The Bluegrass and Beyond

Last Saturday, New York City closed Park Avenue from the Brooklyn Bridge to Grand Central Station to motorized traffic for the day and invited cyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders and inline skaters into the street. It was quite a social event.  Click here to see a New York Times audio slide show of what happened.

Jay McChord, a member of Lexington’s Urban County Council, has suggested doing something similar with a street or highway in Lexington one Saturday a month during nice weather.  It sounds like a great idea to me.  It could make for a great family-friendly, community-building day of fun.

Click here to read this story in Sunday’s Washington Post about what other cities around the world are doing to promote bicycle commuting and lessen the burden of high gasoline prices on their citizens.  Be sure to watch the video of Tokyo’s cool, high-tech bicycle parking system.

If you never ride a bicycle, please stop reading this column.

That’s right; move on to the next story.

I want to speak to my fellow cyclists, privately.

We all know that rural Central Kentucky is a cyclist’s paradise — the gently rolling landscape, the vast web of small, lightly traveled roads and the gorgeous scenery.

In the past few years, thanks to the Newberry administration and the Urban County Council, Lexington has made a lot of progress toward becoming a more bicycle-friendly city.

Each week, it seems, I see new bike lanes on roads that need them. Several bike paths and trails are planned. It’s a good thing: Each time gasoline prices spike, I see more people riding bicycles to work, to run errands and to get themselves in shape.

So what’s the biggest thing holding back cyclists in Lexington? We are. Not all of us, of course, but more of us than we would like to admit.

I ride my bicycle about 2,000 miles a year in Central Kentucky, and I drive several thousand more miles.

Sure, I occasionally encounter rude motorists when I’m cycling. I have had drivers cut me off, pass too close, pull out in front of me, honk, holler and glare. I was even hit once by a lit cigar stub thrown from a passing truck’s window.

Some people in oversized pickups seem to think they have a constitutional right to drive 50 mph on a country road too narrow for a center stripe. Other drivers think the roads belong to them, and cyclists should stick to trails and sidewalks — even though riding a bike on the sidewalk is often dangerous, and sometimes illegal.

Last weekend in Bourbon County, a woman in a red Honda passed our single-file cycling group going up a blind hill on a double-yellow line. Then she stopped in the middle of the road to chat with a buddy going the other way, forcing us to ride slowly between them. Then she passed us again on another blind hill. What a fool.

Honestly, though, I see more dangerous cyclists than dangerous drivers.

Admit it — you do, too.

Sad to say, some of them are my Lycra-clad brethren, who should know better. They ride in packs across the road, rather than two abreast, as the law requires, or single file, which is safer. Others blow through stop signs and act as if stoplights are for other people.

Most of the offenders I see, though, are people who don’t take bicycling seriously. Or they seem to be new at it. They ride on sidewalks. They ride on the wrong side of the street. They weave through traffic and run stop signs and lights.

Some of them don’t wear helmets. Others wear headphones or earbuds. I guess that’s so they won’t be bothered by those big, noisy trucks whose drivers might not be able to see them.

Many cyclists I know have never been shy about yelling at dangerous drivers.

But shouldn’t we do the same when we see dangerous cyclists?

For those who don’t know any better, tactful correction might help them learn. If they just don’t care, maybe they need to know that others do. And, of course, nothing is more effective than modeling good cycling behavior yourself.

If you care about everyone sharing the road more safely, be willing to speak up and be a good example. Better yet, get involved in local bicycle safety and education programs.

There’s a list of organizations and efforts on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Web site.

In May, certified instructors organized several bike safety clinics around town. The University of Kentucky is offering bicycle education classes for students, faculty and staff this fall.

City officials have applied for a grant to offer a more extensive “share the road” program next spring, said Kenzie Gleason, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. I hope they get it.

Sharing the road more safely will make Lexington a better city for everyone, but cyclists must take the lead.

It could be a matter of life and death. Maybe even yours.

CORRECTION: I overstated the case when I said it’s illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk in Lexington. It’s only illegal in the downtown business district. You can ride a bicycle on a sidewalk elsewhere in Fayette County, but it should be done with great care, especially if pedestrians are around. Here’s the exact law:

Sec. 18-155.  Riding on sidewalks.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Click here for bicycling resources in metro Lexington.

Click here for information about Kentucky’s bicycle laws and rules of the road and safety advice.

Click here for information about the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission.

Click here for information about safe cycling in Louisville.

Click here for information about the Bluegrass Cycling Club

Click here for information about the Louisville Bicycle Club

Click here for information about Ashland Cycling Enthusiasts.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Cyclists in Campbellsville.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Wheelmen in Elizabethtown.

Click here for information about the Bowling Green League of Bicyclists.

Click here for information about Pennyrile Area Cyclists in Hopkins County.

Click here for information about the Chain Reaction Cycling Club in Paducah.

The late Clay Lancaster, the Lexington-born architectural historian, is well known in Kentucky for his books about antebellum architecture in the state. During the middle years of the 20th Century, he mapped, surveyed and photographed the pre-Civil War structures that remained in Fayette County.

But he had another life and career that many Kentuckians aren’t aware of — in New York City. This piece in Sunday’s New York Times tells some of the story.

For half a century, the first voice many people in Russellville have heard each morning belongs to Don Neagle.

He rises five days at week at 3 a.m. and soon arrives at the studio of WRUS-AM. He scans the Internet for news, checks the weather forecast and begins broadcasting as the rest of Logan County is getting up to start the day.

WRUS celebrated its 55th year on the air Thursday. On Monday, people will gather at an old downtown theater for a reception honoring Neagle’s 50th year with the station.

“Without being overly pompous about it, I don’t know what the community would be like if we hadn’t had this all these years,” said Neagle, 70. “We find their lost dogs. We tell them what the school lunch is going to be. We tell them who’s gone to jail and who’s been indicted. We tell them who’s done wonderful things, and who’s done not-so-great things.”

Don Neagle of WRUS. Photo by Tim Webb

As a child growing up in Green County, Neagle said, “I was always intrigued by the announcers who did the commercials and the radio news reporters. I thought that would be so cool.”

The summer he was 16, Neagle started hanging around the Greensburg satellite studio of Campbellsville’s WLCK. After high school, he worked at radio stations in Campbellsville, Harrodsburg, Glasgow and Bowling Green. He attended Western Kentucky University for a year before dropping out because of illness.

Somebody then told Neagle that WRUS was looking for an announcer. He started work Sept. 1, 1958. Neagle said he had opportunities to leave over the years, but Russellville always felt like home to him and his wife, Vivian. They have four children and seven grandchildren, three of whom they’re now rearing.

“He has become the most trusted person in that county,” said Al Smith, who also went to Russellville in 1958 to edit the local newspaper. Smith went on to own a group of newspapers and spend more than three decades as host of KET’s Comment on Kentucky.

Like Smith, Neagle is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

“He’s a very warm and friendly and good-humored man — a college dropout who’s probably the best-read person in Logan County,” Smith said of Neagle. “He’s a reporter’s reporter, and a guy who can talk to anybody.”

Six years ago, Neagle and his partners, father and son Bill and Chris McGinnis, bought WRUS from a large company. They wanted to keep the station local and public service-oriented.

In the process, they’ve also made it more profitable, even as big media corporations struggle for revenue.

