Why the NBA Should Be Important to Louisville

***Note***

This entry was composed before the release of the article discussing an independent economic analysis that was done to judge the potential impact an NBA team would have on the city.  This analysis stated that the city would see only a $2.4 million increase to the local economy.  Not only is that embarrassingly low, it stinks of being incorrect.  With a salary cap of $58 million plus salaries of executives and other workers, the local payroll tax revenue alone would equate to nearly $5 million annually.  And this doesn't even begin to include increases in revenue from merchandise sales, taxes on lease revenues to the Yum Center, and increases in spending in the Special Tax District which surrounds the arena downtown.

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I've written in the past that I thought the NBA in Louisville might be far-fetched, slightly off-based, and a stretch for the city to truly pursue.  But the day I wrote the post "Oklahoma City vs Louisville: A Basketball Case Study" I must have been drunk or high, or both.  I was being a moron.

When I met with the city's Director of Economic Growth and Innovation last winter he stressed to me that the city's main focus was trying to attract as much outside investment as possible that made sense for it to pursue.  Things where infrastructure might already be in place, but more development was needed.  Businesses that Louisville already participated in on some level, but might need a slight kick-start to improve upon.  When considering all of these facts, and the economic impact various industries might have, why an NBA franchise would ever be overlooked is beyond me.  We already have the infrastructure: a great NBA-ready arena (the Yum! Center), a plethora of 5-star hotels and restaurants for NBA opponents to stay at and chose from, and a concentrated amount of nightlife options within walking distance of both said hotels and the arena for players and coaches to frequent (because we know that Ballers gon' Ball).  And we have a huge fan base of basketball lovers within a 100-mile radius; one might even argue that it's the biggest basketball fan base in the country.  Sure the population of Louisville might not be big enough in-and-of itself to support a franchise, but when you consider the basketball lovers in Southern Indiana and the entire state of Kentucky you now have a population of followers that would be as big as any large market team in the League.  And we have capital.  With Papa Johns, Yum, Humana, Anthem, and UPS all headquartered within Jefferson County we have the start of a sponsorship base that would be as good as any around the country.  And what we lack in that area could easily be made up through partnerships with national firms that have a presence here such as Northwestern Mutual, United Healthcare, Kindred, and PNC Bank.  We aren't far off.

The arguments against a team are numbered and poignant: people who would support the NBA franchise aren't likely to also buy their season tickets to UL, UK, or IU games - hurting the already established college teams.  Attendance would be so low that the team would quickly be delegated to the annual conversation of contraction.  Local media outlets wouldn't have the capital to adequately support and market the team's games.  The Yum Center would need major renovations to house a team.  The University of Louisville, specifically, would be murdered by having to split dates with the team, and for having to share sponsorship dollars.  So on and so on.

Listen, these are all small items that, if people would really work together for the greater good of the city, would easily work themselves out in a positive way over time.  Starting with season tickets and attendance.  I am a UK fan.  I do not have UL or IU season tickets, and, while I'd love to have the opportunity to go to all of Kentucky's home games, I do not own those either.  But if an NBA team came to Louisville I would jump at the chance to support them because of the talent that would come through the arena, and the quality of basketball that would be played.  Fluff games like those that occur with the Long Beach States, Quinnipiacs, and Monmouths of the world would never take place.  Each of the 41 games played would be competitive, and would matter.  And even if the team were bad, how excited would people be to watch Kobe, Lebron, or Kevin Durant perform in our fair town?  Thousands of people would be interested in this spectacle!  And what if one of those guys were to say "Hey, Louisville is really cool!" wouldn't that just make our day?  On a pure numbers basis, the Yum! Center holds 22,090 folks (per their website).  Most nights there might only be 12,000-14,000 people in the stands depending on the opponent.  However, if the team is successful or the game is big this number could easily climb to 20,000+, allowing the team to average somewhere around 16,000 fans a game - and the average NBA game attendance last season was 17,273.  Not too far off.

Oklahoma City cited a statistic that attendance to nearby Oklahoma Sooner basketball games fell by 15% or so after the Thunder came to town, however this is in a state that is extremely football crazed and whose population isn't nearly as dense as ours in the immediate outlying areas of the city.  If UL were to see any drop in attendance after a franchise entered the picture I believe it would be minuscule as it is much more likely that the NBA team would suffer the loss of a patron if that person was given a choice between their longstanding favorite team or the new thing in town.  And while TV rights could be an issue, as there might not be many big dollar contracts available between a team and any of the local stations, I would guess that a regional institution like Fox Sports could be an option.  Or if the team wanted they could start their own station, keeping all the revenue from ads and television buys from Insight (Time Warner) that would ensue.

That leaves us with the issue of how they would fit with the University of Louisville.  And this really is the weakest argument in my opinion.  In my previous blog I did an analysis of the game schedules between UL's Men's and Women's programs and that of the Oklahoma City Thunder in order to see what the possibilities are for conflict.  And while there would be some, the reality is that only a few games a year (less than 10 total between all three teams) would really have to be moved around.  Something that is more than easily doable, to the point that that is really a non-argument.  And besides, with all that has come out on how little the University pays to rent the arena for a game, they should be more than willing to be flexible on dates when given the choice of that or paying a higher cost to put on their contests in the Yum Center.  Beyond that, imagine the synergies that could take place with a franchise and UL as students in their Sports Marketing, MBA, Sports Medicine, and Design programs might all have the opportunity of internships, temporary jobs, and other learning opportunities.  For students looking to gain a foot in the door to the ultra-competitive job market that exists within Professional Sports Franchises, this would be huge boon!  It would be a win for the University without a doubt.

