Occasionally, as casino gambling tries to expand in the U.S., some innocent bystander gets taken down. That could literally be the case with the Bavarian Brewery Building, a crenellated fixture of the Covington, Kentucky, skyline since 1877. It 2008 it was bought by Columbia Sussex Corp., which was betting that incoming Gov. Steve Beshear (D) could get casino gambling through the Legislature. However, Beshear has failed time and again, and ColSux CEO William J. Yung III is of a mind to demolish the Bavarian Brewery.
At this news, location preservations sprang to action. It may be too late. Photographs of the crumbling brewery suggest Yung hasn’t put so much as a dime into maintenance of the structure. (Although he bought the brewery for $4 million, he’s borrowed $19 million against it.) Not even being on the National Register of Historic Places would be enough to save the structure. Yung’s intentions are unclear, should he tear the building down.
It would be only too easy to paint Yung as the villain of this drama. However, Kentucky’s congenital inability to license casino gambling is what may have sealed the Bavarian Brewery’s fate.
