WQXE News

The Elizabethtown City Council met for their final meeting of 2025 Monday.

The council approved three municipal orders related to Downtown E-Town. Downtown Redevelopment Grants were approved for 109 South Main Street for $20,908.15 (Hub Haus LLC) and 127 North Main Street for $30,490.27 (Elizabethtown Renaissance Associates). A lease agreement for 226 South Main Street with Logistics Solutions LLC was also approved. City Attorney Ken Howard said the city is negotiating to include stipulations for early termination of the lease.

“We have been discussing with the lessee, Logistic Solutions, the possibility of an early termination,” Howard said. “The original term is five years. If in the event the city needs that property before a five-year time period, we could terminate it earlier.”

The first reading was held on an ordinance to rezone 2916 Dolphin Drive from Neighborhood Commercial (C-2) to Regional Commercial (C-3). The first reading was also held on an ordinance that amends the city’s code for setting city council meetings and other board and commission meetings to reflect the move from the Pritchard Community Center to the new city council chambers located in the former Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame, located at 212 West Dixie Avenue. 

“We’ve had a lot of work in Mr. Addington’s building to make it a wonderful city council chamber,” said Elizabethtown Mayor Jeff Gregory. “I think you all will be pleased with what it looks like and everybody will have a comfortable chair except Marty (Fulkerson). I look forward to having meetings in there, and I think you all will enjoy it as well. It gives us a lot more room, it’s a little more professional, and it’s going to be a good situation.”

The Elizabethtown City Council will meet in their new chambers at their next meeting on January 5.

Four days after the announcement that Ford and SK On would be dissolving their joint venture for battery factories, the Detroit automaker announced a shift in focus that will result in a new operation at the Glendale facilities and the loss of 1,600 jobs.

In a release published by the company Monday, Ford announced “a series of actions to sharpen its Ford+ plan, executing a decisive redeployment of capital to meet customer demand and drive profitable growth.”

Those actions include the repurposing of the Kentucky One and Kentucky Two BlueOval SK plants in Glendale “to serve the rapidly growing battery energy storage systems market.” Ford says the change “will leverage currently underutilized electric vehicle battery capacity to create a new, diversified, and profitable revenue stream for Ford.” Ford plans to convert the facilities from an electric vehicle battery plant to produce advanced battery energy storage systems. Ford says they plan to produce “LFP prismatic cells, battery energy storage system modules, and 20-foot DC container systems” at the facility.

Ford says it will invest $2 billion over the next two years to develop the new operation, which they plan to bring online within 18 months. While Ford says the energy storage facility will include 2,100 jobs, Ford executives said in a call with media that current operations at BlueOval SK will cease and the plant’s 1,600 workers will be laid off. A timeframe for the layoffs was not announced, but Ford said the laid off workers would have the opportunity to apply for the new operation.

The original BlueOval SK announcement from September 2021 reported the project to be a $5.8 billion investment which would lead to approximately 5,000 new jobs. BlueOval SK announced the production of their first battery in August.

Aaron Taylor came on board as the Hardin County Schools Performing Arts Center’s technical director in 2005, but he will be moving into a different office soon as HCS has announced Taylor as the PAC’s new director.

Taylor said getting selected was “extremely humbling.”

“I’ve been here for 20 years, and I knew from the second that I walked in here, before I even worked here when I used to come here with the Blue Apple Players on their tour, I knew this was a place I wanted to spend my life,” Taylor said. “I absolutely love this theater. I love what we do. I love what is possible here, what we can do in the future, and I can’t wait to tap into that.”

Taylor steps into the role as Bart Lovins, the PAC’s director since 2001, retires at the end of the month. Taylor says it is special to follow the person who hired him on.

“I am extremely indebted and grateful to Bart,” Taylor said. “One, for that opportunity, and to be lucky enough to work beside him for 20 years has been unbelievable, and to just try and soak up a little bit of his energy and work ethic. We say around here, ‘if you play the game of trying to keep up with Bart, you’re going to lose.’”

Taylor says he is looking forward to making sure everybody knows about the PAC.

“I feel I owe it to this theatre to make sure that people understand how beautiful and important she is, and to make sure that we create all kinds of arts opportunities for especially our kids and everyone through our community,” Taylor said.

The PAC will present The Nutcracker December 19, 20, and 21. Visit www.thepac.net for ticket information.