The Bluegrass and Beyond

It takes a pretty good seminar to keep me inside on a warm, sunny Saturday when I could be out biking. But Planning for Livability and Sustainability: Lessons of the Vancouver Achievement for Lexington and the Bluegrass was fascinating.

The seminar today at the University of Kentucky was organized by UK professors Ernest Yanarella and Richard Levine. It was a followup to a similar seminar at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2007.

About 40 people attended, including Vice Mayor Jim Gray, Urban County Council member Diane Lawless and David Mohney, chairman of the Downtown Development Authority. I wish some others from council, the city planning staff and Commerce Lexington whose name tags I saw on the registration table had been able to come.

Ian Smith, Vancouver’s former senior planner and now project director for the 2010 Olympic Village, gave a terrific presentation about how his city has in just the past two or three decades transformed itself by bringing many segments of the community together around the goals of making Vancouver a model for urban livability and environmental sustainability.

Early next week, I’ll write more about that, as well as about the presentation by Mark Roseland, director of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver. He talked about what that university is doing, and the role universities can play in helping a city and region improve its environment and economy.

But here was an interesting sidebar from today’s session:

Gray, who has been critical of the Downtown Development Authority for supporting the secretive development of the controversial CentrePointe project, said during a discussion that Lexington’s council members and the mayor need more help and leadership from senior planning staff members to make good policy decisions.

“We don’t have the level of competence that our city deserves in these roles,” Gray said. He added that Lexington government needs a change of political culture to allow senior staff members to feel empowered to seek out innovative ideas and help lead policymakers and the public toward good solutions.

That brought a sharp response from Mohney, who in addition to being the DDA chairman is a UK College of Design professor and former dean who has worked for years to involve students in helping Lexington do a better job of urban planning.

“It’s a tough town to make this work,” Mohney said. “It’s going to take time.” (quote corrected from initial post)

Lawless jumped in, complaining that the city’s bureaucracy is too fragmented. “It’s often like a shotgun, with each pellet being powered by a different division,” she said. “We need an urban planner who has that over-arching vision.”

Lawless said the result is a slow decision-making process where each interest group works with a different part of city government, but there’s too little coordination, leadership or vision. To help with that, she is pushing to have 16 recommendations from the lengthy Downtown Master Plan process finally adopted into  law.

Mohney noted that Lexington was at the forefront of American urban planning in 1958 when it created a growth boundary to protect Bluegrass horse farms. “The problem is we did nothing after that to redefine our growth strategy,” he said.

Lawless said this is a good time to do that, noting that the current mayor and council seem to have the political will to address tough, long-neglected growth issues. “The only way it’s going to happen is for us to roll up our sleeves and do something about it,” she said. “Now is the time.”

Soon, it was time for Roseland to begin his presentation. But the discussion continued for a few minutes on Twitter, with Gray, Mohney and Lawless — along with me and local bloggers Eric Patrick Marr and Taylor Shelton — typing away on their BlackBerrys.

Thanks to that social media platform, several hundred people could follow that conversation. It even prompted one of them — Rob Morris, owner of Lowell’s Toyota repair shop downtown and a budding blogger — to leave work and come over to listen to the rest of the seminar.

Jamie Link may be the chief executive officer of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, but when it comes to riding horses, he’s a novice.

So when he and other top Games officials recently saddled up to see part of the 100-mile endurance course being mapped out across farms surrounding the Kentucky Horse Park, Link was given a horse with two names.

One name was Rocket, which Link used frequently and emphatically as he maneuvered well alongside his more-experienced colleagues.

Others called his golden mount by a name indicating a more gentle nature, Buttercup.

This was a slow, four-mile ride over beautiful Mt. Brilliant Farm. But everyone was thinking about what it would be like for more than 80 competitors who will gallop over it in a day-long race against the clock on Sept. 26, 2010.

Endurance racing will be one of the most high-profile of the Games’ eight disciplines, for a couple of reasons.

The race is scheduled for the second of the 16 days of competition and will be featured prominently, along with a recap of opening ceremonies, on NBC Sports’ first hour-long telecast of the Games.

That show has the potential to be a spectacular video postcard for Central Kentucky’s horse country — not to mention the glamour of the Games.

But because the endurance race is so demanding, any televised deaths or serious injuries to horses have the potential to damage the reputation of equine sports in the eyes of a skeptical public.

The 100-mile course will consist of six loops of between 10 and 25 miles each, beginning and ending at the Horse Park’s Forego polo field. The section of the course officials rode recently — over hills, through valleys and across creeks — is part of the most demanding loop.

“This is the tactical loop,” said Emmett Ross, the endurance discipline manager for the Games who has been working for months to design the course. “This is going to take the pee and vinegar out of them.”

The safety of horses and riders is the major consideration in how the endurance course is designed, and how the race is managed, Ross said.

Safety has become a big issue since two horses died in the 2002 World Equestrian Games’ endurance race in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, and one died two days after falling ill during the 2006 Games’ race in Aachen, Germany.

Horses will be checked by veterinarians at six stops during the 100-mile race, and any showing signs of dangerous stress won’t be allowed to continue. Only 40 percent of the horses finished the race in Aachen, and Ross expects a similar percentage here.

The race also is taxing on riders, who could range in age from 14 to almost 70. Among the most serious competitors will be Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Dubai ruler and frequent Lexington visitor better known for his involvement in thoroughbred racing.

Games officials met for their ride near Man O’ War’s old barn on Mt. Brilliant. They wanted to see the route, evaluate the topography and check the ground’s footing, which they said was excellent on that sunny morning despite recent rain.

Riding with Link were Games Chairman John Long, board members Alston Kerr and Becky Jordan, Horse Park President John Nicholson and staff member Todd Waronicki. I bounced around in the back of a pickup truck with two Games staffers. The group followed an all-terrain vehicle driven by Ross, who seems to have been preparing for this job his entire career.

