The Bluegrass and Beyond

At the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center’s conference last month, people talked about how much more economic progress this state could make if cities and their surrounding counties worked together.

Jim Host thinks they’re right — but that they’re thinking too small. That’s no surprise; few Kentuckians think as big as Host.

The Ashland native turned college sports marketing into a business empire and headed the Commerce Cabinet and state parks system. Host, 71, was the first chairman of the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games before stepping down to focus on building a new sports arena in downtown Louisville.

Host is a longtime Lexington resident who spends much of his time in Louisville. He said his experience has convinced him Kentucky will never achieve its full potential until its two biggest cities get beyond their rivalries and develop a close economic partnership with each other and the counties between them.

“Kentucky’s (economic) capital is between Lexington and Louisville,” Host said. “The limited resources of this state can’t afford for there not to be cooperation.”

America’s economy is experiencing fundamental change, with such longtime engines as California and Florida losing their luster. Host thinks that could be an opportunity for Kentucky.

Kentucky’s central location makes it ideal for companies such as Amazon.com, which has huge warehouses in Lexington and Campbellsville, and United Parcel Service, whose air freight hub is in Louisville.

Other industries — including Toyota, at Georgetown — have grown up between the two largest cities. Harley Davidson is considering Shelby County as the site for a 1,000-employee plant.

Many people whose jobs give them the flexibility to live anywhere have come to or stayed in Kentucky because it has a mix of city amenities, picturesque small towns and rural areas with natural beauty and recreation opportunities.

“How many people do you know who could afford to live anywhere, but they choose to live here?” Host asked.

States such as North Carolina, California and Minnesota have spurred economic development by forging close ties among their cities and universities.

Kentucky is catching on.

Commerce Lexington and Greater Louisville Inc. will make their first joint city visit in May, to Pittsburgh. Officials have said they see the trip as a step toward closer economic cooperation.

The 2010 World Equestrian Games are a great opportunity for Lexington to work with Louisville to showcase the larger region’s assets and potential. “Many top CEOs will come to the Games, and we won’t even know they’re here,” Host said.

Universities have huge potential to spur economic development, and Kentucky can no longer afford for the universities of Kentucky and Louisville to not be joined at the hip, Host said.

“There’s a lot more going on than people realize,” University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. said when asked about that. A UK spokesman said there are 54 joint research projects, worth $24.4 million, between UK and U of L faculty.

But Host thinks there could be much more coordination and sharing of resources. He noted the two universities’ boards of trustees have never met together — at least not in anyone’s memory.

Part of the challenge, Host said, will be for Lexington and Louisville to convince the rest of the state that what’s good for them is good for everyone. That’s because infrastructure investment and economic development in the cities benefits the entire state through commuter jobs, spinoff industries and shared tax revenues.

“This is not to be in competition with the rest of the state, but to provide revenue for the rest of the state,” Host said.

Fayette and Jefferson counties together accounted for 22.5 percent of state real and tangible personal property tax receipts during fiscal 2009, according to the Revenue Cabinet, which doesn’t track sales tax collections by county.

The cultural and psychological distance between Lexington and Louisville has always been much greater than the 75 miles that separate them. A lot of that comes down to Wildcat blue and Cardinal red.

“It’s part of what we grew up with here — we don’t mess with U of L because they’re our arch-enemy,” said Host, a huge sports fan who once played baseball for UK and admits to bleeding blue. “That can be the case in athletics, but it can’t be the case any longer in academics.”

The bottom line is that Lexington and Louisville must become partners instead of rivals, and the rest of Kentucky must realize that as the economies of those cities go, so goes the rest of the state.

“Sometimes a bad economy causes things to be thought through better,” Host said. “Kentucky is a state with limited resources; we have to focus on how we can make one plus one equal four.”

It’s astounding when you think about it: Lexington Mall has been dead or dying since before this year’s high school graduates were born.

It’s even more astounding when you realize that the 30-acre site could be one of the hottest pieces of real estate in Lexington if it were redeveloped by someone able to think outside the big box.

Built in the 1970s, when malls were all the rage and suburban sprawl was in full bloom, Lexington Mall began declining in the early 1990s. Tenants moved out, complaining that Maryland-based Saul Centers wasn’t maintaining the place.

The last lonely tenant moved out in 2005, when Dillard’s closed its store. Since then, Lexington Mall’s doors have been boarded up and fenced off and its vast blacktop parking lot has cracked and crumbled.