At the end of the day, if the city wants to look for a way to increase payroll tax, increase its brand, and continue to push interest in a Downtown area that needs more consistent traffic, then an NBA franchise is the instant fix for all of this.  Millions of dollars would pour into city coffers through ticket sales, increases in tax revenues (from the added $58 million+ in salaries that the team would bring in), and increased foot traffic downtown.  This is something that would bring instant credibility to our city, and would go a long way towards re-establishing ourselves as the preeminent town in the South.  We'd have the best 2-minutes in sports, the best 2-week festival in America, the best college sports, and (potentially) the best NBA franchise in the country, to go along with all the other new and spectacular developments that have already begun coming to fruition throughout the past five years.  While it could take years and years to acquire, it's time for our city's leaders to stop being divided, to stop saying why we can't, and start realizing why we should.  In the 1960's and 1970's Louisville had two opportunities for Major League Sports teams, and has admittedly paid the price for ignoring them.  Please, for the sake of our town and the momentum we've developed, lets not do that again.

NuLu: A Louisville Renaissance

Blocks like this one in St. Matthews are becoming common place in Louisville.  Former centers of commerce that have fallen into disrepair, but are being redeveloped for the greater good.

If you haven't noticed Louisville has been going through a quiet renaissance over the past decade in the areas of new building and redevelopment.  Louisville has long been considered a very suburban town with many people traveling into the Central Business District during the day, only to head for the hills (or Prospect) after the whistle blows, and leaving Downtown like a scene in an old western movie at night - tumbleweeds and all!  For decades the story around town was that development was hard to come by more or less because of the rigmarole that was required by the old, un-merged city and county governments.  If you wanted to get zoning rights in St. Matthews you potentially had to have it cleared by three or more municipal bodies - the city of Louisville, Jefferson County, and the City of St. Matthews, not to mention any other neighborhood associations that might be involved.  As you might expect this kept a lot of interested parties away.

Beginning in 2003 with the merger of the city and county governments into one Louisville Metro Government (what a funny idea that was - it only took 205 years to accomplish!) the narrative began to change.  One of the first announcements of then-Mayor Jerry Abramson's new term was on the partnership with the Cordish Company and the redevelopment of the old Galleria Mall into what is now Fourth Street Live!  This broke the chain of unimaginative thinking that had plagued the city throughout the 1990's, and earlier, as it proved that national development could happen in Louisville on a grand scale.  Once Fourth Street came to fruition in 2004 the city began seeing a slow and methodical transformation of downtown as people started to come back to the hallowed grounds of the old city, either to visit the new restaurants and bars that were now present or to take in the new landscape provided by the completion of phase one of Waterfront Park which was occurred in 1999.  This created exactly the buzz that was needed at the time to spur development and get people talking about Downtown Louisville as a destination again, as opposed to the ghost town that it was previously associated with.  Once plans for the KFC Yum! Center were finalized, and new hotels and offices began coming to fruition, the bar had been set - Louisville could successfully spur development and improve its status as a deteriorating city, and it had much more capability to do so than even it had thought possible.

Since 2004 we have seen an outburst of building and redevelopment in and around Downtown Louisville.  Main Street and Market Streets have been revitalized by developers seeing the value in acquiring historic buildings with old-world facades.  The former projects on the east side of Downtown have been transformed into brand new, bright and clean residential complexes.  And Old Louisville has regained much of its reverence as a place of history and dignity within our city.  But it hasn't stopped there.

With the East Market corridor serving as guide, the neighborhood of Saint Matthews has seen a remarkable change over the past five years as developers have been able to transform old, outdated retail spaces into new restaurants and bars that serve the young professionals that live in the area.  In that time upwards of ten new establishments have sprouted up and taken firm root in the city as demand for "new and fun" places to go has steadily increased.  Similar development has been seen in the Bardstown Road / Highlands corridor, as well in the Eastern Parkway / Germantown Area; although not nearly as concentrated.

The driving forces behind these developments are all different and varied in several ways, but there are a few underlying factors which we can attribute towards their creation.

1. Demand - As I've written about before, Louisville is booming in the 35 and under population segment.  These folks are largely college educated, have often lived outside of Louisville for an extended period of time, and want more and varied things to do around town.  They also have larger disposable incomes which they enjoy using to consume food, drinks, and more specialized items that their parents may have previously thought of as frivolous or outlandish expenditures.
2. Availability - If you take a once great metropolitan area (at one time in the top-10 in the country in population),  diminish its occupancy, and move half of those remaining to an outside suburb, you're going to have a high vacancy rate.  Over time these vacancies create blight, and blight offers opportunity for those creative visionaries to turn an old warehouse into new condos, or a vacant lot into a LEED Certified office space.  This is at the forefront of the development in NuLu (the East Market District), Butchertown, Germantown, and other parts of the Central Business District.
3. Capacity - While many people have bemoaned the old guard that formerly ran the city from the C-Level suites in the penthouse floors of the Aegon Building (as opposed to City Hall), what Louisville's power brokers have left behind is a population of wealthy individuals who want to reinvest in the city they love.  These folks are taking on projects like there's no tomorrow, and trying at all cost to put their stamp on the town.  As each has had more and more success, it has only created more excitement and buzz as everyone anticipates the next great development coming to Louisville.
4. Re-Urbanization - In previous decades Downtown Louisville was a place people wanted to get away from, and stay away from at all costs.  However, now that many of the once-downtrodden areas of the Central City have been dramatically revitalized, Downtown is a place that people want to be and be seen.  Condo developments are sprouting up like weeds, and demand for luxury living quarters within the boundaries of the Watterson Expressway is increasing at a rapid pace.  This puts a premium on new retail and commercial development in these areas as new residents want places to go and things to do without having to drive across town.

So where does all this leave us?  On his radio show this past week local sports personality Bob Valvano said, in reference to Louisville attracting a National Basketball Association franchise (or other major sports team for that matter), that Louisville often thinks of itself as the Chicago Cubs of cities - a decent place to live, a fun place to be, but not capable of really doing special things.  And for the most part I would say that this is correct in a lot of ways, currently.  But as I alluded to in my last entry ("Why Louisville Will Be Great"), the young people of this town have big dreams for the city and want to see them fulfilled.  There are going to be bumps along the way and convincing to be done - and it will not happen overnight - but we will slowly get there.  With each new string of development that has arisen over the past decade people have constantly said "That won't last" or "I'm not sure why that's being built", but more times than not these projects have been a success.