As a rider, Ross won Fédération Equestre Internationale endurance events in nine countries and was a gold medal team member in the first North American Championships. He has spent two decades as a trainer, organizer, manager and consultant for endurance events, including the 1984 and 1996 Olympics.

Aside from his knowledge of endurance riding, Ross seems to be an accomplished diplomat. He has reached agreement with 27 owners of more than 60 parcels of land on thoroughbred, standardbred, corn and tobacco farms.

During the actual race, only event staff members, about 300 volunteers and some media will be allowed on the course beyond the Horse Park; others must watch on big video screens at the park.

The course, which will be marked off with classic Kentucky tobacco sticks, will cross roads 14 times as it runs through such famous farms as Elmendorf, Dixiana, Walnut Hall and Castleton Lyons. With leaves in full fall color, the sun rising as the race begins and setting as it ends, it should make for a spectacular scene.

The course will get its first test this Oct. 14, when 75-mile and 100-mile Kentucky Cup races are held. Ross joked that the beauty of the course could be a handicap for competitors: “I think some of them may get to looking at the scenery and just stop.”

If you missed Commerce Lexington’s trip to Madison,Wis., last week – or even if you went – there’s another opportunity to see what metro Lexington can learn from other cities.

The University of Kentucky is sponsoring a seminar Saturday, ”Planning for Livability and Sustainability: Vancouver’s Lessons for Lexington and the Bluegrass,” at the Hilary J. Boone Center on Rose Street.

The seminar looks at Vancouver, British Columbia’s success over the past two decades at reviving its downtown and becoming an international model for urban planning, livability and sustainability — and how the lessons Vancouver has learned could be applied to Central Kentucky.

The seminar begins at 9 a.m. with remarks by UK President Lee Todd. Featured speakers are: Ian Smith, former senior urban planner in Vancouver and current project director of the Winter 2010 Olympic Village; Mark Roseland, Simon Fraser University geography professor and director of the SFU Centre for Sustainable Community Development; and Rick Balfour, an architect and director of the Vancouver Metro Planning Council.

The seminar — organized by Ernest Yanarella, a UK political science professor, and Richard Levine, a UK architecture professor — is sponsored by the Kentucky Environmental Council, Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection and Todd’s office. The session is a followup to a March 2007 seminar at the Kentucky Horse Park, and it is being coordinated with Bluegrass Tomorrow’s InnoVision2018 project.

All sessions Saturday are free and open to the public.

There’s a new effort to encourage young people to volunteer for Central Kentucky non-profit organizations — and it rocks.

The 10,000 Hours Show plans to have a major band play a concert next April at Applebee’s Park. The only way to attend will be to sign up and do at least 10 hours of community service between now and then.

Plans for the concert began several months ago as a service project of this year’s Leadership Lexington class, said class member Colleen Ebbitt. The goal is to generate at least 10,000 hours of service by at least 1,000 volunteers.

“It will be an all-ages show,” Ebbitt said. “All ages can volunteer and attend, but the music will be geared toward the 18-30 age group.”

During last week’s Commerce Lexington visit to Madison, Wis., the 260 attendees heard that Madison’s United Way sponsors a similar event. Last year, those who attended Madison’s concert had logged 38,674 hours of community service.

The event is being coordinated — and volunteer hours are being tracked — by the United Way of the Bluegrass.The presenting sponsor is W. Rogers Co. Applebee’s Park is providing the venue. Show partners include: University of Kentucky FUSION, Leadership Lexington, Georgetown College and Eastern Kentucky University.  Ebbitt said organizers are looking for additional sponsors, including a co-presenting sponsor.

Ebbitt said it may be January before a headline band is chosen because it will be late this year before many bands have firmed their tour schedules. Artists that have done these shows in other cities include Cake, Ben Folds and Guster. Ebbitt said organizers hope to get a band of that caliber.

To sign up for the 10,000 Hours Show volunteer effort, or for more information, go to the Web site.

Toddlers in trailers. Tykes on training wheels. Boys and girls on their first “real” bikes. Racers on titanium and carbon fiber. Grandmothers on cruisers. People of all ages and sizes on ancient Schwinns and Huffys.

They were all at Monday’s Bike Lexington celebration.

The downtown event was moved to Memorial Day this year to coordinate with the Bluegrass Cycling Club’s 32nd annual Horsey Hundred tour. That ride brought more than 1,700 cyclists from across the nation to ride Central Kentucky countryside on Saturday and Sunday.

Despite threatening weather, more than 700 people came out for the main event, a 10-mile family fun ride through downtown and the University of Kentucky campus. Toward the end of the ride, the skies opened and everyone got drenched. Nobody seemed to mind.

Many stayed through the rain for bike raffles and to hear Mayor Jim Newberry and Urban County Council member Jay McChord talk about how trails and bike lanes are a big part of Lexington’s plan to become the healthiest and most bicycle-friendly city in Kentucky.

But council members weren’t just speaking, they were riding. George Myers was pulling his 28-month-old daughter, Aubrey, in a weatherproof trailer. Doug Martin rode with his 9-year-old son, Reynolds. Chuck Ellinger, who racks up a lot of miles most weekends on the same model racer Lance Armstrong rides, was on a $10 garage sale Huffy.

Between rains, people watched races and a bike polo demonstration.

The bike polo teams had just returned from Dayton, Ohio, where they placed 4th and 8th among 27 teams at the 6th annual Midwest Bike Polo Championships. Bike polo started in Lexington about three years ago. Games are held each Sunday and Wednesday evening on four converted tennis courts at Coolivan Park.

A dozen groups had tents on the courthouse plaza, showing the diversity of Lexington’s bike culture.

One was Cycle 4 Sunday, a group organized by first-year UK physical therapy students to raise money for Surgery on Sunday, an outreach to needy people by Lexington’s medical community.

