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I'm not sure why people say KY doesn't have a major airport either. I would think the Cincinnati airport would be major enough and it's located in Northern KY, not in Ohio.
I know people here and in this form complain about KY weather endlessly, but as a CA transplant myself I love the weather here. It actually rains about once a week or so!! I even look forward to the standard thunderstorms. Everything is so green in summer and fall colors are gorgeous. Winters are usually pretty mild with very little snow and spring always has a lovely display of blooming flowers and trees with an abundance of cardinals and robins starting new families and singing just outside. Perhaps it takes someone from out of state to appreciate what we have here.
The four seasons almost make it feel like you are living in a different place throughout the year. The weather never gets boring.
I live on the Ohio River in NE Kentucky and enjoy looking out the window and seeing the river as well as walking it. It's such a striking beautiful huge water feature that people here mostly take for granted.
I actually think this is extremely desirable.
I currently live near Buffalo NY and want to go somewhere warmer with more mild winters. I don't want to go full Sunbelt and move to Texas or Florida so something mild like Kentucky which genuinely has all 4 seasons but without the brutally harsh winters that I've grown to hate us very appealing.
I've driven up an down 71 and 75 and it's beautiful. I need to take more time and explore more of the state. It might be a real alternative as I've been looking at TN and NC but they have become very expensive.
As a resident of New Hampshire, who escaped from the metro Boston (MA) area eleven years ago, I am extremely jealous of Kentucky!!! I WISH that our population was static like Kentucky!!!!! Thanks to COVID and the ability to work from home, our state is inundated with out-of-staters fleeing their blue cities and overpaying for our real estate. This makes our real estate overpriced for NH residents and speculators investing in housing developments on formerly beautiful fields and forests.
I'm not sure why people say KY doesn't have a major airport either. I would think the Cincinnati airport would be major enough and it's located in Northern KY, not in Ohio.
The airports are not major in the sense that you won’t find a major airline who has chosen those airports to be a hub for the airline. The power to get in and out without having to fly somewhere else is very nice. I live within an hour of BWI now, and because of it being a Southwest hub, I can to a lot of places in a single flight. Many times a day.
Getting into CVG or SDF is not as bad as getting into LEX, but it’s subject to the whims of the airlines. Over the years, airline service to those airports comes and goes. I know it’s automatic that if I need to get to LEX, it’s gonna be two flights and probably out of my way through CLT. I hate CLT airport with a passion. Same for me trying to get to CVG or SDF, an airline like Southwest or Delta (my usual two as I refuse the Spirits of the world), I’m currently going to be limited to one or maybe two direct flights a day. Just a few years ago. I had no options for direct into SDF. So, you’re kind of held hostage by the current market for those airlines.
I’m sure for the first weeks in May you have a lot more options into SDF, but certainly not at a discount.
As a resident of New Hampshire, who escaped from the metro Boston (MA) area eleven years ago, I am extremely jealous of Kentucky!!! I WISH that our population was static like Kentucky!!!!! Thanks to COVID and the ability to work from home, our state is inundated with out-of-staters fleeing their blue cities and overpaying for our real estate. This makes our real estate overpriced for NH residents and speculators investing in housing developments on formerly beautiful fields and forests.
Certain parts of the state are very transient in nature. I grew up in Elizabethtown and graduated from EHS, and Ft Knox and Radcliff population and to a certain extent Elizabethtown populations were subject to the churn rate of the Army. To the point that from a sports perspective, when we played those schools from Radcliff and Ft Knox, you had to reevaluate the opponents a little bit from year to year as some of the standouts from last year may have moved on. I know I had a lot of friends move away because of the Army.
Even though I left the state, I have lots of family left, and I keep in touch with 50+ alumni who have never left the area. I get to hear them complain about the growth of Elizabethtown because of projects like Blue Oval but I try to keep them grounded. I mean for years they’ve been b**ching about a lack of good paying jobs, but now that they’re here, they want to complain about the growth. I just throw my hands up.
I think a lot of it is a lack of buy in for the meaning behind Blue Oval. They don’t believe in the cause. They don’t believe in the future of EVs and they still want them coal mining jobs. Even now, there’s a lot of “I told you so” going on with Ford and Chevy pulling back on their EV goals since the market for them has slowed down. My brother has been a high level auto industry executive for many years. His commentary has been that it’s just a matter of time. Couple of years ago, he was concerned about the pace that Ford and Chevy was throwing money at it, but it’s just a matter of when and not if the dependency on gas is reduced.