Since the 1980s, deregulation has reshaped radio markets in cities and big towns across America. Relaxed ownership rules led to consolidation and cost-cutting. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed broadcasters of their obligation to provide public-service programming.

Now, the four largest radio companies own stations with half the nation’s listeners; the top 10 companies have two-thirds of the listeners.

But “mom-and-pop” radio is alive and well in small towns such as Russellville, Whitesburg, Cadiz and Grayson.

“Local radio is now doing a lot better financially than big-city radio,” said Francis Nash, general manager of WGOH-AM and WUGO-FM in Grayson and author of Towers Over Kentucky, a history of broadcasting in the state.

“We’ve never tried to be bigger than we are,” Nash said of his stations. “We just try to serve the people.”

That service — local news and information and knowledge of the community — has kept people listening to Don Neagle all these years, even when he reports news they would rather not hear.

“They may not be happy that you reported their son got in trouble or their husband got in trouble, but they will cut you slack if they think you’ve been fair and you treat everybody the same,” Neagle said. “The people we talk about are people we see at church, and in line at the grocery store and at the coffee shop.”

Neagle’s morning radio show is a combination of news, weather and whatever he and his listeners find interesting to talk about. Topics range from politics to medicine, gardening to religion. “I don’t think I’ve done a whole show on Greek drama, but I’ve probably done everything else,” he said.

A book lover, Neagle frequently interviews authors. He co-hosts a weekly history show with retired Kentucky Supreme Court Justice William Fuqua.

The most popular part of Neagle’s morning lineup is Feedback, a call-in show.

“It’s so local and so community-oriented, and everybody’s got a voice,” Neagle said. “Anybody who wants to come on the air, we’ll put them on if they’ve got a charity, or they’re promoting the United Way or something going on with the schools.”

To national media conglomerates, WRUS might look like a relic. To syndicated talk radio stars, Neagle might seem like a dinosaur.

But it’s worth noting that, nationally, the radio audience peaked in 1989 and has fallen 20 percent since then.

Things are much different in towns like Russellville, where there are stations still committed to public-service journalism and personalities like Neagle who know the community.

“I’m not smart enough to know what other stations ought to do,” Neagle said, “But this one and me, we’ve sort of evolved together. And it works really well for us and our people.”

If you want to start an endless debate in Kentucky, that question is a good place to start.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on the question organized by James Klotter, Kentucky’s state historian and a history professor at Georgetown College.

I’m preparing my remarks Friday, so help me out and comment below. Is Kentucky Southern?  Midwestern?  A mixture?  What do you think, and why?

The panel discussion will be at the Lexington Public Library’s Central Library Theater downtown. It is part of the Library’s Forever Free: Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation exhibit. Other related activities Saturday include:

• Lincoln’s Lexington Walking Tour – 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. Meet in front of the Central Library.

• Children’s Activity: Civil War Cyphers and Codes  – 2 p.m. in the Library’s children’s department.

• Civil War Living History: Soldiers and Cannons and Horses, oh my! Phoenix Park – 12 p.m. to  7 p.m.

• A Word from President Lincoln with Jim Sayre – 3 p.m. at the Central Library Theater.

• Saxton’s Cornet Band – 5:30 p.m. in Phoenix Park.

I was in Bowling Green the other day with a little time to spare, so I decided to spend an hour with one of my favorite authors, Robert Penn Warren.

Well, not exactly.

Warren died in 1989 at the age of 84 after one of America’s most distinguished literary careers. The Kentucky native was the nation’s first Poet Laureate and won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the 1947 award for his novel All the King’s Men. It is the classic tale of populist politician Willie Stark, who becomes corrupted by power. Sean Penn starred in the most recent movie adaptation in 2006.

All the King’s Men is one of my favorite books. I met Warren once, in 1980, when he and two fellow writers returned to Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of their Southern Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand.

Warren’s birthplace in the Todd County town of Guthrie has been restored as a museum, although the 300-year-old barn in Fairfield, Conn., where he lived and wrote for 38 years, was demolished in 2003 to make way for a McMansion.

The best place now to connect with Warren is the Kentucky Library and Museum at Western Kentucky University. You enter through the side door, walk up some steps and ask at the desk. There, you’ll be directed to a small room with two noisy dehumidifiers that contains some of Warren’s most prized posessions.

After Warren’s death, his widow, the writer Eleanor Clark, left his library and most of his personal effects to WKU, which in 1987 had created the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies.  Warren spent little of his adult life in Kentucky, but the state always remained close to his heart.

The room contains Warren’s well-worn chair and wooden desk, which holds his manual typewriter and reading glasses. And his hand-exerciser, a likely diversion. I’m sure even a literary lion got writer’s block now and then.

Several rows of shelves hold his large collection of books — some inscribed by the authors, who were friends; others containing his penciled notes. And there are his own copies of his own books.

What I found most interesting were albums of letters and family photos. Alone in the room, quiet except for the rattling dehumidifiers, I sat at a large table and thumbed through them.

In some ways, they weren’t like your photo albums or mine. Several pictures of Warren were stamped “The New York Times” on the back. And there were photos that included famous faces, such as a 1967 snapshot from Egypt, with Warren and William Styron, the author of Sophie’s Choice, riding camels and acting like tourists at the pyramids.

But there were many more photos that were striking because they were so typical. There were dozens of snapshots of Warren, Clark and their children, Rosanna, now a poet, and Gabriel, now a sculptor. They were photos of childhood milestones, family celebrations, picnics and good times in the back yard.

Somehow, it’s satisfying to see that one of America’s greatest authors, one of the best minds Kentucky has ever produced, looked happiest when he was playing with his children.

How do you mourn the loss of a historic building or a favorite nightspot?

That’s what artist Bruce Burris wanted to know last month when he sent out a call for mourners.

Burris asked how people would like to mourn the ­demolition of 14 old ­buildings on the downtown Lexington block being cleared to make way for the CentrePointe development.

Sound a little goofy? That’s what I thought, too.

However, Burris got 18 proposals from people who wanted to mourn the buildings, which included Morton’s Row, built in 1826 and one of Lexington’s oldest commercial structures, and the century-old building that housed The Dame, a popular music club.

One of Burris’ ongoing art projects is called Greengrief. Its mission is to provide “compensation to mourners for grieving, praying, singing and for giving thoughtful consideration and sincere apologies to our Earth for the environmental and cultural devastation wrought by us humans to it in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”

Usually, Burris said, Greengrief doesn’t focus on real estate development, or even large sites of destruction, such as strip mines. It looks at small places where human activity has hurt the environment — such as Wolf Run Creek along Southland Drive. “Little projects that hardly no one notices,” he explained.

CentrePointe wasn’t a typical Greengrief project, but after hearing a lot of people upset about it, Burris said, “What the heck?”

He chose three mourners from the 18 applicants, each of whom will receive $100 from his pocket to help fund their projects. They’re now seeking the necessary city permits for their events, which are all planned for Sept. 12 and 13.

“The three of them are very different. And not anything like what I ­expected, either,” said Burris, who operates the Latitude Artist Community on Saunier ­Alley, which works with adult ­artists who have disabilities. “I really couldn’t decide, so I just went for three.”

Jenny O’Neill, an English teacher at Tates Creek High School, decided to apply right before the Aug. 1 deadline. She’s writing a historical novel set in Lexington in 1833, when the oldest of the recently demolished buildings were in use. She also was touched by the destruction of The Dame, because her three children — ages 30, 28 and 22 — all loved to go to shows there.