Another was Shifting Gears, a project of Pedal Power bike shop and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

I did the family fun ride on a 25-year-old bike I bought last year with a donation to Shifting Gears.

Pedal Power, the main sponsor of Bike Lexington, takes donated bikes, refurbishes them and gives them to KRM, which distributes them to foreign refugees who have recently settled here. More than 100 bikes have been given away so far.

Pedal Power owner Billy Yates said he has another 200 donated bikes in his shop’s attic, awaiting repair by his mechanics and volunteers from the Pedal Power racing team. He’s looking for some donated storage and work space so he can get more of the bikes to refugees sooner.

“Bikes are like gold for these refugees,” said Katie Weber of KRM. “It provides a way to run errands, and it opens up so many doors for jobs. They can ride to work, or ride home or to work from the bus line.”

One popular attraction was Berry Pedalers, which lets people help make themselves a fruit smoothie on two blenders powered by converted bicycles.

“He builds the bikes and I tell him what color to paint them,” said Jarah Jones, an art teacher at Sayre School who runs the business with her husband, Shane Tedder.

“It’s a really fun way to get people thinking differently about food, power and transportation,” said Tedder, who is UK’s sustainability coordinator.

Berry Pedalers is a regular at the Lexington Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, selling bicycle-blended smoothies made from locally grown fruit and berries.

“Lexington has completely changed when it comes to bicycles,” Yates said. “Look at the diversity here; it’s amazing. You have families, kids, racers, commuters. The common denominator is bikes.”

We learned a lot about Madison, but we also learned a lot about Lexington, each other and maybe ourselves.

About 260 Central Kentuckians spent three days last week on Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual Leadership Visit. Like many others I spoke with, I left Wisconsin’s capital city thinking the same thing I did last May when we left Austin, Texas.

Metro Lexington is a more beautiful place, with better year-round weather, than either of those cities. So why do they rank higher on national surveys of quality of life and economic vitality?

It’s not about the place so much as the attitudes of the people who live there.

Rebecca Ryan, a Madison-based consultant hired by Commerce Lexington to speak, succinctly described the challenge for any city that wants to succeed in the future: “How do we build a place that the next generation will be homesick for?”

Madison, like Austin, is a national magnet for next-generation talent. Lexington, by comparison, attracts less of it — and often has trouble keeping home-grown talent.

Lexington is a great place, and it is doing a lot of things right. As many people pointed out, it has made enormous progress, especially in the past few years.

But this is the real question: Are the cities Lexington competes with for talent making more progress?

Lexingtonians like to avoid controversy, and they can be polite to a fault. But those who went to Madison had some frank discussions about the civic traits that often can get in the way of progress in Lexington.

Like other Kentuckians, we are quick to criticize, find fault and run ourselves down. We often don’t recognize the good things about Lexington, or take personal responsibility for helping to solve problems. We like to talk and study but are slow to act. We don’t like change. We listen to outsiders, but ignore innovative people among us.

We don’t integrate our universities into the rest of the community as well as Madison and Austin do. We don’t value education — or educated people — as much as those cities do. We won’t embrace and celebrate our creative entrepreneurs as much as those cities do.

For example, while the Commerce Lexington group was in Madison, Alltech had 1,200 people from more than 70 countries in Lexington for a symposium on sustainable agriculture. Alltech is one of Kentucky’s most innovative companies, yet the only things most people here know about it are that it makes Kentucky Ale and is sponsoring the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Next year’s Commerce Lexington trip will be a first: a visit to Pittsburgh in conjunction with Greater Louisville Inc. The trip’s focus will be regional cooperation.

While everyone agreed that is a great idea, many also thought another approach is needed.

“It’s time to take a trip to Lexington to see all the things that we are doing,” said Urban County Councilman Jay McChord.

He also said different segments of the community should mix it up more: “We should create salad bowls, rather than salad bars where everything is kept separate.”

Some suggested retreats to regional assets such as Berea and Centre colleges, or a meeting in Lexington to follow up on ideas from past city visits and measure progress. Others suggested that Commerce Lexington promote local speaking opportunities for Lexington’s brightest minds in business and academia.

During the visit, Madison leaders spoke about their city’s environmental leadership and emerging technology companies. They talked about strong neighborhoods and citizen engagement. They discussed the value people there place on education and high-level academic research that will create the jobs of the future.

“This community is focused on solving problems,” said Police Chief Noble Wray.

One message came through loud and clear: It’s not about the place so much as the attitudes of the people who live there.

Lexington must do more to leverage its “social capital.” All of it.

Cities such as Madison and Austin are more open to people who are different. They value diversity and strive for inclusion. They are, the consultant Ryan said, places where “what’s your idea is more important than who’s your daddy.”

It was a point that had many of the Lexingtonians shaking their heads in agreement — especially the 20- and 30-somethings who kept saying, in so many words: Give us more reasons to stay in Lexington. Please.

Despite significant improvement in recent years, Lexington remains divided by race and class. Too many aspects of community life are as starkly black or white as the plank fences that surround our horse farms.

For example, many Lexingtonians do not welcome Latinos, even though the local economy would collapse without them. Gays and lesbians often feel shunned. Young people of all races complain they are not valued — or listened to.

How many white people attend the annual Roots & Heritage Festival? How many blacks and whites attend Festival Latino?

Dr. Michael Karpf, who came from Los Angeles in 2003 to become the University of Kentucky’s executive vice president for health affairs, said Lexington is more diverse than many people realize, but it doesn’t celebrate its diversity.

Karpf spends as much time as anyone trying to attract top talent to Lexington. He said the city must work harder to overcome stereotypes many outsiders have about Kentucky.

“We’ve got a bad history when it comes to diversity,” Mayor Jim Newberry said in his speech at the end of the trip. “It’s better. But I full well appreciate the fact we’ve got a lot of work that remains to be done.”

