Louisville paper hires Menderski to cover downtown development

Maggie Menderski, who had been covering retail for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, has been hired by the Louisville Courier-Journal as part of a two-person team covering downtown development.

The beat is one of the newsroom’s primary audience strategies as there are billions of dollars’ worth of development on the table for the downtown central business district and its nearby urban neighborhoods.

“Our city’s core is going through a growth spurt similar to what Nashville and Indianapolis saw several years back,” said Menderski in an email to Talking Biz News. “There are so many projects proposed that it’s expected to change the identity, landscape and city living as we know it in Louisville, and that’s why our newsroom’s leadership is committed to building a team specifically for this coverage.”

Menderski’s job title is “city living reporter,” and her focus is on city storefronts and the type of businesses that will come and go from them during this transition. Louisville’s city neighborhoods are highly identity focused. Retail shops and restaurants change as neighborhoods do, and it’s her job to introduce the community to what’s coming and to write the farewells for the ones closing.

“It’s a move that made a lot of sense for me both professionally and personally,” said Menderski. “With the identity of the neighborhoods and the overall boom in Louisville’s city core, there’s a dynamic bigger picture element to this job just like there was with the retail beat in Sarasota.”

Menderski holds a journalism degree from the University of Missouri.