SHELDON S. SHAFER, The Courier-Journal
A plan to swap 10 acres of riverfront land owned by the city of Louisville for Towhead Island is dead.
Nine of the city's 12 aldermen said yesterday that they oppose the trade, which was proposed by Mayor Dave Armstrong in August.
The swap would have been ``a bad deal for the city,'' said Denise Bentley, president of the Board of Aldermen. ``We spent a lot of time and money developing the waterfront. To do a land swap for an eroding island doesn't make sense.''
``It's dead,'' said Alderman Bill Allison, a member of the committee that was reviewing the proposal. ``I don't think we should sell off prime real estate along the riverfront.''
Noting that the 15-acre island is prone to erosion and flooding, he added, ``Towhead Island may wash away in 30 or 40 years.''
Only two aldermen, Cyril Allgeier and George Melton, had been on record against the swap.
But yesterday Bentley, Allison, Steve Magre, Tina Ward-Pugh, Lawrence Montgomery, Dan Johnson and Barbara Gregg joined them, saying they wouldn't vote for the swap.
Aldermen Greg Handy and George Unseld couldn't be reached yesterday, and Alderwoman Cheri Bryant Hamilton declined to comment.
The island is owned by Nugent Investments, an affiliate of Nugent Sand Co. Under a tentative agreement reached last summer between Armstrong and Nugent, the city would have traded 10 acres at the end of Fulton Street for the island. The shorefront land is near Phase 2 of Waterfront Park.
Nugent's long-range plan was to develop the 10 acres with low-density, single-family housing.
Bruce Traughber, who was Armstrong's development director and had been shepherding the Towhead deal, retired from city government last week to take a development post with a University of Louisville housing subsidiary.
Earlier this month, he referred to Towhead's acquisition as ``a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. . . . Towhead is the last island adjacent to the city's shoreline that can be acquired as a public sanctuary.''
Armstrong said yesterday that there have been rumors for years that someone might buy Towhead and turn it into a yacht club or ``store things on it.''
Even though Nugent had never moved to develop the island, Armstrong said he wanted to ensure that Towhead and the wildlife on it would be preserved in its natural state.
He envisioned the island as a laboratory where schoolchildren could learn about the environment and the river's history.
At Magre's request, the Louisville Development Authority, which had been coordinating the land swap, had the two properties appraised. The 10 acres of shore land was valued at $789,000, which included its development potential.
The island's value was estimated at $796,000, including the long-term value of lease payments from a barge company that pays about $100,000 a year to store barges on the north side of Towhead.
Armstrong said yesterday that he had planned to withdraw the proposed swap anyway.
He said he had decided to ask for a re-evaluation of the swap by the task force he had set up to study recreational uses of Beargrass Creek. The task force had recommended the city acquire Towhead.
Armstrong said his environmental adviser, Susan Hamilton, had recommended that an agreement be negotiated with Nugent to ensure public access to the 10 acres that Nugent would receive.
Hamilton also wanted the city to commit to spending the lease payments on dredging and cleaning both the Municipal Boat Harbor near Towhead and Beargrass Creek near the river.
Without those assurances, the land swap shouldn't go forward, Armstrong said.
The Waterfront Development Corp., which oversees riverfront projects, never took a position on the swap. But David Karem, its executive director, said the corporation's board has held the opinion for years that it ``is not terribly advisable to give up riverfront land'' already in public hands.
Swapping the waterfront land at left for nearby Towhead Island was called a bad idea by Alderman Bill Allison. ``I don't think we should sell off prime real estate along the riverfront,'' he said.