It is valuable to look to other successful cities for ideas and inspiration. But if Lexingtonians really want to compete for top talent, we also must look in the mirror.

Commerce Lexington will partner with Greater Louisville Inc. to do a joint leadership visit next year to Pittsburgh, officials announced Wednesday at the end of the trip to Madison.

They said it would be a big step toward greater regional cooperation between Kentucky’s two largest cities.

It will be the first time in the 70-year history of Lexington’s leadership visit that the city has done a joint trip with Louisville.

Pittsburgh is a great destination for such a visit, because the city has a great recent history of regional cooperation, with 30 counties in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio working closely together on common issues, Commerce Lexington officials said.

“If they can do that, we certainly ought to bridge the divide between Louisville and Lexington,” said Kim Menke of Toyota. “As we come up with things that are good for the commonwealth we can speak with one voice.”

Menke, who will be Commerce Lexington’s 2010 chair, made the announcement along with this year’s chair, Woodford Webb.

The Madison trip attracted 260 people from central Kentucky. Greater Louisville Inc.’s annual leadership visit has about 125 people attendees, so next year’s trip could have a big group. Menke said UK and the University of Louisville will be important partners with the two chambers of commerce in making the trip succeed.

After the announcement was made, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson made some remarks via video.

“Not only can we learn about Pittsburgh, but more importantly we can learn from each other,” Abramson said. “We have more in common than what separates us.”

Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry joked: “For the first time, I can say ‘I love Louisville.’”

On the second night of each year’s Commerce Lexington trip, central Kentucky banks sponsor a big dinner.

This year’s event was held Tuesday night at the new  Overture Center for the Arts, an impressive $205 million downtown facility that was a gift to the city from Madison businessman W. Jerome Frautsch.

The center includes performance space, a contemporary art museum and this fabulous room where the Lexington visitors dined.

Click each photo to enlarge.

Arthur Ross, Madison's pedestrian-bicycle coordinator, led a bike tour that included five Urban County Council members. Photo by Tom Eblen

One of the most popular optional activities during Commerce Lexington’s trip to Madison, WI, was a bicycle tour of the city’s extensive trail network.

It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect Tuesday afternoon: sunny and in the 70s.

About 50 Lexington visitors paid to rent bikes for a 7-12 mile ride. The group included five six Urban County Council members: Kevin Stinnett, George Myers, Doug Martin, Chuck Ellinger, Jay McChord and Tom Blues.

Madison is regarded as one of the nation’s best cities for bicycling and walking, with a 150-mile network of trails. Many of the trails are popular recreation facilities, especially those around the lakes on either side of downtown Madison.

But what was notable was how trails and bike lanes have been integrated into Madison’s street and sidewalk network. It’s not a novelty; it’s serious transportation and a tool for better connecting Madison’s neighborhoods, businesses and public venues.

The city requires new developments and buildings to have parking facilities for bicycles as well as cars. And when it snows — as it does a lot here — trails are cleared as quickly as streets, because so many people bike to work, said Arthur Ross, Madison’s pedestrian-bicycle coordinator.

In addition to commuters and recreational riders, many people now run errands on bikes and a growing number of businesses are using them to make deliveries, Ross said.

While some neighborhoods have resisted new trails, fearing they would bring in a “bad element,” there’s no evidence of that. Ross said property values of homes often rise after trails are built near them.

Ross noted that trails are especially important in cul de sac neighborhoods. The intent of cul de sacs is to isolate people from the impact of automobiles and traffic, but they shouldn’t isolate people from each other, he said.

The key to successful integration of trails, bike lanes and roads is public education and good design that minimizes traffic conflicts. That was evident during the trail ride, as intersections where the trail crossed streets were carefully marked for both drivers and cyclists. Most roads also accommodate bicycles.

Halfway through the tour, the group stopped for lunch at Strand Associates, a Madison-based engineering firm with a vice president who lives in Lexington, Mike Woolum. Strand is doing the design work for Lexington’s Legacy Trail, which by the end of next year will connect downtown Lexington with the Kentucky Horse Park.

Madison is a “green” city, and for any of the Commerce Lexington visitors who didn’t believe it, there was a pair of green-colored glasses and a copy of the booklet Green Living for Dummies at their seat.

Seriously, Madison, WI, has long been a pioneer among American cities in looking for ways to improve environmental sustainability. It was among the first cities with curbside recycling, and energy conservation has always been big — thanks to high power costs and below-zero winters.

Other cities and businesses are following Madison’s examples, not just because it’s a good thing to do, but because it makes economic sense and will make even more sense in the future as energy prices rise and the world grapples with increasingly complex environmental issues and depletion of fossil fuels.

“The environmental movement is not a trend,” said Sonya Newenhouse, president of Madison Environmental Group. “It’s like the civil rights movement or the women’s movement.”

Newenhouse was an interesting example not only of Madison’s focus on sustainability, but how its quality of life attracts and retains talented people who build its economic future.

There’s an often-told joke here that Madison’s cab drivers all have PhDs because they came here to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, didn’t want to leave but couldn’t find jobs.

When Newenhouse finished her PhD at the university and couldn’t find a job doing what she wanted to do — environmental sustainability consulting — she started her own firm. It has grown substantially, and now she has started a second company, too.

“I was one of those PhD students who never left,” she said. “I got into the transportation business, although not cab-driving.”

Newenhouse’s firm helps companies become more environmentally friendly and energy efficient — and save money. Among its many services is developing parking and commuting plans.

Her firm also helps companies that are demolishing buildings figure out how to minimize waste. In Madison, 40 percent of landfill waste is from construction and demolition, and the city has laws that require as much as possible to be recycled so the landfills don’t fill up so fast.