“I was so angry about the way this thing (CentrePointe) has come down,” she said. “But anger is one of the stages of grief. And I’m in grief. We were so insensitive to our history, and our young people.”

Her idea is to have a ­public funeral at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 13 in Phoenix Park. She will ask those who come to write about what they’ll miss most about the block the way it was. “I’m giving people a way to grieve in a public way for what they’ve lost,” she said.

O’Neill plans to ask those who attend to then walk three times around the block — the first time expressing their grief, the second time in silence “in respect for what has died,” and the third time with music. She hopes to recruit some musicians who will begin by playing a dirge, then end with New Orleans-style jazz. “That’s the time for moving on,” she said.

Lyndsey Fryman, 26, of Paris, has a much different plan, scheduled for noon on Sept. 12.

“Dressed in Victorian-era mourning clothing, I will create a dollhouse-size replica of the buildings during that time,” she wrote in her ­proposal. “I will walk around the block while creating ­paper flowers on stems and other mementos that will be left as I pass the replica … . The arrangement will hopefully evoke symbolic attachments to the process of mourning (being a form of memory), and a spiritual ­rebirth of those things gone.”

Fryman said she comes from a military family, so has lived many places. “I have a great appreciation for this history and the architecture that has been lost,” she said. “It was part of history, a part of Lexington.”

Brittany Clark, 23, who works for a marketing ­company, hopes to re-create one last ’80s party like the ones she enjoyed at The Dame. She hopes to begin this one at 1 a.m. Sept. 13 in Cheapside Park.

Clark says she went to the Dame once a week for more than a year. “It was a very big part of my life,” she said. “It was a dive bar. It wasn’t the same genre of people you run into at other bars. You ran into people from all different groups. I was more comfortable there than anywhere else.”

She also is angry about the way CentrePointe was sprung on the public. “I felt like everything was done in the worst possible way,” she said. “No one took any time to listen to anyone. I wanted to let people know how I felt about it.”

It should be an interesting weekend.

Have you always wanted to be an actor, but figured you didn’t stand a ghost of a chance?

Well, here’s your opportunity.

The Liberty Hall Historic Site in Frankfort is seeking actors to portray some of Frankfort’s notable ghosts as part of its 14th annual Ghosts of Frankfort production on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Auditions will Tuesday, Sept. 16, and Thursday, Sept. 18, at Liberty Hall, 218 Wilkinson St., from 4:30 p.m. until 7 p.m. No appointment necessary — like a ghost, you just appear. Prospective actors will be asked to do a cold reading, and they should have familiarized themselves with Liberty Hall’s history.

For more information, call Jennifer L. Koach at (502) 227-2560 or go to the Web site.

Here are the parts available:

Hannah Stepney – 30-50 year old African American woman

Margaretta Brown - 25-35 year old woman

Brown Girls (Margaretta, Mary Yoder, Eliza) - 15-20 year old women

Mary Yoder - 25-35 year old woman

Mary Mason Scott - 20-30 year old woman

Gray Lady – 40-50 year old woman

Euphemia Brown - 5-8 year old girl

Miles Stepney - 30-50 year old African American man

John Brown - 40-50 year old man (preferably “robust”)

Aaron Burr - 45-55 year old man

Orlando Brown (adult) - 35-45 year old man

Mason Brown (adult) – 35-45 year old man

Yoder Brown - 17-22 year old man

Doctor Humphreys - 30-50 year old man

Doctor Brown - 40-50 year old man

Brown Boys (Mason and Orlando) - 5-8 year old boys

I’ve been skeptical of using tax-increment financing for a project related to Dudley Webb’s proposed CentrePointe development.

The more I hear about it, the more skeptical I become.

Here are my concerns: Is CentrePointe really an economically viable development? If the state approves a CentrePointe TIF project, will it be as good for Lexington as it is for Webb?

And, most of all, could a flawed CentrePointe TIF proposal poison the well for future projects that work the way the law intended — as an up-front partnership, rather than a tag-along grab for goodies?

At Tuesday’s work session, Urban County Council members will have their first chance to discuss a specific list of “public infrastructure” projects proposed as part of a CentrePointe TIF project. Let’s hope council members ask tough questions and demand good answers.

Tax-increment financing, known as TIF, is a great tool for redeveloping blighted urban areas and thus reducing suburban sprawl. TIF allows some of the new tax revenues generated by a big private development in a run-down neighborhood to be used for up to 30 years to pay for public infrastructure needed to make the development possible.

Louisville, Northern Kentucky and Bowling Green have begun projects since the TIF law was passed in 2007, but the CentrePointe proposal would be Lexington’s first.

Mayor Jim Newberry has been a strong supporter of Webb’s plan for CentrePointe, which calls for a four-star hotel, luxury condos, offices, restaurants and shops in a 35-story tower on the block bounded by Main, Vine, Upper and Limestone streets.

One of the most vocal of Webb’s many critics has been Vice Mayor Jim Gray, who is president of his family’s large construction company. He has questioned CentrePointe’s massive scale, its uninspired architecture, the demolition of the block’s historic buildings and the development’s economic viability. He thinks Lexington is being short-changed by a development that embraces urban design principles two or three decades out of date.

Webb claims to have equity investors willing to put up more than $200 million to build CentrePointe, and he says he can do it without TIF financing. Nevertheless, he is going to a lot of trouble to help the city prepare a TIF proposal, which would include millions of dollars worth of “public” improvements to benefit CentrePointe.

Gray has repeatedly asked where Webb is getting the money for CentrePointe — and Webb has refused to say.

In essence, Webb is asking Lexington to trust him. But many people who have followed his career are reluctant to do that.

The community has a lot of questions about CentrePointe: Does Webb really have financing? Or does he need the TIF enhancements to attract investors? Will he scale back plans for his own costly parking facilities if the city builds a parking garage for him? Does he really have something else in mind for the block?

Against this backdrop, a task force of council members chaired by Newberry last week approved a preliminary list of projects that could be paid for with CentrePointe TIF revenues. Estimates of the money that could be available range from $35 million to $190 million over 30 years.

The task force’s project list includes some great downtown improvements, such as new sewers and streetscapes, underground utilities, a park along Vine Street and public art for the new courthouse plaza.

Perhaps the best project on the list is a restoration of the old Fayette County Courthouse, which now houses the Lexington History Museum. When built a century ago, it was one of Lexington’s most beautiful buildings – and it could be again.

The list also includes a relocation plan for the displaced Farmers Market that is, at best, speculative. It would put the market in Cheapside Park and on the block behind the old courthouse – although there have been no discussions with the block’s owners.

The most questionable parts of the TIF project list are those of most interest to Webb: A city-owned parking garage beneath Phoenix Park and pedways connecting CentrePointe to that garage and the garage across Upper Street built by the state in the 1980s for Webb’s Lexington Financial Center.

Even if you think downtown needs another parking garage, it’s hard to imagine a more expensive way to build one. An underground garage costs at least one-third more than an above-ground one. This garage would cost nearly $10 million for 331 spaces, plus $4 million to rebuild and improve Phoenix Park once it was done. Plus, underground parking is a lot more popular with urban planners than with the public.

But the first thing council members should question – and delete from the list – are the two pedways. Most cities stopped building pedways 20 years ago because they sucked life from the streets. These pedways would cost about $1.5 million each. Does anyone but Dudley Webb think that’s a good investment for Lexington?

