Document the condition
Track where the issue shows up on the Bowling Green property, when it started, how it tracks with heavy rain, and any earlier work; showing up to that first call with photos and rough measurements helps.
Read the local context
Two centuries of building on the same limestone means the city's eras sit on very different footings. Structures from the decades after the 1798 county-seat founding rest on stone and unreinforced masonry, where movement shows as sloping floors and separated walls rather than one clean crack, and where a repair has to work with masonry that predates any modern footing practice. The university's growth after 1906 and the industrial expansion that followed the 1981 assembly plant produced block crawl-space and slab construction instead, which fails under lateral load or over a void. Establishing the era is the first real step.
Ask what will be hidden
Ask specifically what gets buried once the work is finished -- drainage routing, void-filling, pier connections -- since a Bowling Green scope is only as good as what it documents about the parts nobody sees again.
Compare complete scopes
Line up Bowling Green proposals against each other on protection, access, materials, permits, testing, cleanup, restoration, exclusions, warranties, and change-order rules, not just price.
What official local sources add
This is the trade the city's own karst warning is written for. Where the ground is limestone riddled with caves, sinkholes, springs and underground streams, what supports a footing is a question to answer rather than assume, and a void can develop with no surface sign at all. The detail worth noticing is the second half: with very few surface streams to carry runoff away, water leaves largely by going down -- which is precisely how solution channels enlarge beneath a structure. That is also why the city requires erosion-control and post-construction stormwater plans for qualifying land disturbance, and why exterior drainage work here is regulated rather than incidental.
Sources were reviewed 2026-07-20. Before authorizing work in Bowling Green, confirm parcel-specific karst and sinkhole risk, historic-district status, and current permit requirements with the relevant local authority.