The Short Version
- The $30 million, 155,000-square-foot Madisonville Town Center attracted first-to-market brands like Aldi and Hobby Lobby and continues to expand with additional space and outparcels.
- Madisonville, Kentucky, is using relationships built through events like ICSC LAS VEGAS and ICSC NEW YORK to strengthen its retail recruitment strategy and position the city as a regional draw.
- Madisonville has also launched a collaborative Kentucky Connections presence at ICSC events, bringing together cities to attract retailers and development opportunities statewide.
Madisonville, Kentucky’s Keys To Attracting Both National Retailers and Development
Tucked in Kentucky’s Western Coal Fields region, about 100 miles northwest of Nashville, Madisonville is punching above its weight. Each day, the town’s population of 20,000 triples as workers commute in to support its growing manufacturing base and a health care system that serves 275,000 people across 11 counties. It’s also home to Madisonville Community College, a regional state training site for law enforcement and a $50 million police academy that’s under construction. In 2024, Madisonville welcomed Kentucky Sports Factory, a 90,000-square-foot indoor complex that includes basketball and volleyball courts and an indoor turf field.
Last summer, the town added more retail to its roster of regional destinations when the bulk of Madisonville Town Center opened. The $30 million, 155,000-square-foot shopping center includes several first-to-market brands, including Aldi and Hobby Lobby. A Starbucks opened on a pad in 2024, and Brewer, McCoy & Wiles Development is building some 20,000 square feet of additional space and still has some outparcels available.
Recently, Mayor Kevin Cotton and Deputy City Administrator Brad Long discussed the importance of expanding Madisonville’s retail base with Commerce + Communities Today contributing editor Joe Gose. They highlighted the city’s economic development successes since starting to participate in ICSC events, and Madisonville officials have even begun connecting other local cities to the organization through a collaborative Kentucky Connections presence at ICSC events.
Madisonville, Kentucky, expanded its offerings as a regional draw when the $30 million, 155,000-square-foot Madisonville Town Center opened last summer. Developers are building as much as 20,000 more square feet at the property and have outparcels available. Photo above and at top courtesy of the city of Madisonville, Kentucky
How did Madisonville determine it needed more retail, and how did you begin attracting new development?
Deputy City Administrator Brad Long: We have almost 800 acres of parks and recreation within the city limits, which for a community our size is well above the national average based on population. When Mayor Cotton came into office in 2019, we were focused on improving the quality of life for our residents. A big part of that was focused on enhancing event spaces and recreation opportunities at the Mahr Park Arboretum, which now has 625,000 visitors a year versus 75,000 when it opened in 2016. But we realized that quality of life is more than parks and rec; people also need places to eat, shop and play.
Mayor Kevin Cotton: We’d known for a long time that we needed more retail and restaurants, based on surveys that the chamber of commerce would put out. Because the city and county were able come up with a plan to build the indoor sports complex, it showed the development community that we were willing to invest in the infrastructure needed to make projects happen. Getting the indoor sports complex in place launched us into the $30 million town center, and now we’re seeing a lot of great traction with developers putting [purchase and sales agreements] on other properties that have opened up.
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The city and county’s plan to build the 90,000-square-foot Kentucky Sports Factory indoor sports complex, which opened in 2024, signaled to developers that Madisonville is willing to invest in the infrastructure new projects require, according to Mayor Kevin Cotton. Photo courtesy of The Sports Facilities Cos.
How did local businesses and residents respond to the plan to build Madisonville Town Center?
Cotton: In the very beginning of the process, some local business owners pushed back [for fear of competition], but out of that we created a small business roundtable with local partners like our county economic development agency, the chamber of commerce and our tourism folks. Every quarter, our local businesses have an opportunity to come in and have conversations. We answer any questions that they have, and we find ways to help support them. And what they’ve found is that they’re seeing more traffic in their businesses because of the new development. More money was spent in the city limits of Madisonville last Christmas season than has been spent in the history of Christmas seasons here. We just had to get past some of the hurdles of the new the change and the concerns of the local community.
Beyond developer interest in new properties, what other signs of economic growth are you seeing?
Cotton: The economic momentum we’re having has sparked more housing conversations, which in turn are sparking more manufacturing conversations. Last summer, Canadian plastic packaging maker [E. Hoffman Plastics] broke ground on a $43 million plant in Madisonville, its first location in the U.S., and will create around 164 jobs.
How did Madisonville first become involved with ICSC?
Long: We were meeting with the town center developers one day in 2023 about infrastructure needs, and they said: “We’re going to Las Vegas in May for ICSC. Y’all should look at getting involved.” Of course, we didn’t know what it was. But Mayor Cotton decided that yes, we were going to go and that we were going to have a booth. So we went to Las Vegas, and it was like drinking from a fire hydrant. We realized that while a third-party retail-recruitment firm we were working with did a lot of good things, there was no one better to tell our story than us. We also realized that when you Googled “Madisonville, Kentucky,” you’d see certain statistics but they didn’t really tell our story and explain why we were poised for growth. At that point, we fully committed to sell our community the best way that we could by pouring our efforts into retail recruitment. That year, we also attended other ICSC shows, including [in] Orlando and New York. We wanted to get our brand and story out, and we started to build relationships, not only with individual developers and brokers and retailers but also with ICSC as an organization.
Cotton, at left in both photos, and other officials declare Aldi and Marshalls in Madisonville Town Center open for business at ribbon cuttings in the summer and fall, respectively. Photos courtesy of the city of Madisonville, Kentucky
How has Madisonville’s participation in ICSC evolved since that first trip to Las Vegas?
Cotton: Many cities and elected officials have this idea that development is going to come to them, and it’s just not true. They don’t understand that they have to work for it and that opportunities take time. Our wins that started in 2023 took two to three years to finally get across the finish line. By learning the ropes of what ICSC offers and how it can help communities, we began educating other communities on what they need to do before showing up to an ICSC event. We initially allowed other cities to be a part of our booth that we branded with our Madisonville logo. That effort has transitioned to a Kentucky Connections booth, which will include about a dozen cities from the state in Las Vegas this year. There will be meeting space, and each city will have their own tables. We know that most franchises are looking for multiple locations and developers are developing all across Kentucky, not just in one city, so it only makes sense to navigate those opportunities from one booth so that developers, franchisees or investors can talk to the decisionmakers right then and there.
You’ve built connections beyond retailers through your ICSC participation, right?
Cotton: We work quite a bit with officials from Albertville, Alabama, whom we met through ICSC. We went down there on a best-practices visit and met people with Sports Facilities Cos., which is also an ICSC member. We ended up hiring them to manage the Kentucky Sports Factory. It’s incredible how ICSC has opened opportunities that we would not have had without that relationship.
What challenges stand in the way of bringing more development to Madisonville?
Cotton: Kentucky has a state sales tax, and the way the state legislature is set up, we don’t have the ability to have a local sales tax. We’ve been having discussions to change that for eight years, but it hasn’t crossed the finish line.
Long: That definitely plays a role for a lot of folks in the region from the consumer side. We’re 40 miles from the Tennessee line, and we often hear people in this region say that Madisonville and Hopkinsville to our south are on the cheaper side of things [compared with Tennessee]. But we’d have some definite advantages if we could leverage a local sales tax as an incentive [for development].