But there’s a lot more at stake than this project.

Kentuckians like to think of their state as rural. But three of every four jobs are in a city. Lexington accounts for 10 percent of the state’s economic output. The metro areas of the so-called Golden Triangle – Lexington, Louisville and Northern Kentucky – account for 45 percent.

TIF is a vital tool for keeping Kentucky’s cities — and thus Kentucky — economically healthy.

A lot of improvements could be made in Lexington with smart, intentional urban revitalization projects that use TIF. The proposed Distillery District project on Manchester Street, whose developers will make their pitch for TIF financing to the task force next week, is a good example.

But some rural legislators resent TIF because it keeps tax money generated in cities from flowing to the rest of the state. They tried unsuccessfully last year to dramatically scale back the TIF law. There’s no reason to think they won’t try again.

Does Lexington want to risk giving TIF opponents in the General Assembly a big target to shoot at — a questionable project built around an unpopular development?

Do we really want to enter this race on a donkey instead of a thoroughbred?

Ask a Kentuckian where he is from and, unless it is one of the state’s few cities, he’s likely to tell you the name of his home county rather than his hometown.

I was thinking about that this week after I read Jillian Ogawa’s story in the Herald-Leader’s Communities section about a recent gathering of Breathitt County residents and “expatriates” in Frankfort.

My grandmother was from Breathitt County. She always thought it was the best place in the universe, with the possible exception of Lexington. Her father, William Haddix, had a barbershop in Jackson, the county seat. He’s the one with the mustache in this photo from the early 1900s.

I’m always surprised by how many people have roots in Breathitt County. Last week, I met Lexington artist Theo Edmonds, who describes his work as “Hillbilly Chic.”  He’s from Breathitt County and his father, state Rep. Teddy Edmonds, was mentioned at the top of Jillian’s story.

A few months ago, I was talking to Luther Deaton, the president of Central Bank in Lexington, who mentioned he was from Breathitt County. I asked where, and he said the Haddix community.

“My grandmother was a Haddix from Breathitt County,” I said.

“So was mine,” he replied.

I’ve always heard that when Kentucky was divided into 120 counties in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the idea was that nobody should be more than a day’s horse ride from the county seat.

All of the experts say Kentucky has too many small counties for modern government efficiency. Every few years, some group will do a study to prove it, hold hearings and urge that counties be consolidated.

Will it ever happen?  Sure. About the same time the General Assembly declares orange the state color.

Jim Klotter, the state historian and a history professor at Georgetown College, notes that while most counties are small, the towns in them are even smaller. So others are more likely to know the location of a county than a town.

“My home county of Owsley has fewer than 5,000 people and the biggest town is probably under 200,” he said.

Also, rural school consolidation over the past two or three generations has resulted in more countywide schools and, thus, a stronger county identity, Klotter noted.

What do you think?

SLADE – White’s Branch Arch has stood for thousands of years in the Red River Gorge. But not long ago, Zeb Weese noticed it was in danger.

All-terrain vehicle enthusiasts had discovered the hiking trail, originally built as a logging road, that leads up to and goes across the scenic arch near Natural Bridge State Park.

Zeb Weese of the Kentucky Nature Preserve Commission sits below White's Branch Arch. Photos by Tom Eblen

“Ten years ago, you could drive any two-wheel (drive)  sedan from there to where I’m standing,” Weese said as we stood 50 feet apart on top of the arch.

Not anymore. The sandy soil has eroded from around big sandstone outcroppings atop the arch. Rusty steel pipes from natural gas exploration years ago stick out of the ground in several places.

“Those were buried fairly deep just a few years ago, but the ground has washed away,” said Weese, the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission’s eastern regional manager.

“I’ve seen a huge difference since 2002,” he said. “It seemed like overnight the impact was terrible. We were hastening the demise of this arch exponentially.”

What’s happening around White’s Branch Arch and in other natural areas offers a cautionary tale, especially as state officials develop plans to promote “adventure tourism” as an economic engine for rural Kentucky.

All-terrain vehicles – known as ATVs, or “four wheelers” – have become popular tools and toys in rural Kentucky. Hardly a weekend goes by that there isn’t a news item about somebody being killed in an ATV accident.

Weese stands atop White's Branch Arch, which has suffered serious erosion because of ATVs.

But we should be very careful about opening public land to ATVs. They can do a lot of environmental damage, especially in areas with steep hills or sandy soil. Big ATV wheels dig up vegetation that holds soil in place, allowing erosion that sends silt into steams and rivers. Much of the erosion around Red River Gorge eventually ends up in the Kentucky River, which is the water supply for Lexington and many other towns.

Many ATV riders are responsible – they stay in designated areas; they don’t go into the woods and blaze their own trails. Some ATV groups work with conservation officers to protect the environment.

“It’s like a lot of things – a few bad apples ruin it for everyone,” Weese said. “There are appropriate places for everything, including ATVs.”

But the state and federal land designated as nature preserve in Red River Gorge isn’t one of them. Not that it has stopped some ATV riders. Weese said most of the problems seem to come from out-of-state ATV clubs that hit the area on weekends.

Officials have posted signs banning motorized vehicles. In 2006, they got some grant money to rent bulldozers. They dug a series of deep trenches to keep ATVs off the trails. Some trenches include foot bridges so hikers can continue to use the popular trails. But those measures haven’t always worked.

Weese stands on a foot bridge across a trench dug to keep ATVs off the trail to White's Branch Arch.

“It’s unfortunate we have to do this,” Weese said, noting that the trench barriers also produce erosion. “We were doing the damage in a restricted area to keep the damage from being done in a much wider area. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s the best we could do. The main goal was to protect the arch.”

Dave Cooper, a Lexington environmentalist, took me mountain biking on several logging roads and trails that are closed to motorized vehicles. Then we hiked up the trail to White’s Branch Arch to meet Weese.

Throughout the area, we saw several fresh ATV tracks and the erosion they helped produce. Some tracks were on the rutted trails; others went through the woods.

“One four-wheeler can do more damage than a hundred horses or mountain bikes,” Cooper said. “The problem is they won’t stay on the roads. They rip up the forests.”

Adventure tourism could be a great way to capitalize on Kentucky’s natural beauty and help more people enjoy it. But we must be careful not to destroy it in the process.

Here’s a good question: Should the legal drinking age be reduced from 21 to 18? It’s a question many university presidents want the public to discuss, according to an Associated Press story on the front page of today’s Herald-Leader.

You can vote, join the military and fight and die in Iraq at 18, but you can’t legally buy a beer. Does that make sense?

Anti-alcohol activists say it does. They think lowering the drinking age would lead to more alcohol use and abuse by younger people. They say the university presidents are just wanting to reduce their institutions’ liability for alchol-related problems.

But lowering the legal drinking age would put more of the responsibility for alcohol education onto parents and families. If people were taught to drink responsibly when they were at home, might the lesson stick better? Does making something illegal just make it more attractive to abuse?

All good questions. What do you think? Leave a comment below.

The Bluegrass State Games have always been a place to see up-and-coming Kentucky athletes, such as sprinter Tyson Gay, who competed in the Olympics last week, and javelin thrower Dana Pounds, who just missed a trip to Beijing.