As the current leadership in redevelopment has shown, if you build it they will come.  From downtown condos to restaurants to new bars and clubs, if there's a demand for it around town - no matter where that demand is coming from - it will not go unrequited.  It all started with one string of legislation, and then a development downtown, and then another and another.  As the city grows, improves, and redefines itself it will become more and more attractive for outside investment and corporate ventures.  Once that happens then we will really see the fruits of our labor and begin to get the credit we've deserved for the last fifty years as being one of the most progressive cities in the South.  To this end, that is how we will continue to make Louisville Major League.

Why Louisville Will Be Great

Disclosure:

Most of my blog posts are usually pretty random in nature - short bursts of thought based on a topic that is trending around our city at a given time.  This entry, however, has been much more thought out and contemplated than any other.  The premise, as broad as it might sound, came to me in an epiphany-type moment, and its doctrine is something I am trying to spread to as many people as possible.

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Why Louisville Will Be Great

A friend of mine once described Louisville as a sort of suitcase town for young people:  Hundreds of children with great ambitions grow up here and leave for college, ultimately landing in one of our country’s great cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C.) where they spend their 20’s climbing the corporate ladder until they eventually get tired of their toil and return to Louisville to marry and have children in their middle-aged years.  “If we could only keep those kids here after college,” he’d lament, “we’d really start to be something.”

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the vibe around this town is changing.  The aura of mediocrity and stagnation is starting to be swept away and we actually are progressing – a word many people might not understand around here considering it took 50 years to decide on an east end bridge and 30 years to merge our city and county governments.  And while currently most of this progress has been driven from the top there is a new wave of enthusiasm coming down the proverbial pipeline as a perfect storm is taking place locally.

With the recent decline in the economy, and the subsequent lack of new jobs being available to recent college graduates, many more individuals who previously would have moved to much larger cities after their schooling are now returning to Louisville to start their adult lives.  This has created a swell of young people who are educated, hungry for success, and eager to make their own way in life.  What’s interesting, though, is that Louisville currently doesn’t have the capacity to employ all of these people so many of them are literally having to find their own path – via startups, self-employment, and the chasing of dreams.  The result of all this has been a generation of kids who all grew up together, went their separate ways during college, and have now recongregated to begin their lives in the city that they love.  This has created an undergrowth, beneath the large influxes that the Mayor’s office has generated, that is spawning and searching for greatness.  What’s awesome is that, since Louisville could probably be considered the largest small town in the country, everyone knows everybody and we see each other constantly, creating a type of synergy that this city has not have experienced since the 1920’s and 30’s.  And Louisville is the benefactor.  This synergy has only been aided by the fact that this is the age of technology and Louisville’s young people are a mobile and energized group who will get behind any and every cause they deem worthy, with organizations like YPAL, The Bachelors Club, GLOW, and Junior League leading the charge.  And with social media accelerating the flow of ideas and thoughts, people around town are meeting and interacting like never before.  Gone are the days of having to use cocktail parties and other social gatherings for the purposes of networking.  You now can meet someone and know their entire life story in a matter of minutes using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.  In fact, my company recently hired someone who we found on linkedin by simply doing a search of our competitors and messaging anyone we thought we might have a connection to.  This type of job search would have taken several months 10 years ago, but it lasted about 2 weeks given the technologically advanced climate we currently find ourselves in.  On any given night around town I can talk to a friend about their personal training business, their new boutique clothing shop, or the climate of corporate lending at area banks.  For any given need that I have in business and in life I know a person I can go to immediately an get it taken care of.  Any idea that I have that I think could be successful or meaningful, I know a person I can talk to about bringing it to fruition.  That’s not just me either, that’s anyone who’s a young, engaged, and interested business person around the city, and our ranks are growing!  These interactions will only continue to grow and become more meaningful over the coming decades as we all progress and become executives, leading entrepreneurs, and nationally renowned in our fields.  Imagine the topics of discussion that will enhance our city in 10-20 years when our conversations occur in City Hall or a board room on Main Street, as opposed to Molly Malones or Heine Brothers .  That’s when we will really make strides, and THAT’S why Louisville will be great!

The foundation has already begun to be laid too.  With the approval and ground breaking of the Ohio River Bridges Project, the completion of the KFC Yum! Center, and the revitalization of Downtown we have shown the naysayers and doubters that “YES!” we can get things accomplished.  We had our doldrums of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, but this is a new era.  No longer are the old aristocratic powers in charge.  No longer will the many be controlled by the desires of the few.  That is what held Louisville back.  Organizations like River Fields, which uses environmental servitude as its guise to stall advancement in the east end, and people such as Barry Bingham who, for all his good, used his newspaper to control the thoughts of the local population, will no longer be tolerated and they will be eradicated.  The new wave of Louisville’s power brokers will be progressive, tolerant, and hell bent on seeing the city succeed, not just focused on their own interests because what our forefathers somehow missed is that the city’s success is everyone’s success and when the pot gets bigger your slice of the pie will as well!

Louisville’s future is bright and full of potential.  In the coming decades we WILL have light rail, we WILL have an NBA team, we WILL be recognized for our greatness.  These days we think it’s so cool that we get mentioned in a magazine as being the “Best Town For Men” or “A Top Weekend Getaway” – why can’t that be the norm?  I don’t know about you, but I think we’re BETTER than Indianapolis.  I think we’re BETTER than St. Louis.  And I think we’re BETTER than Cincinnati.  It’s time we realize our full potential and begin achieving it.  For the past several years the Mayor’s office, GLI, and the local tourism boards have branded Louisville as “The Possibility City” as a way to lure outsiders.  But that should really be the message to our own constituency!  It is possible for us to compete with the who’s who of cities in the south because we have more to offer and, at our core, are much more progressive.  This new wave of Louisvillians are out to prove that, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.