City officials have been wringing their hands over Lexington Mall for years. Developers have tried unsuccessfully to buy it. Every few years, Saul breaks its silence and says the mall will be redeveloped. Then nothing happens.

Lexington Mall is out of sight and out of mind for its absentee landlord. But it has been much on the minds of local developers and landscape architects. Here’s why: The mall sits on a huge piece of prime land inside New Circle Road, situated between the city’s Idle Hour Park and the reservoir.

“It’s one of the few sites in Lexington with a water view,” said Brian Lee, a University of Kentucky landscape architecture professor whose students have studied the site for academic exercises in urban redevelopment.

The property fronts both New Circle and Richmond roads, and it is just 3 miles from downtown by way of the city’s most beautiful, upscale thoroughfare. There are schools, a fire station and shopping nearby.

Developers I talked with agreed that the site shouldn’t be another mall or Hamburg-style big-box retail center.

With a zoning change, they said, the site would be ideal for a “new urban” mixed-use village of one- to five-story buildings with shops, offices, condos and apartments, all situated on traditional streets and buffered by green space. Businesses on the mall’s edge — Home Depot, Applebee’s and Perkins restaurant, and Central Bank — could easily be worked into a new design plan.

“It seems like the idea of a cluster of smaller retail shops around a common green and serving as a village center with perhaps loft residential or office might have some merit,” said Morgan McIlwain, a landscape architect with M2D Design Group. The group’s recent work includes the site plan for the new Bluegrass Community and Technical College campus on the Eastern State Hospital site.

“It goes nicely with this notion of infill,” McIlwain added. “We could get higher density and not sprawl so much.”

Tom Low, a principal in the Charlotte, N.C., firm DPZ Architects and Town Planners — the firm most famous for designing a similar development in Seaside, Fla. — sent me an interesting diagram of examples for converting a site similar to Lexington Mall into a village-style development.

One developer cited the example also of Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve also seen such projects in Charlotte, N.C., and Williamsburg, Va. When the economy and lending environment improves, something like that could make sense.

First, though, executives at Saul Centers need to find a map and remember where Lexington is. Then they need to find a calendar and realize it’s 2009, not 1990.

Then, maybe, they will partner with or sell Lexington Mall to a developer with the vision to turn one of this city’s most prominent examples of urban decay into a vibrant piece of the urban landscape.

Examples of how an old mall can be redeveloped into a mixed-use project with multiple buildings, streets and green space. Image: DPZ

Maybe creating a vibrant downtown isn’t so much about grand plans as small spaces.

One small space with potential is the block of North Mill Street between West Main and Short streets. It retains most of its old buildings, which now house places to eat, drink and work. Developer Nick Ebbitt is converting the upstairs of several buildings into loft condos.

The block is in the middle of downtown’s emerging action: Galleries, restaurants and bars have sprouted along Short and in Victorian Square; Dudley’s is moving there; Cheapside is alive with the farmers market and other events that will only increase in popularity when a market house is built.

But plans for Mill Street are controversial because developers want to close the street to traffic and eliminate a handful of parking spaces.

I don’t see a big problem with that, but several people, whose opinions on these matters I respect, do. They think it’s important to keep that block as a regular street, at least during the day. Pedestrian malls have been successful in some cities, including Charlottesville, Va., but they have failed in others.

The key seems to be striking a balance between cars and people to create flexible, inviting spaces where people want to spend time and businesses can succeed.

A grass-roots plan by property owners along Esplanade between East Main and Short streets has the potential to do just that. It seems like a good, reasonably priced idea that could be adapted for Mill Street and other places in Lexington, too.

The plan is the work of Gene Williams and Art Shechet, two of the partners in Natasha’s restaurant. Natasha’s developed a loyal following with its high-quality ethnic food, and the business has expanded by adding a music stage with nightly performances by local bands, emerging artists and occasional big-name acts.

Esplanade, which is fortunate to have wide sidewalks, will host a street fair during next fall’s Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. And that got the partners to thinking about the possibilities of a more flexibly designed Esplanade that could take advantage of an adjacent, little-used park on the Chase Bank tower property.

They figure the project could be done for less than $500,000 without closing Esplanade — and adding daytime parking spaces to the west side of the street, where there are none now. They also would plant shade trees that would be lighted at night.

In the evenings, resurfaced parking spaces in front of Natasha’s and the Lexington Club could be converted into outdoor dining areas. With some remodeling to open up the Chase park, there could be room for a temporary stage and booths during community events and festivals.