Perhaps more important, the Games have also been a place for the rest of us — folks who think they just might be able to run, jump, ride a bike or throw a corn-hole bag a little better than their fellow Kentuckians.

Organizers are making plans now for next year’s 25th anniversary of the nation’s second-oldest state Games, which are held each July and early August in Lexington.

They will be making a presentation Tuesday to the Urban County Council, hoping to build interest in the anniversary Games and remind officials of the estimated $6.5 million in economic impact on Lexington from the event each year. Chairman Sam Dunn says it’s bigger than the Sweet 16, and over the years has boosted Lexington’s economy by more than $110 million.

Martha Layne Collins was governor in 1985 when people familiar with New York’s Empire State Games said Kentucky needed to do something like that. Collins, a former schoolteacher, thought it was a great idea – especially given Kentucky’s fondness for fried food and unhealthy lifestyles.

Besides, Collins said recently, ”People in Kentucky love to compete in anything. And it was a good way to bring people from around the state together to get to know each other. A lot of people have formed lasting friendships because of the Bluegrass State Games.“

This year’s Games attracted more than 18,000 participants – up 22 percent from 15,000 the year before. Dunn hopes to boost participation and attendance even more for the 2009 Games. He’s looking for former athletes to honor and participants’ stories to tell as part of the anniversary event.

Dunn, chairman of Bluegrass Management Group and a former Lexington parks director and executive director of the Games, said promoting healthy lifestyles will remain a focus.

The Games’ title sponsor is Get Healthy Kentucky, which was launched by former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a physician, to encourage Kentuckians to develop healthier lifestyles.

This year, Dunn has been practicing what he’s preaching: He has lost more than 30 pounds since January by eating smaller portions, walking and biking.

The Games has tried to stay fresh and relevant by adding new sports each year. One addition this year was lacrosse. ”They weren’t even playing lacrosse in Kentucky when the Bluegrass State Games started,“ Collins said.

Perhaps the most popular new sport this year was cornhole, the corn- or bean-bag toss game that might be Kentucky’s most popular back-yard pastime. Eighty corn hole teams competed at Woodland Park, including several father-and-son teams.

”It’s certainly not the same level of exercise as cycling or a 5K run, but it encourages people to get off the couch,“ Dunn said. ”And if you’ve ever gone around the tailgaters at a UK game, you know how competitive Kentuckians can be at corn hole.“

Next year, Dunn said, Games officials are considering several possible additions: 3-on-3 soccer, Wii games, cross country track and two activities that were discontinued several years ago: Bowling and walking for seniors.

”We think we’re at the right time at the right place with the right product,“ Dunn said of the Bluegrass State Games. ”It can help bring the state together, and make it more healthy at the same time.“

Along the creek where Lexington began and the street that was once its industrial heart, Barry McNees and a dozen partners hope to write a new chapter for downtown’s west side.

As they plan for the future, they’re spending a lot of time sifting through the past.

It began more than three years ago when McNees bought an old industrial building on Manchester Street because he saw potential for redevelopment. A local historian of Kentucky’s bourbon industry stopped by one day.

“He asked what we were going to do with the Old Tarr Distillery,” McNees said. “And I said, ‘The old what?’”

NcNees learned that the circa 1866 building next door had been the warehouse for one of Kentucky’s first post-Civil War bourbon distilleries. Later, McNees and his partners bought the abandoned James E. Pepper Distillery down the street.

Those two properties provide bookends and a theme for the Distillery District, an ambitious redevelopment project that the partners hope will someday house restaurants, clubs, art studios, a small distillery, a coffee shop, indoor recreation facilities, a farmer’s market, offices and condos.

Distillery District developer Barry McNees.

McNees, 39, who grew up on a tobacco farm near Winchester, hopes to preserve and reuse most of the old distillery buildings. “That way, we’ll get both a modern development and one that celebrates Lexington’s past and its culture,” he said. “It gives you the romance of history and creates a destination where people will want to go.”

It also will make the development eligible for state and federal historic tax credits that could cover as much as 40 percent of renovation costs.

Another key will be seeking tax increment financing, known as TIF. It allows a portion of state and local taxes created by new development in a blighted area to be used for up to 30 years to pay for the public infrastructure — utilities, sewers, streets and sidewalks — needed to make the development possible.

Currently, the district’s properties generate $137,000 a year in state and local taxes, McNees said. Once the redevelopment is complete, he estimates the taxes will be a hundred times that amount.

McNees said city officials and the Downtown Development Authority have offered support and encouragement. The developers have conducted design workshops with students from the University of Kentucky’s College of Design to generate ideas for how the old buildings might be reused. And they have met with nearby neighborhoods and businesses to get them comfortable with the project. More public meetings are planned soon.

The Distillery District, along with the Newtown Pike extension, could literally reshape a large area west of Rupp Arena. State and local officials are soon expected to unveil the design for a “signature” bridge that will carry Newtown Pike across the railroad yard near Manchester Street. The double-span bridge is expected to include decorative lighting.

Eventually, others hope to restore Town Branch Creek through the neighborhood, creating an eight-mile greenway trail into downtown. McNees and his partners are designing their projects to take advantage of Town Branch, which flows virtually hidden along Manchester Street and is funneled underground once it gets to downtown.

The Town Branch Trail proposal also envisions restoring one of Central Kentucky’s oldest buildings, the 1790 James McConnell house. It now sits vacant beside a railroad track just across Manchester Street from the Pepper Distillery. It’s not far from McConnell Springs, where Lexington was founded.

“It’s totally neglected,” McNees said of the dry-stone house as he looked at it from the distillery’s roof. “Can you imagine letting the home of one of Lexington’s founders just sit there deteriorating like that?” McNees said he and his partners have invested almost $9 million so far acquiring and renovating the collection of industrial buildings on 25 acres along Manchester Street.

The Old Tarr warehouse, an 11,500-square-foot structure that once housed 8,000 barrels of bourbon, was later used as a tobacco warehouse and as a machine shop, making parts for the IBM Selectric typewriters that were manufactured at what is now Lexmark.

The warehouse sat empty for years before McNees began converting it into an events hall that can hold 2,000 people. Its first test came in April 2007, when it was the site of the Beaux Arts Ball. Eventually, McNees wants to use adjacent buildings for restaurants and clubs, which would open in the back onto Town Branch Trail.

While the developers refine their plans, prepare a TIF application, seek financing and try to pull all the pieces together, they’re renting out some of the buildings they own for industrial storage and artists’ studios.

This concept rendering shows how a renovated Pepper Distillery warehouse and Town Branch Creek might look.

The most ambitious – and costly – piece of the project will be renovating the Pepper Distillery, which claimed to be the nation’s largest when it opened in the late 1800s. Most of the buildings there now date from the 1930s. The distillery’s largest structure is a concrete and block warehouse that once held 100,000 barrels of aging bourbon. Each of the five floors has tall ceilings and an acre of floor space. It is built like a fortress, so future uses are almost unlimited.

Unlike Old Tarr, where only the warehouse survives, the Pepper site still has almost all of the buildings that were there when it was a working distillery.

Last week, McNees took me on a tour of the Pepper site. It was like stepping back in history, because most of the equipment was left in place to gather dust when bourbon-making stopped in the early 1970s.

“This whole thing has been like a significant archaeological dig,” McNees said as we walked through each building, stepping around junk, broken glass and pigeon droppings.