On a personal level, I’m loving the hybrids these days.
When I get involved in finding people for high school reunions from EHS, my purely unscientific analysis is that about 50% of the people make a conscious decision to stay in the area because it is a family driven environment. And part is because they like it and don’t feel they need the big city life. They like to throw around the term “family values” without really being aware of the social implications of what that means to some people. Another 25% wish they could have made meaningful employment in the area but felt compelled to leave and another 25% are glad that life is in their rear view mirror.
As Happy Chandler once said. I’ve never met a Kyan who wasn’t either thinking about going home or who was actually going home.
I miss KY, but all it takes for me to want to leave again is to observe and listen to family and friends for a couple weeks.
Certain parts of the state are very transient in nature. I grew up in Elizabethtown and graduated from EHS, and Ft Knox and Radcliff population and to a certain extent Elizabethtown populations were subject to the churn rate of the Army. To the point that from a sports perspective, when we played those schools from Radcliff and Ft Knox, you had to reevaluate the opponents a little bit from year to year as some of the standouts from last year may have moved on. I know I had a lot of friends move away because of the Army.
Even though I left the state, I have lots of family left, and I keep in touch with 50+ alumni who have never left the area. I get to hear them complain about the growth of Elizabethtown because of projects like Blue Oval but I try to keep them grounded. I mean for years they’ve been b**ching about a lack of good paying jobs, but now that they’re here, they want to complain about the growth. I just throw my hands up.
I think a lot of it is a lack of buy in for the meaning behind Blue Oval. They don’t believe in the cause. They don’t believe in the future of EVs and they still want them coal mining jobs. Even now, there’s a lot of “I told you so” going on with Ford and Chevy pulling back on their EV goals since the market for them has slowed down. My brother has been a high level auto industry executive for many years. His commentary has been that it’s just a matter of time. Couple of years ago, he was concerned about the pace that Ford and Chevy was throwing money at it, but it’s just a matter of when and not if the dependency on gas is reduced.
On a personal level, I’m loving the hybrids these days.
When I get involved in finding people for high school reunions from EHS, my purely unscientific analysis is that about 50% of the people make a conscious decision to stay in the area because it is a family driven environment. And part is because they like it and don’t feel they need the big city life. They like to throw around the term “family values” without really being aware of the social implications of what that means to some people. Another 25% wish they could have made meaningful employment in the area but felt compelled to leave and another 25% are glad that life is in their rear view mirror.
As Happy Chandler once said. I’ve never met a Kyan who wasn’t either thinking about going home or who was actually going home.
I miss KY, but all it takes for me to want to leave again is to observe and listen to family and friends for a couple weeks.
You make some excellent points. I don't think many people who have never been here realize KY can be a very diverse state with different employment opportunities depending on where you live within the state and western KY is not like eastern KY in many ways.
In my area, many people graduate high school and leave for college or other things and move to other states. Some if not many end up returning realizing the big world out there isn't always what they thought it would be. I know several people that have come back to raise their children or retire including a few that are very well off financially. Even George Clooney has a home in a small town just a few miles from here where he spent time growing up.
Some people no matter where they are will naturally hate where they grow up because they had a less than ideal childhood, leave and never look back.
And I still believe fast growth is not ideal. Slow but steady growth is the way to go. Many who have experienced fast growth in their areas or in their state now regret it.
Last edited by marino760; 12-15-2023 at 06:08 AM..
You make some excellent points. I don't think many people who have never been here realize KY can be a very diverse state with different employment opportunities depending on where you live within the state and western KY is not like eastern KY in many ways.
In my area, many people graduate high school and leave for college or other things and move to other states. Some if not many end up returning realizing the big world out there isn't always what they thought it would be. I know several people that have come back to raise their children or retire including a few that are very well off financially. Even George Clooney has a home in a small town just a few miles from here where he spent time growing up.
Some people no matter where they are will naturally hate where they grow up because they had a less than ideal childhood, leave and never look back.
And I still believe fast growth is not ideal. Slow but steady growth is the way to go. Many who have experienced fast growth in their areas or in their state now regret it.