The result would be a small, flexible public square similar to those that help make European cities fun places to spend time.

Architect Farzin Sadr, who owns Natasha’s building and has his offices upstairs, drew up some initial plans. Natasha’s partners have enlisted support from other nearby property owners, including Chase tower and Central Christian Church.

Williams and Shechet unveiled their plan at an Aug. 18 breakfast for Mayor Jim Newberry and Urban County Council members. They soon will ask that the project be added to the city’s downtown streetscape work — ideally before the Equestrian Games.

“We’re latecomers to the table, but we think this plan makes sense and would be a lot of bang for the buck,” Williams said.

“We also think it would move the center of gravity back a bit to the east end,” he said. “We want an anchor here that is social and speaks to an older crowd and more family groups.”

Natasha’s partners think this could be an easy, highly visible downtown success story that would have relatively little cost or controversy. I suspect they’re right.

In case you missed them, the Herald-Leader carried two excellent op-ed columns Sunday and Monday from two of Lexington’s most knowledgeable and passionate advocates for smart growth and preservation of what’s special in the Bluegrass.

Here’s the Sunday piece by Knox van Nagell, executive director of The Fayette Alliance.

Here’s the Monday piece by Hayward Wilkirson, who was a founding board member of Preserve Lexington, which last year opposed destruction of a historic block that’s now a downtown meadow.

Readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine recently voted the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville as the nation’s best hotel.

It was in the news last week and discussed on NBC’s Today Show this week.

“It sounds like the idea behind this is brilliant,” said Today Show host Matt Lauer, who seemed barely able to hide his surprise that Kentucky could be on the cutting edge of anything.

The 90-room luxury hotel that houses a public, all-hours contemporary art museum really is brilliant, and the Today Show and Conde Nast Traveler are just the most recent examples of the positive buzz it has created for Louisville.

The 21C was the brainchild of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, who worked with Lexington-based Gray Construction to create the museum/hotel by renovating and connecting four century-old buildings.

The complex is not far from developer Bill Weyland’s Glassworks art and office complex and Louisville Slugger factory and museum. They are all on Louisville’s West Main Street, in renovated old buildings that less imaginative developers would have demolished.

These attractions have sparked a vibrant entertainment district popular with locals and visitors alike. Last year, the American Planning Association named West Main Street as one of the nation’s 10 best streets.

Gray Construction’s chairman, Lexington Vice Mayor Jim Gray, worked closely with Brown and Wilson to create 21C - and it wasn’t easy. Some of the buildings needed new foundations and steel reinforcement. “There was one day when we almost lost one of them,” he said.

But Brown and Wilson never considered tearing down the old buildings, Gray said. And it wasn’t just because the $180-a-square-foot cost of renovation was cheaper than new construction.

“They knew that the character of the old buildings was what would inspire and create the energy for the project,” Gray said. “Within the frame of the old buildings they were going to create something new and contemporary and inspiring.”

Last year, during Lexington’s debate over the now-stalled CentrePointe project, Gray often mentioned 21C as an alternative approach to the generic skyscraper developer Dudley Webb planned. Webb could create something special by saving some of the 14 old buildings he wanted to tear down and weaving them into a quality piece of contemporary architecture.

Webb wasn’t interested. The old buildings weren’t worth saving, he said, even though renovation would have been cheaper than new construction.

So, here we are more than a year later. The block has been cleared of 180 years of Lexington history. CentrePointe is stalled and probably dead. Louisville has 21C and a lot of national buzz. Lexington has a pasture in the middle of town and a missed opportunity.

But it’s not Lexington’s only opportunity.

A few blocks away, developer Barry McNees is scraping together money to create the Lexington Distillery District. His vision is to renovate two abandoned bourbon distilleries and other industrial buildings in one of the city’s long-neglected neighborhoods. They would become the nucleus for a mixed-use neighborhood reflecting Lexington’s heritage and authentic culture.

The Distillery District is struggling amid the credit crunch. Still, the 150-year-old Old Tarr Distillery warehouse has become Buster’s, a popular nightclub. Galleries and artists’ studios are sprouting nearby.

“You clean that place up and it’s a destination,” Gray said of the Distillery District. “There’s nothing like it in Lexington, and that’s what appeals to people.”

So here’s the question for May Jim Newberry’s administration and Lexington’s business leadership: Where should this city place its bet? Will a prosperous future look more like what’s happening on Louisville’s West Main Street, or what’s been happening for 30 years on Lexington’s West Main Street?