The day is coming when Louisville will be great again and it's because you and I want it to be.  The train is leaving, folks, and I hope you're on it because Louisville will once again be Major League.

Louisville's Rotting Asset

Kentucky Kingdom has been closed since the summer of 2009, and  it is unclear if it will ever reopen.

There's an age-old question that many people ask when considering the assets they own: how do you really value it?  Some things, such as cars or other durable goods, are sure to depreciate and are at their peak value the day they are purchased.  Other items, such as homes, jewelry, and fine art, can appreciate and gain  enormous amounts of value through either time-based valuation or a large increase in demand caused by an incident in time.  But another category of goods is tougher to pin down, and those goods are things that are only really valuable if they are being used to generate some type of intrinsic worth; and when they aren't in use, these items are simply losing value and being a drain on resources.  Such is the case for the theme park formerly known as Kentucky Kingdom.  Like the ice cream machine you bought back in '93 when you thought you were going to hit it big in the gelato business, but is now dust-covered in the garage, unless the theme park is open and generating revenue then it is essentially a worthless use of some very prized real estate at the Kentucky Fair and Expo Center.  And it is absolutely dumbfounding that no government agencies have stepped up the plate to ensure it resumes business in the near future.

Consider this:  in the winter of 2010 when the Kingdom officially closed its gates it was reported that over 1,000 part-time summer jobs, 55 full-time positions, and an estimated 10,000 hotel stays would be lost annually.  Not to mention the millions of dollars of taxable revenue generated from cotton candy and stuffed animal sales.  On top of that, the fair board alone lost nearly $2 million in now unpaid rent and parking fees that the park brought into their coffers every summer.

The unfortunate part of the entire situation is that it was something that could have potentially been avoided.  Being mired in a large corporate bankruptcy, Kentucky Kingdom's operator and parent company, Six Flags, simply decided to pull the plug and cease operations at the park.  Leaving behind in its wake 58-acres of roller coasters and thrill rides that offer no benefit to the city if they aren't in use.  Twice now independent investors have attempted to purchase the park and restore it to some semblance of its previous glory, but these attempts have been futile at best.  Original owner Ed Hart tried to purchase the park with the help of some tax forgiveness and commercial loans from the State of Kentucky, the City of Louisville, and the Fair Board.  This deal ultimately fell through when tough economic conditions and shrinking municipal budgets caused those lending options to fall through.  And this past spring the owners of Indiana's Holiday World attempted to reclaim a portion of the park - saying the major roller coasters such as the Vampire, T2, and Thunder Run were too far in disrepair to make them feasible for re-opening.  This deal ultimately fell through when the Koch Family claimed the Fair Board was being too short-sighted in its lease agreement, and felt there would be nearly no way to make the project profitable.

So where does this leave us?  Mayor Greg Fischer has repeatedly said that it's his goal to continually be growing the economic base of our community, and has shown as much in his efforts to expand the presence of both Ford and GE here locally.  So why not reach out to try and lure an investor for this park locally?  Or approve a corporate-friendly tax package that would make a deal worth doing for Ed Hart or another local fan?  With 1,000 part-time jobs literally sitting dormant on the sidelines, what better way to jump start the local economy?  If you figure those jobs pay minimum wage at 20 hours a week for a seasonal six-month period that equates to over $300,000 annually in payroll tax alone that the city is losing out on, not to mention the other, probably, $200K lost without the park's full-time staff.  In total, there is an asset worth  near $500 million in annual economic impact (this is not an official statistic) that is simply being left to rot.  And each that passes by the memories of gleeful children frolicking, hundreds of teenagers celebrating a weekend at Day Five Alive, and throngs of adults soaking up rays in the lazy river simply fade into oblivion.  All while the thoughts of what could have been continue to mount as Louisville loses yet another piece of itself in the puzzle of what could make it great.

Oklahoma City vs Louisville: A Basketball Case Study

The Kentucky Colonels once dominated the sports landscape in Louisville.  Why hasn't a modern revival happened sooner?

With the NBA Finals starting in earnest last night the question has been repeatedly floated around the air-waves and blogosphere of Louisville "If Oklahoma City can have an NBA franchise, why can't we?"  And it's an interesting question because on the surface so many things would seem to shift in the favor of Louisville being a viable home for a professional basketball franchise.  Why is it then that Louisville is often overlooked in that discussion?

When you examine the peripherals, again, it appears that Louisville should hold its own in any NBA argument.  Louisville ranks higher than OKC in terms of population and size of media market (42nd vs 43rd), Louisville has a higher median annual household income than OKC ($39,457 vs $34,947), and Louisville has more Fortune 500 companies from which to draw sponsorships than OKC (3 vs 2).  But the turning point really comes when you consider the mobility and hunger of the two fan bases.  First of all, Oklahoma City, while it is close to Norman and not far from Stillwater, has no specific ties to a particular college sports programs, and has no significant major sports franchises other than the AAA Baseball OKC Redhawks.  Beyond that, the closest major sports town to OKC is Dallas and its over 200 miles away - a further distance than Louisville is from Nashville.  The next closest bastion of top level athletes lies in Kansas City which is nearly 400 miles away, and more than a 5 hour drive.

How do these folks get their sports fix?

Louisville, in contrast, has major college sports littered all throughout its community fabric with the University of Louisville competing at a high level in all its major sports, and Bellarmine University competing extensively as well.  When you throw in the University of Kentucky, which is a mere 75 miles away in Lexington, the picture gets pretty cloudy when you consider which entity is going to get your entertainment dollar.  Beyond that, Louisville is within 250 miles of four major sports towns in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Nashville, and many people around here already have deep ties to teams in those locales because, frankly, they've had to find somebody to root for all these years.  When you add to that the Kentucky Derby, and horse racing in general, along with the Louisville Bats.  You have a sports landscape that pretty well ties up the demands of any fan's tastes all year round, not to mention their dollars.

