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.

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.

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.

 

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.