Picture scrap yards and abandoned industrial buildings, the wasteland this 85-acre park reclaimed beside the Ohio River. To your west the city’s wharf and Riverfront Plaza/Belvedere sit just beyond the lawns. This stretch of riverfront was once a wasteland of scrap yards and abandoned industrial buildings; today it has been reclaimed as a vibrant green space that welcomes over 2.2 million visitors each year.
Walk a little and you’ll see the Big Four Bridge rising from the park, the pedestrian link that connects you to Jeffersonville, Indiana. The park throbs with civic life — it hosts the Fourth of July at Waterfront Park, Forecastle Festival, WFPK Waterfront Wednesdays, and the fireworks spectacle Thunder Over Louisville. Its public rebirth was built in stages: Phase I, between 1994 and 1999, created about 55 of the park’s acres and had an initial development cost of about $58 million in combined public and private money.
In recognition of that transformation, the park won the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence in 2013. Notice the Big Four Bridge rising from the park and the Ohio River flowing beyond it.