I returned to Lexington this week after a long vacation to find that CentrePit had been transformed into a grassy meadow, and workers were installing a classic horse-farm fence around the perimeter.

The past half-century of Lexington’s growth has been defined by grassy meadows and horse-farm fences giving way to homes, office buildings and shopping centers.

Dudley Webb may go down in history as the only Lexington developer to do just the opposite. And he did it in the center of town, on a block that has been developed urban space since the 1700s.

Seriously, though, I have to give Webb credit. I’ve always thought his CentrePointe development was poorly conceived and not in the community’s best interests. The fact that he can’t seem to find financing for the $250 million project speaks to some of its issues.

But in this instance, Webb is doing the right thing: Making his demolition site look attractive until he and landowner Joe Rosenberg decide the block’s ultimate fate.

Other local developers of stalled projects, such as at the corner of Richmond Road and Man O’ War Boulevard, and abandoned eyesores, such as Lexington Mall, should follow his lead.

Thank you, Dudley Webb.

Fencing is installed around the CentrePointe block. Photo by David Perry

After announcing Tuesday that the state would find money to bury power lines along the Newtown Pike extension, Gov. Steve Beshear remarked that if we hadn’t done this project right, we would have regretted it for decades.

He’s right about that. And it’s scary how close it came to being done wrong.

Many people deserve credit for quickly changing the course of this project and saving it from mediocrity, including Beshear, Mayor Jim Newberry and several Urban County Council members.

But after city officials take their bow, they need to take a hard look at why this sort of thing happens too often in Lexington.

The Newtown Pike Extension has been on the drawing board in one form or another since the 1930s. As dreams turned into designs over the past few years, city officials promised the project would create a beautiful new gateway into Lexington, complete with a “signature” bridge.

Somehow, though, those dreams and promises didn’t make it into the state Transportation Cabinet’s blueprints.

Many people — including Urban County Council members — just assumed the power lines would be buried, rather than strung up on poles like those that clutter much of Lexington’s skyline. Not so.

Architects Graham and Clive Pohl, brothers who own property along the Newtown Pike corridor, sounded the alarm after Kentucky Utilities contacted them about buying an easement to string lines.

That created public outcry, prompting Newberry to ask Beshear for state help in paying to bury utilities and the governor to shake loose some Transportation Cabinet contingency money.

“Citizens got our attention on this issue,” Beshear said.

It was a good save all around. But the bigger issue is why the save was needed.

Lexington has come a long way recently in creating a vision for excellence in downtown development. Part of it is a desire to “clean up for company” before the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games. Part of it is the realization that quality of life is a key component in economic development.

But if Lexington is to stop settling for second-best, we need to find the missing link that too often keeps vision from becoming reality.

Settling for second-best is how we get buildings like the suburban-style High Street Post Office and the federal prosecutors’ building on Vine Street, which looks like a cheap suburban hotel. It’s how we allow the city’s historic core to be demolished for ego-driven, pie-in-the-sky projects like CentrePointe and the World Coal Center.

We’re getting better with vision, but we often seem to lack the structure, leadership and will to make it happen.

The Downtown Development Authority has traditionally seen its mission as facilitating the plans of private developers, although, since the CentrePointe fiasco, Chairman David Mohney has talked about the need to serve a broader public interest. Still, the DDA has limited power.

Great cities seem to find ways to make developers, businesses, government agencies and utilities build in ways that are good for the whole city and not just themselves.

These cities don’t do it by trying to write rules for everything, or creating dense bureaucracies that discourage development. They do it by requiring that major projects undergo public scrutiny and professional review by people with expertise in urban design and planning.

Last winter, I wrote about how the nine-member Downtown Commission has guided the revitalization of Columbus, Ohio’s urban core. Many other cities also have effective design review boards to make sure new parts of the urban landscape fit in and contribute to the whole. Those boards have broad authority, and they don’t settle for mediocrity.

Distillery District developer Barry McNees said the ability of officials to find a way to bury power lines along the Newtown Pike extension is a promising sign for future development in Lexington.

“It begins to define the kind of urban DNA we want for downtown,” McNees said. “A lot of the concern was, if we’re willing to compromise at the beginning, where will we end up?”