The old mash tubs were still there, along with the brick kilns used to dry used mash for cattle feed. Huge gears and light fixtures sit on shelves in the machine shop. There are stacks of production records from the 1960s sitting on shelves near a box with cans of grain samples from the early 1950s. McNees dipped his hand into an old grain sifter and scooped out hulls.

The developers began going through the Pepper property earlier this year, making basic repairs, cleaning up and deciding which machinery to keep and which to sell for scrap. AM talk radio plays non-stop in the main building to scare away critters. McNees hopes to restore the distillery’s smokestack, which used to spell out “Pepper” but is now a few letters short because the top was removed. The old water tower seems to be in good shape, and it has become the Distillery District’s logo symbol.

A large lot beside the Pepper Distillery — familiar to most Lexingtonians as the place they used to go to claim a towed car — has been cleared. McNees hopes to have outdoor concerts there in a few months. The first Pepper building likely to see reuse is the timber-frame barrel house. A local group plans to put a small “craft” distillery and tasting room there by next spring and has ordered a 200-gallon copper still from Portugal.

McNees and his partners have a big, expensive job ahead of them. But if they can find the money to match their imagination, the Distillery District could become an economic engine for downtown and a place that leverages Lexington’s rich past for a more prosperous future.

To see a slide show of photos from the Distillery District renovation, click here.

MOREHEAD – Like a lot of small towns, Morehead sometimes seemed to be stuck in the past, awkwardly dealing with the present and ill-prepared for the future.

Local leaders knew there was more potential in Morehead, but how could they realize it?

In 2005, then-Mayor Bradley Collins was president of the Kentucky League of Cities. The league had started the non-profit New Cities Institute. And the institute had developed a program to help communities identify and build on their strengths by bringing together key players and — most important — involving average citizens.

“You’ve got to bring the citizens into the equation, and leaders are often so reluctant to do that,” said Sylvia Lovely, the league’s chief executive officer and the force behind the New Cities Institute. “But at the end of the day, it’s the only thing that works.”

Collins decided Morehead would be the first Kentucky city to try the program.

The old Rowan County Courthouse has been converted into an arts center. Photo by Tom Eblen

“To be quite honest, I was afraid of it at first,” said Collins, who has retired after four terms as mayor. “I thought the people of Morehead and Rowan County wouldn’t go for it. I was in for a wonderful surprise.”

Madisonville followed Morehead, and a program will begin Aug. 27 in Inez. West Liberty will begin one later this year, and Paintsville and other towns are considering it.

Lovely is especially excited about the program in Inez. One reason is that Inez has some dynamic, young leaders. “They are just determined they are going to turn this town around,” she said.

Another is because Inez, in Martin County, has been a national symbol of Appalachia’s troubles and hopes since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson went there to launch his War on Poverty.

The New City program has a community’s citizens and leaders discuss issues, needs and goals around 12 principles that focus on civic pride, connections to place and people, and hopes and visions for the future.

It’s no magic formula, but Morehead leaders say it has been well worth the effort.

Rowan County is famous for its fractious history. The governor sent the militia there in the 1880s when local feuding got so out of hand that some legislators wanted to dissolve the county.

More recently, officials had worked pretty well together. But the big players – the city, the county, Morehead State University and St. Claire Regional Medical Center – didn’t communicate as much or as well as they needed to.

Of more concern was that government wasn’t especially transparent, and citizens didn’t speak up because they didn’t think officials would listen.

“I’m not proud of it,” Collins said, “but that’s the way it had always been done.”

That changed when local businesses put up money to sponsor the New City program, and large groups of citizens showed up at public meetings to have their say.

“It was a wonderful experience, even though I was afraid of it,” Collins said.

His successor, Mayor David Perkins, and Rowan County Judge Executive Jim Nickell said many New City initiatives, such as some downtown beautification projects, have yet to be accomplished because of tight budgets. “Hopefully, when the economy picks up they can start implementing some of the ideas,” Nickell said.

But the tone of civic conversation is much better, as is the working relationship between the key institutions and leaders.

“It was really a ­thoughtful, frank series of discussions,” said Morehead State President Wayne Andrews. “I came away thinking we learned a lot.”

“We’re still going to disagree sometimes, but we’re not at each other’s throats,” Perkins said. “People realize that now they have more of a chance for impact. And we have a much broader sense of what people in the community want.”

Morehead has made big strides recently, including: A new civic center opened in 2006. Major downtown projects include a new courthouse and library, and an arts center in the old courthouse. A joint city-county recycling program is making the local environment better — and making a profit. And there’s more city-county cooperation on water, sewer and emergency services as well as on home construction regulations.

City officials had meetings to listen to Morehead State students, who said they wanted more to do on weekends. As a result, the city helped attract a new sports bar and six-screen movie theater by subsidizing land acquisition.

People said they wanted the university to have more presence downtown. The university’s Center for Traditional Music is now on Main Street, and Andrews said officials are looking for similar opportunities.

“We really believe that if we work together and the community succeeds we all succeed,” Andrews said. “It has been a great story for our community.”

What a beautiful weekend!  I had a great ride Saturday in Madison County with the Bluegrass Cycling Club.  I wish I could have gotten back out on Sunday. We don’t often get perfect weather like this in mid-August.

The rural Bluegrass is a great place for recreational cycling. Lots of well-paved, lightly traveled backroads and beautiful countryside. Riding in the city of Lexington isn’t as much fun, but it’s getting better all the time.  That’s a good thing, because I’ve seen a lot more people riding bikes to work and shop since gas prices soared a few months ago.

The New York Times had this story Sunday about how the increasing popularity of cycling is resulting in more clashes between cyclists and motorists. The story begins with an anecdote from Louisville. I’ve found most central Kentucky drivers to be polite and safe around cyclists. (Unfortunately, I see more examples of cyclists not obeying the rules of the road.)

Universities around the country are doing more to promote bicycle use, as this Associated Press story explains. The New York Times also recently featured UK’s innovative Wildcat Wheels bike loaner program in this story. Wildcat Wheels is a project of UK’s sustainability coordinator, Shane Tedder.  You can read more about Tedder’s work in this interview with Taylor Shelton of the GreenKY blog.

What can Lexington learn from the CentrePointe fiasco?

It’s probably too late for anyone but Dudley Webb to make his hotel, condo, retail and office complex in the middle of downtown a better development. But this is the perfect time for the rest of us to make sure it isn’t repeated.

Don’t get me wrong: we need high-quality development, and lots of it, to make Lexington a vibrant place to live, work and visit.

Mayor Jim Newberry and Vice Mayor Jim Gray took steps last week to seize this opportunity to improve the way planning, development and public process are handled. Now the rest of us need to step up to the plate.

I’m no expert, but I’ve talked to a lot of people who are. Here’s some thinking about where we can go from here.

A vision for downtown

Many people object to CentrePointe’s design because it is too massive and ignores many aspects of the Downtown Master Plan, which was developed in an extensive public process at a cost of about $400,000. Lexington’s Planning Commission hasn’t adopted all of the plan’s recommendations, so more work is needed.

The plan is important, but it should not become a straitjacket. It needs to be a suit of clothes that allows city officials, developers and the public to handle specific projects with both flexibility and shared understanding about Lexington’s vision and expectations. There needs to be an ongoing conversation, and the plan needs to be flexible enough to change with conditions, new opportunities and new ideas.

