Northern Kentucky

REAL ESTATE
Transformative ‘pioneering’ development
Northern Kentucky real estate scene is seeing audacious builds and rising home prices
J. Miles Wolf photo
BY ABBY LAUB
WITH historic properties,
waterfront vistas, a major
metropolis just across the river
and a healthy influx of new residents,
Northern Kentucky’s commercial and
residential real estate markets are vibrant
and diverse. The real estate landscape
has changed a lot in a short time, but the
CORPOREX FAMILY COMPANIES
100 E. RiverCenter Boulevard,
Suite 1100
Covington, KY 41011
(859) 292-5503
corporex.com
Corporex is a real estate
focused investment company.
The core mission is to create
value through real estate
investments. Corporex has a
50-year legacy of designing,
developing, constructing and
managing real estate assets of
William P. Butler,
Chairman/CEO,
Corporex
Companies,
LLC
the highest quality. The company’s track record
demonstrates a diverse mix of investment in
and development of over 100 build-to-suit
office and industrial projects, over 41 full
service and select service hotels, business parks,
luxury residential and family sports clubs.
balance of historic preservation and new
development has worked well.
Covington-based Corporex has played
a major role. Real estate development
by the 50-year-old company has shaped
the skyline of the south bank, and it
continues to be an innovator.
“Corporex has historically taken on
projects that are transformative for the
communities that they’re in,” said Tom
Banta, Managing Director for Corporex
family of companies. “When you look
at everything we did on the Northern
Kentucky shoreline here – at the time we
started RiverCenter – Covington had just
been designated by HUD as one of the
most blighted communities in the U.S.”
Instead of shuddering at the prospect
of making a bad business deal, Corporex
saw the great potential of property just
across the Ohio River from downtown
Cincinnati and built the RiverCenter
Office Towers, complete with the highend
Metropolitan Club at the top.
“At the time it was considered
absolutely crazy,” Banta said. “We called it
pioneering, and it became a very pivotal
moment for Covington. It was considered
to be something that was going to
When other developers were focusing on the
suburbs in the 1980s and 90s, Corporex was laser
focused on Northern Kentucky’s urban core with
landscape-changing projects such as The Ascent
(blue and white) and RiverCenter next door.
advance and move the
community forward, and
it did.”
Fast forward to
2017, and the influence
Corporex’s real estate
development has had on
Covington will be written
as an important chapter in
regional history.
Tom Banta,
Managing
Director,
Corporex
“Even more recently when we did
The Ascent, that again was considered
very transformative,” Banta said, noting
that the uniquely shaped, residential
tower has 70 units with an average sales
price of more than $900,000 in an area
no one believed luxury housing would
sell, period. “We couldn’t find any
comps in the marketplace near that.”
Developing Northern Kentucky is
paying off, literally, and it’s clear that the
area is special.
lanereport.com Economic Renaissance 35