After the big storm Tuesday afternoon, I drove down Main Street to check on Lake Lexington. As I was waiting to turn left from Upper to Vine, I looked back at the CentrePointe site and saw Coleman Larkin and his dalmatian, Sal. I’ll leave any commentary to Sal.

Organizers of the Legacy Trail, a 9-mile bike and walking path being developed from Lexington’s East End to the Kentucky Horse Park, are seeking your help in choosing a logo.

The public is being asked to vote among three logos. Register and cast your vote at www.mylegacytrail.com. Or you can text your chosen logo’s name (see chart below) to (859) 797-4900.

Those who register will be included in drawings for a $500 gift certificate from Pedal the Planet bike shop, a $250 gift certificate from John’s Run Walk Shop and a $100 gift certificate from J&H Outfitters.

Voting began yesterday evening at Thursday Night Live at Cheapside downtown and will continue through Aug. 13. The winning logo will be announced at Thursday Night Live on Aug. 20.

There seems to be a fund-raising walk, run or bicycle ride for just about every cause, charity and disease.

So when Ed Stodola was looking for a way to raise money to restore the Grand Theatre in downtown Frankfort, the avid cyclist decided to organize a ride.

But what a ride.

The Grand Autumn Bicycle Ride Across Kentucky is a three-day trek that covers 11 counties and more than 200 miles, from the Ohio River at Carrollton to the Tennessee line at Dale Hollow Lake. Dip your wheels at each end.

In each of the past five years, the ride has attracted no more than 35 riders, but Stodola is hoping for the maximum 60 this year. For more information, go to www.gabraky.com.

So far, the GABRAKY has raised more than $68,000 for the Grand Theatre’s $5 million renovation. It has not been a lot of money in the Grand scheme, Stodola admits. But it has provided cash flow at critical times during the seven-year effort.

“The ride also helped keep the Grand efforts in the public eye,” he said, explaining that the first ride, in 2004, came when other fund-raising efforts had plateaued.

Organizers are planning the sixth ride for Oct. 9-11, with a couple of differences.

Instead of “Grand,” it’s now the “Governor’s” ride, reflecting its designation as the Beshear administration’s first Kentucky Adventure Tourism bike tour. Also, the theater’s renovation is almost finished. An open house is planned Aug. 7.

The Grand on St. Clair Mall was built about 1910 as a small vaudeville house and enlarged as a movie theater in the 1940s. It closed in 1966, and the building was put to other uses, from a dollar store to an auction house.

There was an effort to restore the Grand in 1983, but it failed. Then, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Frankfort citizens began looking for a project to build community spirit. They remembered the Grand.

Since then, several other restoration projects have begun in downtown Frankfort, which has many beautiful old buildings. “I think it’s going to have a transformational effect,” Stodola said.

The renovated Grand will show movies, host concerts and be a venue for small stage shows. None of its 420 seats is more than 50 feet from the stage.

“We’re going to market it as Kentucky’s most intimate performance venue,” said Bill Cull, chairman of the non-profit Save the Grand Inc., which owns the building and is managing the restoration.

Cull and Stodola gave me a tour of the theater last week as workmen were installing seats and putting on other finishing touches. Sections of original plaster from the 1910 vaudeville house and 1940s theater have been preserved as part of a beautiful, modern theater that includes a small art gallery upstairs.

A mid-1800s house that shared a wall with the theater also has been restored. It will be used for administrative offices and performers’ dressing rooms.

The project was put together with a patchwork of government money, grants, corporate and private donations, volunteer labor and, of course, money raised from the bicycle ride.

A concert by R&B groups The Platters and The Coasters is planned for the theater’s grand opening on Sept. 25. Other bookings so far include the New York Theatre Ballet’s production of Sleeping Beauty.

Singer John Sebastian will perform at the theater during the Alltech Fortnight Festival on the first night of this year’s GABRAKY. And when the cyclists ride south the next morning, they can take a little pride in having helped the Grand’s marquee light up the Frankfort sky again.

It was a puzzle with no easy answer.

Two buildings from the mid-1800s — former servants’ quarters and Lexington’s oldest apartment house — were in such bad shape they had been condemned.

Their demolition would have left another sad gap in the historic neighborhood between downtown and Gratz Park.

Meanwhile, there is a need for affordable housing downtown for low-income people and retirees. Officials estimate that more than 8,700 households in Fayette County spend more than half of their income on rent.

With a lot of work and creative financing — such as tax credits and grants — the puzzle was solved Thursday with the dedication of First Presbyterian Church Apartments on Market Street.