City officials should use the tool of tax increment financing, known as TIF, in an intentional way, rather than in just a reactive way, as is being done with CentrePointe. TIF allows some future incremental tax revenues from a private development to be used to pay for surrounding public infrastructure.

What if city officials sought out developers for projects that could help accomplish the community’s infrastructure and development goals? That way, the city could drive the process, rather than risk being run over by it.

Lexington could get a lot of low-cost imagination and expertise by becoming more engaged with the University of Kentucky’s College of Design, which has fine architecture and preservation programs.

There has never been a better time to do that: The former dean, David Mohney, is the new chairman of the Downtown Development Authority; the new dean, Michael Speaks, has enormous skill and enthusiasm; and UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. is passionate about having the university reach beyond its stone walls to improve life in Kentucky. It could be a powerful partnership.

”I hope we can get involved with the city in some early stages of thinking and help people see outside their comfort zone,“ Speaks said. ”Design is all about “what ifs.’ It gives you possibilities to think about.“

The college also could be helpful in one of Mohney’s goals for the DDA, which is to increase public awareness of the role good architecture and design can play in improving a city’s economy and quality of life.

Good architecture isn’t just about what buildings look like; it’s more about how people use them and how buildings can inspire people. It’s also about the image a city projects to the world.

You don’t have to look only to cities such as Chicago and London to see the value of good architecture and redevelopment. You can look at places like Paducah and Greenville, S.C. And while you’re watching the Olympics, think about how some of China’s stunning new architecture is likely to shape its international image.

Better public process

In most cases, developers aren’t required to engage the public in private projects, even ones as prominently located as CentrePointe. That’s the law and process now – and it’s wrong. Lexington needs to open up its process, and maybe change some laws, to give the public more voice. The task force created recently to study TIF opportunities is a good start.

The Downtown Development Authority has been criticized for being more of a facilitator for CentrePointe’s developers than an advocate for the public interest. ”That dynamic needs to change,“ said Mohney, who is working with the authority’s board to update its mission statement.

That’s a good thing, because the DDA should be a key place where ideas and players come together. It’s an independent agency, designed to be insulated from political pressure.

A proactive DDA could look at what’s working in other cities, foster public education and discussion and prompt action. There are many good tools other cities are using.

One is a design review board, such as Cincinnati and other cities have had for years. Such professional boards interpret and enforce standards defined by a community to make sure new developments are appropriate.

While CentrePointe’s design has received a lot of criticism, it’s hardly the worst example of mistakes that could have been prevented by a good design review process. The post office on High Street looks like it belongs in a suburban shopping center. And the ugly new U.S. Justice Department building on Vine Street manages to look both fortress-like and cheap.

Another tool is form-based zoning, which regulates building height, setback and other specifications based on surrounding structures. Another is a so-called Community Benefits Agreement, which at the least can require developers to engage the public.

It’s a careful balancing act, though. The last thing Lexington wants to do is create laws so strict and bureaucratic processes so cumbersome that developers won’t want to build here. But there’s a lot of middle ground between that and the process that produced CentrePointe.

You can’t make a rule for everything, and you don’t want to. You need both good rules and city leaders willing to use them intelligently. Other cities do it. Lexington can, too.

Rethinking preservation

Newberry last week directed the DDA and the city’s Division of Historic Preservation to update the list of downtown buildings more than 50 years old, work with property owners and conduct public hearings on which are worth preserving. The council is supposed to receive that list by March.

That’s a good start toward ending Lexington’s tendency to act on historic preservation only when the wrecking ball arrives. But it’s only a start. People and groups interested in preservation and reuse of old buildings need to take more initiative.

The Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation has done a lot of great work over the years, but it has been reluctant to take the lead in development battles. Perhaps that’s because it’s hard to fight the establishment when you are the establishment. The charge against CentrePointe was led not by the Trust, but by a new citizens group, Preserve Lexington.

While many downtown buildings were surveyed and their historic significance documented in the late 1970s, pressure from property owners kept most of them from being protected. That left the door open for CentrePointe and the developments that preceded it.

Several buildings on the CentrePointe block, such as the circa 1826 Morton’s Row, were deemed worthy of preservation. But it’s hard to protect a building against the owner’s wishes.

There’s more to preservation than saving old buildings from destruction. Preservationists must help building owners get the expertise, financing and tax credits to rehabilitate historic properties for new uses that will boost both their businesses and the local economy. There have been many recent old-building success stories downtown, and there could be many more.

”Historic Preservation needs to be on the forefront and be proactively making recommendations,“ said Phil Holoubek, developer of the Nunn Building and Main & Rose condo projects.

There also needs to be a broader discussion about preservation. Sometimes preservation is about saving truly historic structures such as Morton’s Row, one of Lexington’s oldest commercial buildings, which since 1929 has housed Rosenberg jewelry and pawn shop.

Other times, it’s about incorporating old buildings that are interesting but not necessarily historic into contemporary structures that can add value to the city’s streetscape. Those developments can be both more charming and more economical than all-new construction.

City officials and community activists also need to take a deep look at building inspection and code enforcement. The CentrePointe block’s old buildings were dilapidated because their owners and the city let them get that way.

Newberry’s administration has done a lot to improve code enforcement, such as cleaning up long-ignored trailer parks. Gray said he wants his task force to look at these issues, both downtown and throughout the city. Other council members want to go after apartment complexes, rental houses and stores that have become dangerous eyesores.

”What’s going on in the neighborhoods is the same thing that’s been going on downtown,“ said Diane Lawless, a 3rd District Council candidate who has been researching the issue.

It is often said that Lexington deserves an urban landscape as beautiful as the rural landscape that surrounds it. What do you think we should do to achieve that?  Comment and offer your suggestions below.

Lexington has been lucky to be home to some great academic minds who have been keen observers of the local scene. They have sometimes been listened to, and often ignored.

The first one who often comes to mind is University of Kentucky historian Thomas Clark, who died in 2005, just short of his 102nd birthday. A native of Mississippi, Clark understood Kentucky and its people perhaps better than anyone ever has.

Another is Raymond Betts, a University of Kentucky history professor and founding director of UK’s outstanding Gaines Center for the Humanities, who died in 2007. Betts wrote a couple of op-ed pieces for the Herald-Leader in 1976 and 1983 discussing the future of downtown Lexington. In light of the CentrePointe controversy and renewed interest in downtown redevelopment, they’re well worth reading. You can see PDFs of the articles by clicking here and here.

To see the range of public opinion about CentrePointe, you need look no further than Mayor Jim Newberry and Vice Mayor Jim Gray.

Gray has been among the most vocal critics of Dudley and Woodford Webb’s plan for the CentrePointe development downtown, which would include a four-star hotel, luxury condos, offices, restaurants and shops.

Jim Gray

Gray has questioned the plan’s economic viability, its scale and design, its destruction of historic buildings and the process that allowed it to be sprung on the public as virtually a done deal.

Newberry backs CentrePointe. This week, he sent a series of four e-mails to the community endorsing the project again and scolding some of its critics.

“I do not consider it to be a perfect development,” Newberry wrote in one e-mail, “but on balance there has never been any doubt in my mind but that the best interests of Lexington are served by the completion of CentrePointe.”

Newberry’s e-mails focus more on the advantages of a big downtown development than on the specific plans for CentrePointe. The project will create jobs, increase downtown density and maybe even preserve farmland, he wrote.