A second company she started, Community Car, rents cars by the hour to people who occasionally need a car but don’t want the cost — or environmental impact — of driving one more than they really need.

Jeanne Hoffman, Madison’s sustainability coordinator, said many of the city’s environmental efforts are done in partnership with local companies. “The business community cooperates greatly with the city and with non-profits,” she said.

Among the initiatives are incentives to build environmentally friendly LEED-certified buildings and use sustainable energy. The city’s fire stations have solar thermal systems. There’s a growing interest here in developing wind power.

There are many rebates and tax incentives for installing solar panels to generate power, which people and companies can sell back to the local electric utility for a higher price than electricity they buy.

“It’s a wildly popular program,” Hoffman said. “Businesses had better start thinking about this because it’s going to affect their bottom line.”

Click on images to enlarge.

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to get up early and walk with my camera when the weather and light are good. Both were this morning.

Madison is a great city for walking, from the state capitol grounds to the pedestrian/public transportation corrider of State Street between downtown and the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Here are a few photos from this morning.  Click each image to enlarge it.

There’s a famous Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going to be, rather than where it is. That is as true for successful cities as it is for professional hockey players.

That was the advice Madison-based consultant Rebecca Ryan gave to the 260 Kentuckians who arrived in Madison, WI, on Monday for Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual Leadership Visit. She is the author of Live First, Work Second.

Where will the puck be for cities in the years to come?  Ryan — who knows more about basketball than hockey, because she used to play hoops professionally in Europe — said the talented workers of the future will choose where they want to live and find work, rather than following a job where it takes them.

She was talking specifically about younger generations, but a lot of older-generation folks in the audience were nodding their heads, too.

As part of her work for this trip, Ryan came to Lexington and studied its attributes, along with those of Madison and other cities that Lexington likes to compare itself to. She compares cities according to seven indexes she said will be important for future success.

Those indexes are: Job growth prospects; educational resources; the “social capital” of talent; diversity and civic engagement; the cost of living; what there is to do for fun after work; and how easy it is to get around a city, especially by walking, biking and mass transit.

Lexington scored high in job growth prospects and cost of living, but lagged the other cities in some other key areas (although it still did pretty well).

Her advice: Focus on quality of life issues that will retain natives and attract new residents. I loved the way she put the challenge: “How to build a place that the next generation will be homesick for.”

Ryan said  cities need to focus on building their “social capital” by being more welcoming of new ideas and diverse groups of people. She noted that one reason the Irish potato famine of the early 1800s was so devastating was that farmers there planted basically one variety of potato.

“How can Lexington be a more open community?” Ryan asked. “What’s your idea should be more important than who your daddy is.”

Ryan showed a photo of her modest home, which she said she carefully designed with an architect based on  qualities and functions that were important to her. “The power of living in a built space that is intentionally designed is so powerful,” she said.

Ryan said the experience emphasized to her the importance of good architecture and urban planning. That includes building a human-scaled city designed for people, rather than cars. She said Madison’s State Street pedestrian mall downtown is a magnet for local residents as well as visitors.

Ryan took those talking points from a classic 1961 book I happen to be reading now: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. I highly recommend it. Jacobs wrote the book to rail againt 1950s-era city planning ideas, which remained in fashion for decades and did a lot to damage cities, including Lexington.

Ryan looked at Lexington’s strengths and how it could build upon them. A key one she identified was developing more bicycle lanes and paths because Lexington is surrounded by so much bicycle-friendly countryside.

“This is a real area of potential for you,” she said, noting that Madison’s 150 miles of bike trails are a major civic asset.

I looked at the table behind me and noticed that two of Lexington’s biggest bike-trail boosters, Steve Austin of the Legacy Center and Urban County Councilman Jay McChord, had big smiles on their faces.

The Commerce Lexington trip began with several optional tours — Arts & Culture, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recreation, “green” Madison and downtown development.

I took the downtown development tour, which focused on an impressive new mixed-use project called University Square. It is a $180 million public-private partnership between a developer and the university that is built beside campus on a 3.4-acre site that had been a 1970s-era shopping center.

The most striking thing about University Square, which has won some design awards, is the clean, open contemporary architecture. One interesting feature is a roof garden on the fourth floor, with patio areas for residents and students and green plantings in trays around the roof.

About one-fourth of the space is planned for retail, although the poor economy has slowed that piece of the project. The university has one-fourth of the space, which is used for student services offices and space for student activities.

Half the building is a private development of upscale student apartments — 356 units that can hold 800 students. The apartments are quite nice — and not cheap. They rent for $1,000 per bedroom (units have one, two or three bedrooms).  Many students rent two-to-a-bedroom to save money.

At 1.1 million square feet, it is the largest mixed-use project ever done in Madison.

About $3 million in tax-increment financing was used for the enclosed parking areas, and the university invested about $57 million. The rest is private money, said Susan Springman, who works for the developer, Executive Management Inc.

The developer approached the university about the project in 1996. Construction began in 2006 and the building has been opening in phases over the past nine months. Springman said one thing that made the project possible was a close working relationship with the city.

This is one of the nicer of many new student housing apartment projects. Local officials say it has helped move students out of older homes in the neighborhoods surrounding the university, allowing families to start moving back into those and making the neighborhoods more stable.

About 260 Lexington area business, civic and government leaders were boarding two chartered jets early this morning for Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual leadership visit. This year’s destination: Madison, Wis.

The chamber of commerce visits a different city each year to see what progressive things it is doing and how some of those ideas might be used to improve Lexington. It’s also a great three-day networking opportunity for leaders in many spheres of Lexington life who might not otherwise get to know each other.

This year’s trip includes the mayors of Lexington, Richmond and Versailles, as well as Lexington’s vice mayor and several Urban County Council members, the police chief and school superintendent.

This is Commerce Lexington’s second visit to Madison; the first was in 1997. Last year, the trip went to Austin, Texas, and the year before, Boulder, Colo.