The two buildings were carefully restored into a studio apartment, two one-bedroom units and seven two-bedroom apartments that will rent for between $330 and $550 a month. Tenants must have incomes below $22,700 for singles and $26,000 for families. Even before the first residents have moved in, there’s a waiting list.

Not only are the apartments affordable, they’re beautiful. While adding modern closets, fixtures and appliances, the developers preserved the buildings’ exterior, as well as inside touches such as windows, woodwork, wooden floors and fireplace mantels.

The large project team celebrated the apartments’ completion Thursday with a ceremony next door in First Presbyterian’s chapel.

“This project has been both a joy and an honor,” said Holly Wiedemann, a church member and president of AU Associates, which specializes in converting old buildings into affordable housing.

“It can be done,” Wiedemann said. “Historic buildings can be saved. Affordable housing can be produced, and it is desperately needed.”

Clyde Carpenter, a University of Kentucky architecture professor and member of the church, spoke passionately about both Christian outreach and historic preservation.

“Preservation is as much about the future as the past … it is about environmental sustainability, not wasting, not consuming,” he said.

In addition to giving historic buildings new life, Carpenter said, the apartments will add vitality to the neighborhood.

First Presbyterian, which recently restored its circa 1872 sanctuary, has played an important role in keeping the neighborhood vital. Among other things, the church restored Henry Clay’s law office next door and built a magnificent contemporary chapel in the 1990s that Carpenter helped design.

First Presbyterian Apartments, Carpenter said, represents a new ministry for the church.

AU Associates led the project on the church’s behalf with a big cast of characters. Financing came from Central Bank, the city, the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Kentucky Housing Corp. Design was done by S+A Architecture, with construction by Churchill McGee LLC.

Behind the scenes were many more partners, from lawyers Robert Vice and Mac Deegan to Kentucky American Water Co., which replaced water lines so old that some of them were made of wood.

“This is a model we need to replicate for other projects,” Urban County Council member Diane Lawless said of the public-private partnership. “Not only is it affordable housing, it is quality affordable housing. That makes all the difference.”

Click on each photo to enlarge.

It is a tried-and-true model: an “incubator” building with shared office space that cuts overhead costs and provides a creative community where business entrepreneurs can learn from and be inspired by each other.

Could the same work for social entrepreneurs?

In fact, it works quite well in many cities.

The Kentucky Conference for Community and Justice wants to create such a place in Lexington.

Within five years, the KCCJ hopes to have perhaps 20,000 square feet of shared work and meeting space near downtown for emerging non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs interested in making the world a better place.

The organization has a non-binding letter of intent to put the facility in the Old Pepper warehouse, a cavernous building on Manchester Street that is planned as a focal point of the Lexington Distillery District.

“When people come together, you have the space between where so much can happen,” said KCCJ Chair Shannon Stuart-Smith.

KCCJ has been developing the idea for two years in cooperation with other local groups. But the effort was jump-started late last month when a delegation visited the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, Ontario, one of North America’s most successful social incubators.

Located in a renovated industrial building, the Toronto center rents desks, telephones, printers, Internet connections and other modern necessities to social-oriented entrepreneurs, companies and non-profits that have fewer than five workers.

The center also fosters an atmosphere — both physical and psychological — that encourages networking, brainstorming and collaboration. That includes everything from informal conversations between desks to planned events, such as twice-weekly “salad club” meals.

That atmosphere is what KCCJ hopes to replicate in Lexington.

“The tenants didn’t think of themselves as tenants; they thought of themselves as partners in the program,” said jeweler Joe Rosenberg, a KCCJ board member. “What we’re hoping to do is take what they’ve learned and build on it.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that once you put this together, you’ll fill it up,” Rosenberg said.

Debra Hensley, an insurance agent and former Urban County Council member who has been working on the idea for several years, estimates there are 100 fledgling organizations and entrepreneurs around Lexington whose mission involves social and environmental issues. Many work out of their homes, or in isolated offices.

“Within 10 minutes, I thought, this is what I’m looking for,” said Jason Delambre, a young Lexington-based sustainable energy consultant. who went with the group to Toronto.

KCCJ, which started as a chapter of the old National Conference of Christians and Jews, has worked for decades to fight discrimination and promote human equality and inclusiveness. The organization sees creation of a social incubator as perhaps the best way it can contribute to future progress in Kentucky.