But OK, I love Louisville, and Kentucky in general (that's what this blog is all about right?), so lets say that the fan bases are equal and the penchant for spending on sports is equal.  Basketball is obviously king in the KY right?  So what are the hold ups?  Well first, the University of Louisville is the primary tenant for the KFC Yum! Center which would house any professional team that were to grace our presence (has anyone been in Freedom Hall lately?  It's a leper colony down there), and has two basketball teams (both men's and women's programs) housed there.  The powers that be, including Men's Head Coach Rick Pitino, set things up this way as a deterrent to any pro franchise who might want to split time at The Bucket.  Upon further evaluation, though, this really isn't such a big drawback.  When comparing the 2010-2011 schedules of both UL men's and women's basketball to that of the OKC Thunder (just for sake of example) we find that only 9 dates in their schedules from October to March overlap.  This problem would be easily solved, mainly on the professional team's end as their 82 game schedule could easily be back loaded with home dates during March and April when college basketball is in the midst of their tournaments.  Problem solved.

The bigger issue, though, appears to be a willing party to sponsor such an undertaking.  The Oklahoma City Thunder were purchased in 2006 by Clay Bennett, an experienced NBA minority owner with the San Antonio Spurs, who pounced on the opportunity to buy the then Seattle SuperSoincs after seeing the outpouring of support for NBA basketball during Oklahoma City's housing of the displaced New Orleans Hornets from 2005-2007.  A sports fan his entire life, he was able to pair the team with other equally interested owners from large nearby companies, who provided more than adequate support.  This is where Louisville really falls short.  While the town has plenty of money and talented individuals who control it, most of the prominent individuals who would have the resources to do something similar to Mr. Bennett are either very old and unmotivated, or simply not interested.  And while Mr. J. Bruce Miller, the local attorney who has made it his life over the past decade to seek out an NBA franchise for Louisville, thinks that he can attract a foreign investor to line our pockets with basketball bucks, it just doesn't have the same cache and weight that someone fighting directly for our city might carry.

At the end of the day Louisville is a growing metropolis that is slowly catching up to its neighbors in terms of overall competitiveness and metropolitan attraction.  And while many of us would love to see a pro sports franchise be a part of our cities landscape, the truth of the matter is that in this case it would be better for us to never love at all than to have loved and lost.  Eventually it will come, people.  If we continue to take the steps necessary to grow employment, population, and wealth in this city we will continue to grow and continue to gain notoriety.  And when that day comes that we can see the first pitch, kickoff, or tip for a major sports team in Louisville, then it will be ever sweeter.  In the meantime, just root for the Thunder, Spurs, Kings, and other small-market teams who will one day aide in making our dream a reality when we finally make Louisville Major League.

The West End: What to do with Louisville's Troubled Soul

With the increase in violence we have seen over the last few weeks in West Louisville it's pertinent to discuss what things could be done, from an economic standpoint, to help reclaim the area that is traditionally west of 9th Street and bordered by the Watterson Expressway.  The city has already seen several great neighborhood renaissances over the past decade with NULU and Liberty Green transforming the formerly blighted East Market and Clarksdale Neighborhoods.  Eastern portions of downtown as you head into Butchertown are now bright, buzzing and remarkably removed from the fear and uneasiness that previously might have come over someone who may have walked through those neighborhoods at the turn of the century.  In short, neither were places you especially wanted to be after dark.

Neighborhood revitalization does work and needs to be employed much more rigorously throughout Louisville. The city has already announced the future transformation of the Smoketown Neighborhood as its next targeted project for improvement, but this is another area that is generally bordered by much nicer surroundings, as Old Louisville and its stately homes are just a few blocks away.  What is to be done when you enter an area that is completely ensconced in blight, poverty, crime, drugs, and hopelessness as much of West Louisville is?  We should use Richmond, Virginia as a case study.

In 1999 Richmond started the Neighborhoods in Bloom program that aimed to target specific blocks within the city that had the utmost need for revitalization.  They combined both local and federal funds and identified 300 blocks to begin assisting and improving.  They concentrated on four main areas of improvement: focused code enforcement and improvements, repayment of back property taxes and the sale of some delinquent homes, increased historic home review and preservation, and focused infrastructure improvements in these areas.  The city gave itself a time span of 5 years to do these things.  What happened was quite phenomenal.

At the end of the project the city had invested $21.3 million in total funds (again spread between local and federal sources) with a median investment of $21,000 per block.  And the results that occurred were almost unimaginable:  housing prices in these previously blighted areas increased at an exponential rate (outpacing the rest of the city) beginning in 2001; community ties were strengthened as neighborhood coalitions were created to see the projects through; and private investment into these areas increased to levels never before seen in the history of these neighborhoods.  New jobs were created and people actually began moving into these areas again.  Beyond that, it is expected that the increase in property tax revenues over the next twenty years will cause the project to eventually be cash-flow positive for the city as a whole.  And at the root of all this was a sense of pride and ownership because people were being treated fairly and given positive options.  Self-worth was enhanced because people's surroundings were vastly improved, and morale in these neighborhoods skyrocketed.

So what does this mean for West Louisville?  The city completed the Liberty Green project for over $200 million and it encompassed just six city blocks, with a few additional spillover areas.  And while this transformation is clearly evident, it is still too early to tell how long-lasting it might be.  For a fraction of the cost the city could make a true, total transformation in West Louisville by specifically targeting their investment; starting with the most dangerous, blighted areas, and moving into their surrounding blocks after that.  Studies show that one of the great prevention tools of crime and drug abuse is simply giving people hope by improving their surroundings or providing them jobs.  As I wrote about in an earlier post, it is well past time that we stop avoiding the West End by circumventing it with highways and interstates.  Redeveloping the city's most dangerous neighborhoods will spur job growth, quell crime, and increase morale across the whole city.  And opening West Louisville for enhanced through traffic will only increase interest in its success.  At the end of the day, we should always be looking for ways to improve our current tax base as opposed to always looking for new taxpayers to flow in.  There are only so many Fords and GEs in the world.  (My old argument of growing the pot vs improving the soil).