I’ll try to post updates here several times a day Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, I’ll follow up with a column in Friday’s Herald-Leader about lessons learned from the trip.

If you’re on Twitter, I’ll also be posting items at www.twitter.com/tomeblen.  Also check out Commerce Lexington’s Web site.

Will this be another downtown survey that is filed away and forgotten?

Or will Lexington follow through and take steps to leverage what’s left of its rich architectural past for a more prosperous future?

The city historic preservation division last week unveiled a survey of every building on 34 downtown blocks. It graded each pre-1965 structure’s historic and architectural merit as “outstanding,” “significant,” “contributing” or “non-contributing.”

Mayor Jim Newberry ordered the survey after controversy erupted last summer over developer Dudley Webb’s demolition of a block of buildings dating to 1826 to make way for the CentrePointe tower he has yet to begin building.

Preservationists were outraged, but Webb claimed the old buildings were insignificant and too dilapidated to reuse.

Newberry said a comprehensive survey was needed as “a reference point from which our conversation can begin” about which downtown buildings are worth renovating and reusing.

“That will be a substantial step in the right direction so our discussions can be more productive than they have been in the past,” Newberry said last week. “I think it’s healthy for us to have a community discussion of those values now rather than in the heat of the battle.”

Newberry also ordered code enforcement officers to sweep downtown to make sure old buildings aren’t suffering “demolition by neglect” as many of those on the CentrePointe block had.

The mayor’s strategy makes sense. The survey, which will be posted for public comment on www.lexingtonky.gov beginning Monday, is a useful first step.

But it is at least the third first step Lexington has taken in the past three decades.

After an earlier downtown demolition controversy, then-Mayor Pam Miller commissioned a similar survey in 1993. Several of that survey’s “significant” buildings have since been demolished.

Most of the buildings on the CentrePointe block, which is now an empty mud hole, were rated “significant,” except for the 1826 building that housed Joe Rosenberg’s jewelry store, which was rated “outstanding.”

The 1994 survey recommended that the city prevent demolition of those buildings. It also recommended that the city “encourage property owners, through code enforcement, to provide continued maintenance for buildings in the area.”

The Kentucky Heritage Council has other downtown surveys, most done in 1979 and 1980 by architectural historian Walter Langsam. They describe in detail the architectural and historic merit of many of the now-demolished buildings on the CentrePointe block.

Do you see a pattern here? Many of the more than 50 people who came to a meeting last week to see the latest downtown survey did, too. They asked about next steps. Where do we go from here?

Lexington has done and continues to do a lot of good historic preservation, thanks to the Blue Grass Trust, other organizations and many dedicated individuals and businesses. Among them: Bank of the Bluegrass, Ben Kaufmann, Gray Construction, Thomas & King, Peter Armato, Holly Wiedemann.

And just west of downtown, visionary developers Barry McNees and Rob McGoodwin are working separately to redevelop industrial complexes built for two of Lexington’s former signature industries, bourbon and tobacco, into assets for the new economy.

But historic preservation has always been a struggle in Lexington, because too many people have the wrong idea about it. They see preservation as an economic drag instead of an economic engine.

Preservation is rarely about recreating the past to make a museum piece. Instead, it’s about mixing the best of the past and present to create interesting, useful buildings for the future that speak to Lexington’s unique heritage and culture.

It’s really not so much preservation as recycling.

Look carefully around Lexington and in other cities around the country and world and you will see fine old commercial buildings being given new life. And they’re usually a lot more special than the new, generic towers built by cost-conscious developers.

Downtown revitalization isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an ongoing process that requires vision, leadership and citizen engagement.

It’s not about creating laws for everything, because laws and process can do as much to prevent great development as bad development. The key is creating sensible, flexible laws that allow leaders, under the watchful eyes of citizens, to help a city achieve its potential.

During the next few weeks, as citizens comment on the latest downtown building survey, Urban County Council members should adopt the Downtown Master Plan and proposed new zoning laws. They, business leaders and interested citizens also should look at strategies other cities are using to protect their historic assets and recycle them for the future.

Creating a successful downtown Lexington isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. But we’ll never get very far if all we ever take are first steps.

This 1826 building, one of the first Greek Revival structures built in Lexington during the mid-1800s, was demolished for CentrePointe. Photo by Tom Eblen

A little late to the party, as usual, I have joined Twitter.

The Herald-Leader’s hilariously good parenting blogger, Heather Chapman, had been after me for months to join Twitter. And I had been watching other colleagues such as Rich Copley and John Clay make good use of the 140-character instant headline software.  Then, Rich wrote a good column about Twitter last week.

I’m not a technophobe. In fact, just the opposite. I’m late joining Twitter for the same reason I put off getting a BlackBerry a few years ago and procrastinated on joining Facebook. I knew I would love them too much and they would take up a lot of my time, which they do. But they’re wonderful tools, and I suspect Twitter will turn out to be, too.

How will I use Twitter?  I have no idea. I’ll start figuring it out next week while 260 other folks from Lexington and I are on the Commerce Lexington trip to Madison, Wis.  You can follow by “tweets” here: @tomeblen.

If you want to change, you must expose yourself to new ideas.

That’s why I’m a fan of Commerce Lexington’s annual Leadership Visit. On Monday, more than 260 of Lexington’s government, business and civic leaders will board two chartered jets to Madison, Wis., for the 70th annual trip.

Each year, Commerce Lexington sponsors the three-day trip to a different city in search of ideas for improving Lexington.

(Another reason I’m a fan of the trip is that it helps influential people from different areas of the community get to know each other, and it brings new people into the leadership circle.)

Many of those on the trip will be business executives. Others include Lexington’s mayor, vice mayor, police chief and most members of the Urban County Council, as well as the mayors of Richmond and Versailles. Fayette Schools Superintendent Stu Silberman is going, along with representatives of four colleges and universities.