The next step involves figuring out how to raise $1 million to $5 million to build the space and develop a business model to sustain it, Hensley said. Similar centers in other cities have a variety of financial models, depending on local circumstances.

“We’re making a tremendous leap with this project,” said longtime member Marilyn Moosnick.

But then, the work of the Kentucky Conference for Community and Justice has always involved making tremendous leaps. Perhaps that’s why it has been able to do so much good.

Sometimes a dream deferred can come true.

You could see that dream in the faces of many of the 200 people who gathered Thursday morning at the corner of East Third Street and Elm Tree Lane to break ground for the long-delayed Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center project.

The crowd included community leaders and city officials, some of whom had worked for 18 years to restore the Lyric, an icon of Lexington’s African American community.

It also included many longtime Lexingtonians who have been waiting 46 years for their Lyric to reopen.

They’ll have another year to wait before the cavernous shell of a theater is rebuilt as a city-owned performing arts and community center.

“It means a number of years of frustration are over,” said Robert Jefferson, a former Urban County Council member who helped start the long crusade. “This is a very emotional time for me.”

After a 1987 fire damaged the Kentucky Theatre on Main Street and the city announced plans to restore it, Jefferson urged then-Mayor Scotty Baesler to appropriate $250,000 for the Lyric.

It was only fair, Jefferson said: “As a native Lexingtonian, I hadn’t had the right to go to the Kentucky Theatre because of segregation.”

But it would take years of struggle and legal disputes before Mayor Jim Newberry, the Urban County Council and a dedicated group of community activists would succeed in putting together the Lyric’s $9 million renovation and operating plan.

Many of those who came out remembered the Lyric as the place where black Lexingtonians came to see movies, vaudeville shows and jazz musicians from 1948 until the theater closed in 1963.

Tassa Wigginton said her childhood Saturdays were spent at the Lyric, visiting with friends, eating popcorn and watching cartoons and movies.

“We came with a quarter; 10 cents to get in and 15 cents to spend,” she said. “One day when I was a teenager my daddy let me come with him to see a stage show and I thought I was in seventh heaven.

“This was really the community center,” Wigginton said. “This and Dunbar High School were the pride of the black community.”

Don Garrison said he began working at the Lyric selling tickets and ended up as its last manager. “I was here the night we shut it down,” he said, noting the irony that desegregation ruined the Lyric’s business.

Julian Jackson Jr., another early supporter of the Lyric’s restoration, said he hopes the new facility will preserve the East End’s colorful history.

Many people know the area was once home to Lexington’s pre-Keeneland race track and the famous black jockeys Isaac Murphy and Jimmy Winkfield. But Jackson said they may not know of other neighborhood greats, such as the opera singer William Ray and the inventor Joseph Bailey Lyons.

As with the Lyric, desegregation led to decline in the historically black East End — a decline that has been in rapid reverse over the past decade, thanks to work by the Urban League, city government and many others.

S.T. Roach, the legendary basketball coach at the old all-black Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, was thrilled to be able to attend Thursday’s ceremony.

“I’ve been waiting for this for many years,” said Roach, 93, who once worked at the Lyric and ran an ice cream bar next door.

Roach recalled the vitality of the old East End and thinks the Lyric’s restoration could kick the neighborhood’s renaissance into high gear.

Former councilman George Brown agreed.

“I think the new Lyric will become a meeting place, a community place, a place for new artists to be discovered,” Brown said. “Who knows what could be spawned here, from Third and Elm Tree Lane? Only the mind can imagine.”

Conversion of the Eastern State Hospital property into the new campus of Bluegrass Community and Technical College is perhaps Lexington’s most important urban redevelopment project in decades.

So it is good to see that the people running this project seem to be serious about doing it right.

BCTC President Augusta Julian assembled a strong planning team that has been working for months in consultation with a diverse group of specialists and stakeholders. Now, you can have your say.

Officials will hold a public forum to seek comments on the campus master plan at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the North Lexington YMCA at 381 West Loudon Avenue.

“We have made every effort to talk to everyone,” said Stan Harvey, a principal in the design firm Urban Collage. “Even though we’ve come a long way, it’s early enough in the process that it can still be refined.”

A second public hearing will be scheduled in the fall, when the site plan is near completion.

The project was made possible by a brilliant land swap announced last year: Eastern State, one of the nation’s oldest hospitals, will get a new facility on the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream property on Newtown Pike. BCTC will get a new campus on the Eastern State property. UK will get BCTC’s Cooper Drive campus for future expansion.

