streets, repaving, and infrastructure investments. It's a partnership, Erika. That's the way it works in places that are functional. Perhaps it might yet work here, council permitting.
6 comments:
so sometimes the rumor mill is true
Then when people from other area's of southern Indiana have to travel down a grid locketed Spring St. They will turn around and never come back. It will be easier for easterners to go east across the bridge and eat their Wick's pizza in Louisville or a really nice one-way west bound all the way from Silver St would make it easy and safer for most of old N.A. and the rest of Clark Co to effciently come to the CBD. My family loves Wick's and I'll be having a Rolling Rock to go along with it. See everyone there! Hope it is a smoke free environment.
Then, when people like me who live close enough to downtown to walk to Wicks, can safely navigate a two way Spring St instead of dodging traffic in its current dragstrip form, I will be able to enjoy an evening at Wicks, drinking (hopefully) some good NABC beer!
A, if they'll have our beer, we'll sell it to them. At some point I hope we "own" downtown taps, in the figurative sense, of course.
If they won't buy it, I'll have to get a pizza to go and then walk up to get a growler at your place. Simple fix for me.
Then when people from other area's of southern Indiana have to travel down a grid locketed Spring St. They will turn around and never come back...
Yet somehow restaurants keep going to Bardstown Rd. No one there complains about parking or gridlock, at least not in the sense that they “vote with their feet” and shop/dine somewhere else.
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