In July 2007, while on the campaign trail, now-President Obama really said it best: "If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence; failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation.  We have to heal that entire community.  And we have to focus on what actually works."

Lord knows our community can't endure violence like what was seen last week.  We're better than that.  And if it was possible in Richmond, it sure as hell should be possible here.

Richmond, Virginia should serve as a model of how to  reduce crime through neighborhood revitalization.

The Impact of Economic Impacts

People, get off the ledge - it's going to be OK!  That is what I wanted to scream at the masses who outwardly loathed the findings of the Economic Impact Study Indiana performed on its portion of the Ohio River Bridges Project.  The fact that only 12,000 jobs were projected to be created over a 30 year period and that many of the original impact would last only through construction had people worried about the sky falling and wondering if we should even build anything?  Hell, at this rate we could have had the ONE GUY who has been re-decking the Big 4 Bridge into a walking connector build both bridges AND re-configure spaghetti junction all during his lunch hour during the time it has taken us (some 50+ years) to debate these bridges.

Lets get something straight: Economic impact studies should not be considered the end-all-be-all for decisions regarding community planning and development for the simple fact that despite their headline-grabbing star power, they are inherently flawed and incredibly inconsistent.  I recently completed an impact study for the Kentucky Derby Festival as they were trying to find a way to numerically prove their worth to the local powers that be, and in the pre-study research I discovered at least four separate methodologies for how to effectively perform the research (ultimately we settled on doing what closest resembled past efforts for the KDF in order to obtain results that had a consistent background).  And apparently sample size is not an issue for some of these big firms that are collecting huge fees to conduct this supposedly "scientific" work.  The most recent study was based upon 110 total responses for a project that impacts an entire state.  Our work for the KDF included nearly 800 responses in review of a project that impacts just a single city - how does that make sense?  Furthermore, some so-called experts say that the only dollars that should be counted as part of the impact are those that are brought in from out of town, while others insist that anything spent in regards to the subject matter should be included in the total as those dollars could either not be spent at all or be sent elsewhere.  And beyond that there are huge questions about the multiplier effects really should be considered, it's just not a cookie-cutter thing here.

All of this is to say that, while economic impact studies are important and do serve a purpose, they should only be considered with a grain of salt, and should never be the full-on basis for a decision.  In the case of the ORBP I think the facts speak for themselves.  In the 1960's cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Nashville began building massive transit-infrastructure projects to increase traffic flow and prepare for future growth.  Louisville sat on its hands, and continues to do so as the old-money powers that be conjure up diversion after diversion to postpone and even threaten the projects existence.  In 1992 the city took a very public, very controversial vote on the issue and it was defeated by a slim margin.  At that time it was proclaimed that an East-End Bridge would never happen.  Well people understand this - IT IS HAPPENING, and if you want your city to grow and prosper and attract world-renown companies to staff jobs and wealth into this city IT MUST HAPPEN.  If Louisville is considered The Possibility City please understand that there are only two outcomes available:  It's either going to be Possible for Louisville to climb into the 21st century as a leader of the midwest and the preeminent neo-American city; or it's Possible that Louisville will shrivel into oblivion as UPS and Humana leave the city for greener pastures where greater economies of scale are available because of closer vendor relationships and improved infrastructure.

If you continue to cry wolf and continue to play scared then the latter will happen and it won't be pretty (see Cleveland).  And that will be the true impact of these so-called economic impact studies.  

Job Growth in the Ville: Growing the Pot vs Enriching the Soil - (Unexepected) Part 2

I must admit, this morning I am eating crow - the thing I hate the most to do.  Not because I was called out or corrected by a peer, but because I had a realization.  I was fortunate enough to network over coffee with one of the city's bright, young, minds in the sphere of local economic development, and he motivated me beyond belief. After my last rant about the mental thrashing I felt I took with our Director of Innovation, it was extremely uplifting to commiserate with someone of like mind and beliefs about the potential of our town.  But it made me realize that Mr. Smith is not wrong in his views about how to develop Louisville (although I disagree with some of his views), but just a contrasting point in the overarching argument that we both share.

Rebuilding Louisville into the great city she used to be a century ago is no easy process.  Like any old home in a state of disrepair, there are many steps to the cleansing and beautification process that must take place before the finished product comes to fruition.  Luckily we have workers tending to many phases of the revitalization.

To achieve true exponential growth there are three phases of achievement that must take place.  In one sector new businesses must be brought in to add immediate job creation and revenue generation for the city.  These additions bring excitement to the city because they are the most detailed and publicized developments we see.  This is Mr. Smith's task of "growing the pot."  The second phase of development is to parlay the current infrastructure for better use - transportation, public education, parks and city services.  This was my point on enriching the soil.  But the third area, and one that is greatly overlooked, is the cultivation and development of the start-up and entrepreneurial community.  These would serve as our shots of nitrogen and fertilizer in the hypothetical pot analogy I made in the last entry.

You see start-ups bring energy and new blood to the community.  They bring a more robust buy-in towards the community because people now have to come together and unite under the common goal of making this new idea into a reality and molding a successful company out of a dream.  When you get many successful start-ups in one community at the same time you now have a group of thinkers and doers who can unify under the umbrella of not only turning ideas into reality, but also making their overall environment a place that is nurturing towards their whims.  Once this energy combines with the renewed growth generated through the consolidation of other systems, and the expansion of the pot through outside investment, you now have an equation for success that creates exponential explosion throughout the entire system.  This combination of factors can only take place when there's a total system buy-in from everyone involved, and the entire community is committed to making a Major League Louisville.

