Louisville, Kentucky: Library Branch Confirmed for Mid City Market as Mid City Mall Redevelopment Moves Ahead

The Highlands-Shelby Park branch of the Louisville Free Public Library will have a permanent home in Mid City Market, the redevelopment that is replacing Mid City Mall on Bardstown Road, officials confirmed on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

Keeping the library on the site was a priority neighbors raised again and again in public meetings on the project, and a new standalone library building had been drawn into the redevelopment plans for some time. What was missing was a finished deal. That deal is now done, and the branch will stand on the same ground where library patrons have come since the two earlier branches merged and moved into the mall in 1993.

Mayor Craig Greenberg allocated 2.5 million dollars from the city budget to help secure the library's permanent home at Mid City Market. The plans also include a park and green space outside the new library. "This is a neighborhood library, and that means the neighborhood needs to have a voice in what comes next," Greenberg said in a news release on Nov. 11.

Neighbors get the next word on Dec. 15

The city will hold two public feedback sessions on Monday, Dec. 15, on what residents want inside the new Highlands-Shelby Park Library. The afternoon session runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Douglass Community Center, 2305 Douglass Boulevard. The evening session runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Highland Community Ministries, 1228 E. Breckinridge St. The sessions start the community input process for the inside of the new building.

Atlanta-based Branch Properties is redeveloping the former Mid City Mall property into Mid City Market, with a new Publix grocery store, shops, restaurants and the library. Publix signed its lease for the site in August. Branch Properties said that Mid City Mall has deep roots in the Highlands, and that closing on the property means the company can start delivering on what it heard from neighbors and city partners. "We told the community we would start site work by the end of this year, and we're proud to be delivering on that date," the company said.

A Highlands fixture since 1962

Mid City Mall opened in 1962 at 1250 Bardstown Road, on an 11.5-acre site in the Highlands, east of downtown. The Courier Journal wrote in 1994 that the mall could be considered the crossroads of Louisville: part shopping center, part community center. The property was listed for sale in November 2024, and the redevelopment is a 60 million dollar project. The indoor mall closed on Sept. 1, 2026, and the library branch was its last open business in its final weeks.

For the Highlands, the library was never a side tenant. It was the reason many residents came to the mall at all, through the years when anchor stores left and the center changed around it. Wednesday's confirmation ends the stretch when its return was drawn on plans but not settled, and it sets the question for Dec. 15: not whether the library comes back to Bardstown Road, but what it should hold when it does.