If it makes my friends and family from Elizabethtown feel any better, what they need to remember is that the automotive industry has been salivating over that plot of land Ford bought for a long, long, time. Georgetown narrowly beat out Elizabethtown as the site of what is now the largest Toyota plant in the US. VW looked at the site for the plant ultimately built in Chattanooga. Saturn narrowly picked a site in TN over Elizabethtown. Thankfully.
From what I read (at least published in the papers, I don't have first hand knowledge) it seems like all those failures fed into more planning from the city and county leaders on how to architect a deal which made sense. I'm sure some could say I'm being overly optimistic, but I say what my intuition says.
There is a lot of NIMBY mistrust going on for that site and a lot of folks are nervous about the transformation to Glendale and worried about impacts to the water table. I don't have a solution for those concerns, but I will tell you one thing.
Having lived in the mid-Atlantic for a number of years, I know WaWa. I interviewed there at the Corporate office (in WaWa, PA!) years ago for a senior position, but we decided we didn't fit well enough. Ultimately though, I have noticed how WaWa does its market research. WaWa is a fabulous privately owned company that started years ago as a dairy farm guy trying to get his milk to market. The only time I have seen a WaWa close a store, it was because they're building a bigger one down the street.
In this region, people who want to open up a brick and mortar business of their own, but they don't know what locations are "hot" or offer the right amount of foot traffic, people tell you pay attention to where WaWa is opening new stores. WaWa just opened a new store in Exton, PA this week for example, but I would argue that area has been hot for a while. WaWa has done the market research for you. If you're thinking of opening up say a butcher shop or whatever, I'd try to get it as close to that WaWa as I could.
When I heard WaWa was going to open a store in Elizabethtown (one of 3? in the entire state), I felt (intuition again) things will work out for everyone. Having a WaWa will show other chains that this is a very viable area, and maybe had something to with an incoming Publix as you see Publix stores near WaWa in Florida.
My only beef is that no one seems to give the south side of Elizabethtown any love. I wish they would have committed to a grocery store on the south side. I guess there's always hope for an Aldi.
Fast growth can be painful, but I'm proud of the area for being noticed and I look forward to hearing that the schools are driving the education needed for those good paying jobs. I know EHS is up to the task as a lot of my classmates are teaching there or have retired by now.
It's remarkable to track your old EHS (or wherever) classmates who didn't leave and realize that as full grown adults, how much of an impact that they have made to their community. I am proud of my classmates who stayed home. For my line of work (Computer Science) after graduating from UK in mid 80s, there was nothing of substance in KY, so I left. I thought about retiring in KY, but it's not as friendly towards retirees as it could be.
The 2020 census to 2022 estimate is a little odd, but if you take it back to 2010, there's modest growth. The only reason Tennessee is growing faster than Kentucky is metro Nashville, which accounted for 2/3rds of that state's net population growth in the 2010s. Kentucky doesn't have a region like that. Metro Louisville and Metro Nashville were close in size in 1990, but about 1/4 of Metro Louisville is in Indiana, and Metro Nashville has more than doubled since 1990.
The 2020 census to 2022 estimate is a little odd, but if you take it back to 2010, there's modest growth. The only reason Tennessee is growing faster than Kentucky is metro Nashville, which accounted for 2/3rds of that state's net population growth in the 2010s. Kentucky doesn't have a region like that. Metro Louisville and Metro Nashville were close in size in 1990, but about 1/4 of Metro Louisville is in Indiana, and Metro Nashville has more than doubled since 1990.
And from what I've heard, that has spilled over to Bowling Green KY because it's a reasonable driving distance to Nashville. I've heard complaints about Bowling Green now having heavy traffic, trash in the streets among other things which were not an issue previously to the Nashville boom. I don't live in Bowling Green so I personally can't say.
One family here in my town I'm pretty good friends with were living in Bowling Green until about 2-3 years ago. They saw the change, sold their house, packed up the kids and moved back here to raise their children and not be part of the Nashville rat race.
Last edited by marino760; 12-16-2023 at 08:56 AM..
It all hinges on migration.
There are no states with a high enough fertility rate (TFR) to fuel their own growth. With a fertility rate of 1.8, Kentucky is no exception. It will shrink without migration from other states.
Every single state would shrink without migration. Even rural South Dakota has a TFR of 1.98 - the best in the nation. LINK
TFR of the US is 1.64. It is my own opinion that that is why the border has been left open. Close the border solid and America would never grow again.
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