Job Growth in the Ville: Growing the Pot vs Enriching the Soil

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting and having a long discussion with one of our city's great assets, recently appointed Director of Economic Growth and Innovation for Metro Government - one of Mayor Fischer's right-hand men.  In our meeting I nervously meandered through a list of ideas, problems, and solutions that I had tried to thoroughly construct over the week I had to prepare, and, despite my best intentions, there were no groundbreaking solutions, no job offers, and little gained from our talk other than a better understanding of what Metro Government aims to do as a leader in growing the city's economic base.  Grow the Pot.  A phrase I heard at least 50 times during our discussion.  And while it is well-intentioned, and certainly is the ultimate aim of any economic developer, shouldn't we consider easier options within the confines of our great city first?  For sake of context, some of my ideas were as follows:

- A program that allows young JCPS teachers to get tuition assistance for the pursuit of advanced degrees in exchange for agreeing to teach at some of the county's most under-performing schools for an extended period of time.  (As it stands now young JCPS teachers can transfer out of the "doldrums" of poor schools as soon as they have tenure enough to do so within the confines of the union).

- A partnership with one of the national banking institutions present in the city that would bring young finance workers to the city where they could complete many of the analytical and back-office tasks that are currently performed directly on Wall Street at a much higher price to the company.

- Advanced entrepreneurial incubators where MBA students from surrounding universities could gather and bounce ideas off each other with ease.  A situation that the city, UL, or a donor, could fund in hopes of some of these ideas taking flight and becoming major corporations in the city.

- A revised TARC route that would lend the transport service to actually being used.  Could you imagine actually trusting that a certain bus would arrive at its pickup and drop-off locations on time?  And that the routes would be easy and clear to understand?

All of these ideas were brought up amongst friends before I even began thinking of presenting them to Mr. Smith, all of them were met with strong approval, and they all were quickly rebuffed as the meeting progressed.

I understand his point, for Louisville to grow we need to get more dollars injected into the economy by direct investment from currently foreign entities.  That's the easiest way for our city to grow its employment base the fastest - and that's true.  But it's also the most complicated and the path of most resistance in a lot of cases.  The truth of the matter is that Louisville, as an institution, have a lot of systems in place that are really good in purpose, but have been half-assed (sorry mom) in execution.  For example, when we discussed the teacher education idea Mr. Smith launched into a deep diatribe about how the problems with the school system really root in the downfall of the busing system and how the private school system has cannibalized the cities best students - both valid points.  But what if the cities best and brightest teachers chose to stay at the schools which needed them most?  The students there would be exposed to professionals who participate in their craft at its most rudimentary of levels: to mold and shape young minds, and to make a positive impact.  Believe me, it's the kids at these places who need it most.  Restoring hope at the lowest levels of schools would span greater confidence in ALL of our cities public schools and bring many students back into the fold whose parents would have otherwise had them home-schooled or sent to one of the many private institutions locally (many of whom employ these very same young teachers anyway).

The TARC idea was another one I was passionate about, and something I was prepared to personally take on if given the chance.  Unfortunately I was told that TARC was a private entity and that the city could not ask them to do anything - BS!  The city has every right to ask TARC to evaluate its operations in order to improve efficiency and its reputation around the city.  While I have no public records to back this up, I am certain that TARC receives SOME type of funding from City Hall.  And even if they don't, I doubt it would take much more than the offer of a grant or future funding to help get the ball rolling.  I surveyed countless young people who said that if they had reliable info on how the TARC routes operated, were confident in the promptness of their arrival, and felt like the service was affordable, that they would frequent TARC as much as possible for the purposes of transport for commutes and for leisure activities on the weekends.  And what better advertisement to a national organization looking to move 5,000 jobs than by saying "We don't have a subway or any sort of light rail, but our bus system is among the most efficient and effective in the country"?  Mr. Smith didn't seem to care.

The downfall of outsiders coming into Louisville and making big decisions, as Mr. Smith is, is that they often fail to see the usefulness that abounds in many of the city's most aged institutions.  Like trimming a plant in the spring, often times things must be consolidated in order for new growth to begin, and while growing the pot might be the goal it's extremely shortsighted to say that the only way to do it is through the attraction of new businesses.  Simply adding a new taxpayer to the community only creates one or two points of impact on the local economy, but expanding or improving a current asset to provide more growth provides exponential impact.  It might take a little longer to get new growth by enriching the soil, but in the long run it will create a much more fruitful plant.

Ninth Street (Louisville's 8-Mile), 8664, and the Bridges Project

For over 40 years the community has been in a heated debate over expanding the number of bridges that span the Ohio River to Indiana.  Originally the thought was that only an East-End Bridge was needed in order to create a beltway around eastern Jefferson County, Jeffersonville, and New Albany using I-265, but this has been blocked through legislation, public vote, and now legal action manipulated by the mostly-defacto environmental "rights" group RiverFields.  In order to get these issues resolved the city has expanded this debate to now include a downtown bridge and a total re-working of spaghetti junction, two projects that probably need to be addressed for the city to continue to grow over the next fifty years (especially considering the pace that business like this gets done around here - see Westport Road exit ramp from the Watterson).  Proponents of the East End Bridge like the idea because it gets that bridge done quicker and should help end the debate. Those chiming mostly for the downtown portion argue that the Kennedy will soon need to be replaced as well, and that large, national employers such as UPS and Ford will cease doing business in the community if we don't fix our ever-growing traffic problem soon.  And, as is the case in most of the city's debates, those who are against everything in general are part of the dwindling group of aristocratic elite who would prefer Louisville stay the same as it was in 1950, and never change from there.

