Growth. Both problem and propellant, the word may seem foreign to most of Kentucky’s 120 counties; but it has come to define Warren County and Bowling Green.

Anyone who has lived or worked in the Bowling Green area for more than a decade has seen the changes that have come to the Nashville Road, Lovers Lane and Scottsville Road corridors as the city has experienced explosive residential, industrial and commercial growth.

That growth is such a defining aspect of the county that Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman addressed it during his Election Night celebration on Nov. 8, 2022.

“Managing our growth is the most important thing now,” Gorman said. “How we handle our infrastructure and housing growth is what we’re going to be judged on.”

Gorman’s counterpart in city government, Bowling Green Mayor Todd Alcott, is also attuned to the growth and its implications for the city and county.

“Growing up in Bowling Green, I remember when Scottsville Road was a two-lane country road,” Alcott said. “Now it’s a major four-lane highway.

“I’ve seen the evolution of the downtown area, with new businesses and attractions. I remember the excitement when the Corvette plant came to Bowling Green.”

Alcott said the city for years saw “spurts of growth” stemming from its location in the Interstate 65 corridor and the presence of Western Kentucky University.

The Corvette City, though, has hit another gear in recent years.

“The last 10 years, we’ve seen incredible growth,” Alcott said. “A lot of that is due to the Kentucky Transpark. That investment has really paid off.

“About $43 million has been invested between the city and county in buying land and investing in infrastructure and utilities. What started with about 600 acres is now over 2,000 acres.”

And that acreage in the northern Warren County industrial park is filling with employers just about as fast as former farmland can be purchased and repurposed.

As proof that investment in the monstrous industrial park is paying dividends, Alcott points to such recent developments as the 400,000-square-foot Tyson Foods plant expected to eventually employ 450 people, the O-I Glass plant that will employ about 140 people, and the 3 million-square-foot Envision AESC plant.

The Envision AESC plant in particular promises to transform the county’s economy. Originally projected to employ about 2,000 people, the Japan-based company could now nearly double that over the next several years by diversifying into products beyond the electric-vehicle batteries it will make for the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and other customers.

Those recent economic development announcements are also testament to Bowling Green’s resilience, Alcott believes.

“We went through the (COVID-19) pandemic and then a tornado,” he recalled. “There was a lot of uncertainty, but then we had three major announcements (of new employers) almost immediately.”

The vitality of Bowling Green and Warren County is borne out by the numbers. According to U.S. Census data, Warren County’s population rose from 113,781 in 2010 to 134,554 in 2020, an 18.2% increase that easily puts it among the state’s fastest-growing counties.

That’s a far cry from Warren County’s beginnings. Established in 1796 as Kentucky’s 23rd county, it was carved out of Logan County and named for Revolutionary War hero Joseph Warren. It depended largely on agriculture and riverboat trade in those early years.

But growth came with the laying of Louisville and Nashville Railroad tracks in the 1850s and the routing through the county of I-65 a little over a century later. It hasn’t stopped.

That most recent decade of growth is hardly an aberration, according to a recent study.

A 2022 report from the Louisville-based Kentucky State Data Center said Warren County’s population will swell to more than 200,000 over the next three decades, leapfrogging it into a spot as the state’s third-largest county.

The projections show 75 of the state’s 120 counties declining in population while Warren County is predicted to add 74,743 residents from 2020 to 2050, reaching 209,297 residents and surpassing both Kenton and Boone counties to become the state’s third-most populous county.

In raw numbers, Warren County’s projected growth is second only to Fayette County’s 75,649 and its 55.6% gain trails only Scott County’s 79.5% projected growth rate.

Small wonder then, that community leaders like Gorman and Alcott see those increasing numbers and the strategies needed to address them as the top issue facing Warren County.

“The No. 1 challenge we have now is the housing shortage,” Alcott said. “We’ve put a lot of effort into studying that and figuring out how best to tackle it.”

Part of that effort came in the form of a housing study done for the city by Bowen National Research.

The Bowen study concluded that the Bowling Green area has an overall housing gap of 2,594 units (1,990 rental units and 604 for-sale units).

That’s in line with the conclusions drawn by City-County Planning Commission of Warren County Executive Director Ben Peterson when he conducted a 2022 session on housing as part of the planning commission’s process for updating its comprehensive plan.

“Typically, we build about 1,000 to 1,200 units per year,” Peterson said. “Now that has grown to where we need about 3,000.

“We were in a housing crunch pre-tornado. I hesitate to call it a housing crisis now, but we could get there.”

That housing crunch has prompted both the Bowling Green and Warren County governments to funnel local, state and federal dollars toward efforts by the Housing Authority of Bowling Green and Habitat for Humanity to erect affordable housing units.

“We’re really confident we’re working toward a solution,” Alcott said. “We’ve put a lot of effort and detail into it.”

Going hand-in-hand with the need for housing is the need for transportation infrastructure. A number of local and state projects are in the works to address the increase in traffic along such routes as Nashville Road, Cave Mill Road, Three Springs Road and Cemetery Road.

But one project certain to get a lot of attention over the next decade is a possible new Interstate 65 interchange between the current exit 20 in Warren County and exit 6 in Simpson County.

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District 3 Chief Engineer Joe Plunk explained in 2021 when the need for a new interchange was being studied that the 14-mile gap between the two exits is one of the largest between the Tennessee state line and Louisville.

That study by the Michael Baker International consulting firm looked at three possible locations for a new interchange and recommended the Rich Pond Road area as the preferred location.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll see heavy equipment moving dirt along Rich Pond Road anytime soon.

According to KYTC, the next step to move the project forward is to enter it into the state’s Highway Plan process to be considered for funding. Preliminary estimated costs for a new interchange in the Ky. 242 area range from $37.7 million to $49.8 million.

Plunk likens this project to the exit 30 interchange near the Kentucky Transpark, which opened in 2018 after nearly a decade of planning and construction.

One thing, though, is for certain: A new I-65 interchange only promises to accelerate Warren County’s already-robust growth.