Last year’s trip to Austin, Texas, underscored the importance of “weird” creativity in building a city’s economy. It also showed how live music and other entertainment venues can attract creative young people and become an economic engine.

The year before, the people who went to Boulder, Colo., brought home the idea that walking and bicycle trails can improve a city’s quality of life — and, again, attract creative talent. That helped jump-start various trail-building efforts around Lexington.

Like those cities and others previously visited, Madison and Lexington have a lot in common. They’re about the same size and have beautiful natural settings, a major research university and other good institutions of higher learning.

The University of Wisconsin has reached the University of Kentucky’s goal of becoming a Top 20 research university. Madison is much farther along than Lexington in attracting and developing high-tech companies. Madison has a more educated population and higher per-capita income.

Madison and Lexington both often show up on national rankings of great places to live and work, although Madison often ends up higher on the list.

“Quality of life” is sometimes a hard-to-define characteristic, but everyone agrees it will be vital for cities to thrive in the 21st century economy. That is because technology and digital communications give companies and individuals more freedom to choose their location.

Among the topics on the Lexington visitors’ agenda: arts and culture, downtown development, recreation and environmental sustainability. They’ll hear from Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and Rebecca Ryan, founder of Madison-based Next Generation Consulting and author of Live First, Work Second, who will report on her impressions of Lexington.

Commerce Lexington has visited Madison before, in 1997. And similarities between the two cities led the Herald-Leader to send reporter Jamie Gumbrecht there nearly three years ago to do her own comparison.

Among the things that struck Gumbrecht about Madison were the close town-gown relationship and the emphasis on walking (a major pedestrian thoroughfare, State Street), biking (150 miles of trails and bike lanes everywhere) and opportunities for people to gather for events or just to hang out (50 live music venues and a huge lakefront commons).

For my own quick preview, I consulted an old friend, Ellen Foley, a Madison resident and former editor of the city’s largest newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal. What, I asked her, makes Madison such a great city?

Foley cited qualities that may not be readily apparent on a quick visit. Madison has a history of being open to new ideas and different kinds of people, including immigrants. It has long valued education, partly because those immigrants saw education as the way to get ahead.

She mentioned a vibrant, innovative business community and a deep sense of community philanthropy and civic engagement.

“We care about each other. We take actions to help each other,” she said. “We still go to the city council meetings that last until 3 a.m. Way before micro-blogging, our neighborhoods had active oral networks that shared stories and issues. We had a huge controversy in our neighborhood about putting islands in a busy street to slow traffic. One big issue was who was going to plant flowers in this island, and which flowers!”

For another perspective, I consulted a new friend, Rebecca Self, education director of Seedleaf, a non-profit group that promotes affordable, community-grown food in Lexington. A Lexington native, Self has lived in Madison and will be among those going on the Commerce Lexington trip.

Self said Madison residents feel a responsibility to get involved in civic affairs, and seem to be more proud of their city than Lexingtonians are of theirs.

“I think their self-pride actually helped to create their reputation,” she said. “From starting out in a place where they believed in themselves and their potential rather than doubting it, they were able to do some pretty impressive things, many of which I hope we’ll see and in some way replicate.”
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Now that the 70th anniversary Celebrity Curtain Call show is over, it’s safe for me to confess that I, too, am a Lexington Children’s Theatre alumnus.

I was hardly a giant of the stage. In fact, I was a dwarf — one of seven in the spring 1967 production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

My third-grade teacher told my mother that I seemed to be a frustrated actor. She suggested I try out for Lexington Children’s Theatre.

I ended up as the dwarf “Happy.”  The only line I remember was my response to Snow White’s critique of housekeeping in the dwarfs’ cottage. “Dust?  What’s that?”  (Perhaps that’s why my wife prefers me to vacuum and leave the dusting to her.)

Children’s Theatre was fun, although I apparently showed little talent for acting. But, then, we 8-year-old dwarfs were easily overshadowed by the show’s lead. Even at age 12, it was obvious she would become a star.

Five years later, Lydia Hodson became Kentucky’s Junior Miss, then America’s Junior Miss. After attending Transylvania University and graduating from George Washington University, Hodson went into television. She and Sam Dick were co-hosts of PM Magazine on WKYT-TV from 1979 to 1982. She went on to do a similar show in Louisville, married composer Phil Copeland and had a son, Ashton.

In 1986, she was diagnosed with Hodgekin’s lymphoma. She fought the disease and beat it, but the treatments left her body weak. She died from respiratory problems in October 1991.

It’s a shame Hodson wasn’t here to celebrate Lexington Children’s Theatre’s 70th anniversary. I have no doubt she would have been one of the stars of the show.

That is me, fourth from the left, beside Lydia Hodson as Snow White.

Bill Samuels’ speech to the Bluegrass Hospitality Association was a lot like the Maker’s Mark bourbon his company produces: smooth with a distinct flavor — and a kick.

Samuels talked Wednesday about how Kentucky has a monopoly on making premium bourbon. How it is a growing industry, which has doubled production since 1999. How it directly employs 3,200 people, has made $100 million in capital investment and creates $3 billion in gross state product.

Then he talked about how bourbon is creating a spinoff tourism and hospitality industry with huge growth potential that could rival Scotland’s whisky trail and California’s wine country.

Samuels unveiled a new logo and souvenir passport for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a 10-year-old marketing effort that he said has brought millions of tourists to the eight participating distilleries.

Then he delivered the kick.

Samuels blasted state officials, accusing them of trying to kill the bourbon industry with excessive taxes and unfair sales restrictions. And he signaled that the industry will be fighting back.

“We’re not looking for subsidies from our commonwealth,” Samuels said. “But we’re sure as hell not looking to be thrown under the bus.”