One problem that has yet to be addressed through all of these debates, though, is the potential to further isolate the West End and other impoverished areas through a further re-doubling of concrete highways, causeways, and other man-made restrictions to society.  Since 1932, with the implementation of The New Deal, residential racial segregation has taken place through the displacement of many inner-city families due to the construction of interstates and the renewal of large downtown centers.  While the leaders of our time thought they were strengthening our country by creating a national highway system, what really took place was a natural dispersion of income by which those who could afford to transport themselves the long distances between home and work moved out into the suburbs and those who couldn't congregated as best they could in metro regions.  The downfall of this displacement is that land was readily available in the suburbs and scare in the urban areas causing the cost of living to skyrocket for those forced to remain near the centers of commerce.  Ultimately all of this led to poorer families having to congregate in housing projects and subsidized communities because it was the only way they could manage to continue to be near their places of work and education and still continue to make ends-meat.  Through time this problem has perpetuated by the fact that the highway system allows people to quickly and easily move through these areas of poverty without having to pay any attention to there state of disrepair and ineptitude, only further expanding the problems and increasing the separation between the two main people groups - essentially the haves and the have-nots.  So while an expanded Downtown Bridges Project may be good for the community in general, it could also create even more blight and income-differential within our fine city.

Throughout the discussion of what has become known as the Ohio River Bridges Project a small sect of individuals led a grass-roots campaign known as 8664, a charge to remove I-64's expanse across western downtown Louisville and revive River Road as the main route for those who need to navigate west through the city.  The idea behind this is two-fold: first it aimed to reduce traffic downtown by completing only the eastern bridge and diverting all unnecessary traffic around the city through Indiana, thus decreasing the problematic congestion and overuse of the roadways.  Second, it aimed to reclaim downtown by forcing those people who might need to get into West Louisville to drive through some of Louisville's poorest neighborhoods, increasing traffic through those areas, and hopefully increasing interest in ways to bring them back into a state of well-being.  The overall sentiment the group had was that Louisville didn't really need to take the easy fix and simply build more interstates, but could much more holistically improve itself by removing the structural and cultural barriers that have weighed down the city for years.

In the end the chimes for 8664 were drown out by bureaucrats who couldn't stand to see their good ideas go by the wayside for some not-for-profit movement, and the city lost another chance to improve itself beyond expectation.  It appears that, for the time being at least, the community will continue to be divided and segregated by its highway system, and that the problems will only be perpetuated in the future.  As Walter Mondale said in a 1967 hearing on the Fair Housing Act of 1968, "[the] basic national policy has been... we might talk about helping you in your ghetto, but we are not going to help you get out of it."

With all the revenue problems the city has had over the last decade, expanding the financial base through the improvement of neighborhoods, tax-payers, and people already loyal to the city and to its well-being must seem like too easy of a plan to ever consider undertaking - at least in the 502.

A picture of 9th Street / Roy Wilkins Blvd, Louisville's divide between the central downtown area and west-end poverty.

A map of West Louisville, the city's most self-contained and most impoverished area.

A digital rendering of the expanded spaghetti junction, its added lanes and overpasses.

A digital rendering of Louisville's West End Waterfront if 8664 had come to fruition and I-64 was removed.

 

Indianapolis and the Story of the Super Bowl

In this mornings Courier-Journal an article ran by USAToday columnist Mike Lopresti describing the ascent of Indianapolis in the 1970's and 80's from a quiet mid-western town that was "evaporating," as a former mayor put it, into one of the region's leading hubs of commerce, and the host site for the 2012 Super Bowl.  Essentially the story goes that the powers that be in Indy realized that their downtown landscape was going to shambles and they needed something to rejuvenate their scene.  Enter the Indianapolis Colts, the RCA Dome, (eventually) Conseco Field House, and (now) Lucas Oil Stadium.  What they did was basically drive interest through the use of sports.  People began to flock back to downtown Indy like the Salmon of Capistrano (to use the parlance of our time) in order to attend these games, go to these events, and be integrated in the city's new sports scene.  And you know what - IT WORKED.

This is a classic argument of what comes first, the chicken or the egg, but it's a great case study for Louisville.  When the Yum! Center was completed last year at the corner of 2nd and Main Streets critics howled about the lack of interest in Downtown Louisville, and the thought that an arena on the waterfront would be unsustainable, and a waste of resources.  And while there definitely questions still to be answered about the former, I think we can all agree that the latter is proving to be false.  Without question the addition of the KFC Yum! Center to our downtown landscape has increased interest in our city's main business corridor to levels I have never seen in my lifetime.  Previously the thought was that it was too expensive, too much of a hassle, and too big of a headache to do anything other than work downtown.  Now the commentary is on how we get MORE things downtown.  People are going to games, going to dinner, attending plays and shows, and experiencing all Louisville has to offer at a record pace.  In a few short weeks Louisville will be host to a portion of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament's first two rounds, and has the potential to do even more with that event.  Concerts are being headlined in the facility nearly every week, and residents are beginning to see what an asset the building is becoming to our city's landscape.  It might only be one step, but it's a big one in the right direction to Louisville gaining national prominence once again.  Just as Indianapolis discovered forty years ago and are reminded of today, if you build it they will come - it's time for Louisville to continue to capitalize on it's own Field (arena) of Dreams.

The Start of Something Great

The idea for this blog has stemmed from years of living and observing Louisville - the city and its people.  Louisvillians are a great lot that often dream big, but usually find little in the way of coherent support or leadership to tackle big tasks and really get things done.  My goal for this small, intraweb space is to present ideas that are being floated throughout our city and explore them in both a macro and micro sense, and examine what is really needed to make our city spectacular.  Since the 1960's Louisville has really been treading just to keep its head above water, while peers such as Indianapolis, Nashville, Cincinnati, and Atlanta have zoomed by.  What is it that's kept us at bay?  Why do we still have the same problems 50 years later?  What can be done to really begin making waves in the region and once again establish ourselves as one of the premier locales in the Southeast?  I hope we can uncover the answers to these questions and more as we strive to make Louisville a Major League City.