Jim Newberry

But Newberry seems to have missed the point of CentrePointe’s critics. Nobody opposes development on the block; critics just want some city leadership to get a better development plan.

I’ve watched the CentrePointe debate at City Hall with great interest, because it mirrors some of the conversations I hear on the street.

If you follow this column, you know that I think Gray has been right about CentrePointe from the beginning. But I also have a lot of respect for Newberry.

I think they both want what’s best for Lexington. And, ironically, they have the same vision for Lexington — a future based on preserving our culture and character while building a knowledge-based economy that attracts the “creative class” of workers who will make it possible.

So why the disconnect?

Newberry comes from the world of corporate law, where he was managing partner of a major firm. He’s practical, careful and literal. What do our laws require? Is the developer following the law? Will the developer go away if we demand more of him?

Gray, the president of his family’s large construction company, comes from a much different sphere, and this controversy plays to his professional expertise.

Gray knows a lot about development, construction and architecture. His company helped build the 21C hotel and museum in Louisville, an innovative redevelopment project that has drawn international acclaim. And he understands the power that good architecture has to inspire a city’s residents and attract the world’s attention.

Ever since the CentrePointe plan was unveiled, Gray has insisted that Lexington deserves better than it is getting from the Webbs.

In many ways, Newberry and Gray represent the yin and yang of Lexington.

This is a conservative, practical and careful city — but one that knows it must become more creative and innovative to succeed in the 21st century and beyond.

It’s also a city uncomfortable with change and conflict, even though conflict is often the path to dialogue that leads to better results.

CentrePointe has been a wake-up call for both Newberry and Gray — and, I hope, for many others — that Lexington needs to become more intentional about how it handles development, especially downtown.

I’ll write more about that on Sunday.

********

Worth reading: Dan Rowland, a UK professor and former director of UK’s Gaines Center for the Humanities, has a good op-ed piece in Thursday’s paper about lessons we can learn from CentrePointe. Read it here.

The best thing city officials have done so far in the CentrePointe fiasco is to begin studying how tax increment financing could be used to help downtown.

The Urban County Council created a task force, which includes seven council members and Mayor Jim Newberry. It could be a valuable forum for them and the public to ask questions and make decisions that will shape Lexington for decades.

Tax increment financing, known as TIF, is a great tool. It allows cities to use a portion of local and state taxes generated by a major private development for up to 30 years to pay for public improvements needed to make that development possible.

There are three big questions that need answering soon: Can CentrePointe qualify as a TIF project? If so, is it the right project for the TIF tool? And, if so, what downtown improvements should be bought with that tax money – improvements that will be in Lexington’s best interests, and not just in the best interests of CentrePointe’s developers?

State law requires that TIF financing be essential to a project, which could be an problem with CentrePointe. That’s because developers Dudley and Woodford Webb say they will build no matter what. Can Lexington convince the state that CentrePointe qualifies for TIF?

“It’s a challenge,” acknowledged Jim Parsons, a Newport attorney hired by the task force to be its TIF consultant. “I’ve never seen a TIF like this.”

The key, Parsons said, could be how the project is presented to state officials: Is the project just CentrePointe, or is it a downtown revitalization plan of which CentrePointe is a key part?

Lexington officials also need to decide if CentrePointe is the right project for raising the money they want for downtown improvements. Whatever portion of downtown is included in a CentrePointe TIF district will essentially be locked up, precluding any other TIF projects there for 30 years.

If bonds were issued to pay for the improvements, they could generate between $35 and $70 million, officials estimate. Newberry raised an intriguing idea at the TIF task force’s meeting Tuesday: If the city used tax revenues gradually to pay for public improvements rather than issuing bonds, it could, by the CentrePointe developers’ estimates, have as much as $190 million to work with.

One problem with that approach, though, is it shifts the risk from bondholders to the city. If CentrePointe’s four-star hotel, shops, offices and luxury condos are wildly successful, the city could get even more money. If they’re not, the city could get far less.

Is CentrePointe a viable project? There are many skeptics, including other hoteliers who see little demand for a new luxury hotel and people who see lots of vacant retail space downtown.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray and Councilman Tom Blues, who are skeptical, sought proof Tuesday that the Webbs have the more than $200 million needed to build CentrePointe. They asked for letters from the investors promising that the money has been pledged.

“Is the financing committed?” Gray asked. “Is the project real? I’ve learned over time that all that glitters is not gold.”

The Webbs’ attorney, Darby Turner, refused to provide any proof of funding or identify the investors. Based on previous comments by Dudley Webb, the investors are foreign.

“We’re going to build the project,” Turner said. “The financing is in place. Do you all want to come along or not?”

Turner said CentrePointe’s investors want their business to stay private, adding that might pose a problem with underwriters if the city seeks to issue TIF bonds.

In other words, Lexington just has to trust the Webbs. And that trust must extend well beyond the next couple of years, when CentrePointe either will or won’t be built.

As Gray noted, most of the revenue the city would use for improvements would come from state sales taxes – and that money won’t come unless CentrePointe’s hotel and shops succeed long-term.

Assuming Lexington does a CentrePointe TIF project, everyone should take a close look at how that future tax money is used. An initial list of possible projects prepared by the mayor’s office and given to task force members Tuesday raised concerns.

The proposal – and it is just a proposal – listed $48 million in projects, including some great ideas: $2 million CORRECTION: $14 million for renovating the old courthouse, which houses the Lexington History Museum; $2 million for renovating the old courthouse plaza; $1.5 million for a permanent Farmer’s Market facility; $2.5 million for public art; and $3 million for downtown entertainment venues.

There also was money for improvements to Phoenix Park, utilities, sewer and streetscape improvements.

However, the list also included projects that bear close scrutiny. There’s a $1 million outdoor Jumbotron that could be used during the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in 2010 and for things like Friday night movies. OK, that’s worth discussing.

But there are a couple of things I’m very skeptical of. The first is a proposed two- or three-level parking garage below Phoenix Park, with as many as 331 parking spaces costing $30,000 each.That could cost $10 million, plus a few million more to put Phoenix Park back together.

The garage would be good for CentrePointe, but is it a wise investment for the city?

Street parking downtown is popular and limited. But there already seems to be plenty of available space in downtown parking structures. In general, people don’t like parking structures, and they like underground parking even less. Before city officials invest millions in this costliest form of new parking space, they should do a thorough study of downtown’s parking inventory and anticipated needs.

It’s also worth asking whether those millions might be better spent on downtown public transportation. Trolleys? Streetcars?

But the thing I’m most skeptical of is a proposal for $3 million worth of “pedways,” also known as skywalks, to connect CentrePointe to the proposed parking garage and the garage at the Webbs’ Financial Center (“the big blue building”) across Upper Street.

If CentrePointe’s design looks like something out of the 1980s, skywalks are an idea from the 1960s that have been widely discredited since then. Why? Because they take human activity off the street.

(READ MORE about other cities’ experiences with skywalks here and here and here.)

One of the biggest complaints many people have about CentrePointe’s design is that it isn’t friendly to street activity. Pedways would make it even less so.

The first public hearing about a CentrePointe TIF was held after Tuesday’s task force meeting. It was lightly attended, and only a handful of citizens spoke. Maybe that was because it’s early in the process, and people have little information to react to.

Our elected city officials have provided a great forum for discussing these issues. They, and Lexington citizens, should make the most of it ­- and soon.