The bourbon industry is smarting over the General Assembly’s eleventh-hour move earlier this year to balance the state budget by adding the 6 percent sales tax to alcohol.

On Kentucky Derby weekend, a group of industry players ran full-page newspaper ads in Lexington and Louisville demanding that the governor and legislature reconsider.

“Kentuckians already pay the second-highest taxes on beverage alcohol in the U.S. We say enough is enough,” the ad said. “If you see the governor or one of our legislators during the Derby Season, let them know what you think of their unfair tax policies because it’s time to restore common sense to the Commonwealth.”

The Kentucky Distillers’ Association is working on developing a legislative strategy, President Eric Gregory said. He said the industry wants to make sure it has “a seat at the table” when lawmakers discuss much-needed tax reform.

“There are now seven different taxes on bourbon,” Gregory said. “That’s insane.”

Why is liquor so heavily taxed? Because it’s an easy political mark, especially in a state where many Christian denominations consider drinking a sin. Forty-nine of Kentucky’s 120 counties ban alcohol sales, and an additional 41 counties restrict them. A big reason for that is church folks and their legislators.

“I travel all over the world, and the only place I have ever heard the signature product, the signature industry, referred to as sin is in Kentucky,” Samuels said.

“If the majority of our elected officials believe that what we’re producing is sin, we need to confront it. And if they win, we need to shut all this stuff down, because we wouldn’t want to embarrass them. I would contend that’s an issue that needs to be dealt with. We’ve got to call their hand on it. We’re going to force that issue.”

Last year, Rep. Steve Riggs, a Louisville Democrat, suggested that only “wet” counties should receive the benefits of future alcohol taxes. In a General Assembly dominated by legislators from those mostly rural “dry” counties, the idea went nowhere.

Samuels suggested legislation removing all local-option restrictions and forcing counties that want to ban alcohol sales to vote “dry” again. And, he said, those that did should not get any alcohol tax revenues.

“It was estimated that to do that would have raised twice as much money as adding the tax, which took our product, of this signature industry, to the second-highest in the country,” he said.

State tax receipts on distilled spirits dropped by more than half last month as the new tax took effect. But it’s too early to know if that was because of the tax, the overall economy, or simply because people stocked up before the new tax went into effect.

Samuels had two points to make to the tourism people. One was that the bourbon industry is a major, growing contributor to Kentucky’s economy. The second was that bourbon-related tourism and hospitality has huge growth potential.

“This is the cheapest economic investment that the state could make,” he said of lowering taxes on the bourbon industry. “In my judgment, (bourbon-related tourism) has every bit the potential for being for Central Kentucky what Napa and Sonoma are for California. But if the industry itself is not viable, it has no chance.”

American foreign policy during the past four months has looked much different than it did during the previous eight years.

Many people have contrasted the approaches of President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. They also have compared Obama with other American presidents since World War II.

George Herring of Lexington is taking a longer view — a much longer view.

George Herring. Photo by Matt Goins

Herring, a retired University of Kentucky professor, is a leading authority on the history of American foreign policy. He also is author of the much-praised book, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776, the seventh volume in the Oxford History of the United States.

Since its publication last fall, Herring’s book has been praised by reviewers for its comprehensive coverage, its analysis of major themes and its readability.

Herring said writing the book brought home to him how foreign relations have always been central to American history and success.

“There’s this myth of isolationist America,” he said. “But we are a nation that has behaved, from the very beginning, like a traditional great power. That means being aggressively, relentlessly expansionist. Vigorously defending our interests, and putting those interests above ideals when those things clashed.”

So far, Herring thinks Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been savvy and sophisticated about foreign affairs. But, he warned, Obama’s foreign policy “team of rivals” has yet to be tested.

Herring’s comments were echoed recently by Foreign Policy magazine, which asked experts to grade Obama’s performance so far. The results: 11 As, 16 Bs, 7 Cs — and a D from former Bush Administration official Elliott Abrams.

“I think the direction he’s moving is the right direction,” Herring said. “It accurately reflects where we stand in the world today. On style points, he has been spectacular. He has done some remarkable things.”

Chief among them, in Herring’s view, has been tempering the notion that America always knows best and can unilaterally dictate policies to other countries and determine outcomes.

Herring said such “American exceptionalism” has tripped up presidents for generations.

“People don’t like to be lectured,” he said. “They don’t like to hear other people talk about how great they are and how right they are. The other thing may be that it blinds you to the limits of your power.”

Herring said race, and sometimes racism, has played a major role in the history of U.S. foreign policy. The fact that Obama is a black man from a multicultural family gives him special credibility and standing with many foreign nations and leaders.

Herring sees Obama’s willingness to engage the leaders of other nations — even bitter enemies — as a positive sign, based on historical experience. Fresh approaches to dealing with Russia and Iran, for example, could be in our long-term interest.

Herring noted that Obama has been seeking the middle ground on many issues. His administration also has followed some paths that the Bush administration had started down during its final two years in office, such as relations with Europe and Israel and strategies for dealing with Iraq’s insurgency.

“The breaks or changes between administrations are never quite as sharp as the new administration would like you to believe,” Herring said. “Changing policy is often like turning around a huge aircraft carrier in stormy seas. So many positions are fixed it’s hard to change in terms of domestic politics.”

The economic rise of China and India — and perhaps Russia and even Brazil — will continue to make global politics more complicated. Although America is the leading world power, it is hardly the only one.

From the perspective of domestic politics, many of Obama’s approaches to foreign policy could be risky. If things don’t go well, he could be accused of being weak.

“There are no quick solutions to these problems; It’s going to require a patience on the part of Americans that is not part of our national character,” Herring said.

“When you get down to cases, the chances of a good outcome on Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, all of these things, is very much up in the air,” he said. “These are problems that don’t have easy solutions, or perhaps any solutions at all.”