The new BCTC campus will be a landmark project for several reasons.

For one thing, it is a rare opportunity to build a new college campus for an institution experiencing huge growth and rapid change to meet the needs of Kentucky’s 21st-century economy. Julian sees the possibility that enrollment could double from the current 12,000 students within a decade.

But the planning team wanted to avoid the classic commuter-school design — an island of buildings surrounded by a sea of surface parking. The plan calls for more than 60 percent of parking to be in structures along railroad tracks, with surface lots concentrated near the “back” of the campus along Loudon Avenue.

Morgan McIlwain, of M2D Design Group landscape architects, said a lot of thought was given to how to integrate mass transit into the plan, as well as bicycle and pedestrian access. Officials plan to incorporate into the campus a part of the proposed Legacy Trail — a bike and pedestrian trail that ultimately will link downtown Lexington to the Kentucky Horse Park.

The planning team also realized that the campus will have a huge impact on redevelopment of the surrounding area, which includes the YMCA, Lexmark and Coolivan Park.

The team estimates that 88 acres of surrounding property is now either vacant or “underutilized.” Much of it is old industrial land that Harvey hopes can be rezoned for high-density residential, commercial and other private developments that he expects to grow up around the campus.

A lot of thought has been put into Fourth Street, which will connect the campus to nearby Transylvania University, and Newtown Pike, the extension of which will connect it back to UK and the Cooper Drive campus.

The 48-acre Eastern State site, which has been closed to the public since the hospital began operations there in 1816, was something of a mystery. When Loudon Avenue was extended many years ago, workers discovered 4,500 graves that were reburied there in an area that will be maintained as a cemetery.

The planning team has worked for months with the Kentucky Heritage Council and others to survey the site. Surprisingly, no more graves have been found, Harvey said.

The team is recommending the renovation and reuse of four of the dozen buildings now on the site. Those include the white-columned administration building, the hospital’s most recognizable structure, and an architecturally significant 1906 “laundry” building.

But it turns out that the most historic feature of the property is the front lawn, whose design has essentially been unchanged since 1816. McIlwain said the lawn will be preserved, as well as the relationship of buildings to Fourth Street and Newtown Pike.

Plans call for the campus to eventually have about 14 buildings of three to five stories, with a total investment exceeding $500 million over two decades. A new state law will require construction to adhere to “green” building standards. That could include roof gardens and water-permeable paving.

In addition to Urban Collage and M2D, the project team includes two other top local firms: EOP Architects and Staggs and Fisher engineering. International firms on the team include Perkins + Will, which specializes in campus design, and HDR civil engineers.

The new BCTC campus will change the face of northwest Lexington. Now’s the time to have your say about what that face should look like.

Today’s meeting of the Courthouse Area Design Review Board offered a few updates on CentrePointe, the massive downtown development project that 16 months after its announcement remains a mirage.

Darby Turner, the attorney for developer Dudley Webb, said Webb is in Europe working to secure financing for the $250 million project from the estate of a mysterious, unidentified investor who is said to have died last fall, leaving the hotel-condo-office tower in limbo.

“We hope to have that (financing) in 30-to-60 days,” Turner said. But he quickly acknowledged, “We’ve been saying that, frankly, for some period of time, but all in good faith.”

The three review board members present seemed understandably skeptical. A year ago, they accepted Webb’s argument that he needed quick permission to demolish a dozen buildings on the block, including one dating to 1826, because his development was too important to delay.

Turner said today that once financing is secured, excavation work could begin within a month. Digging down three stories for an underground parking garage will take about three months. Then, foundations must be built before the proposed 35-story tower can begin rising from the ground.

The big issue, of course, is financing. The global economic meltdown has stopped similar projects worldwide dead in their tracks. The demand for big four-star convention hotels and luxury condos just isn’t what it used to be.

Because CentrePointe sits inside the historic overlay district of the old Fayette County Courthouse (now the Lexington History Museum), the review board had to give permission for the old buildings to be demolished and CentrePointe to be built.

The board gave that one-year permit last November. The permit won’t expire until November, but Turner was appearing to ask for a one-year extension. Now.

The board was confused. Why would Webb want an extension that would expire in July 2010 rather than asking in the fall and getting one that wouldn’t expire until November 2010?

Turner said having more lead time would “give assurance to our investor that this project is still doable in Lexington.”  He also said he wanted to avoid someone trying to challenge an extension in the fall.

What Turner didn’t say — but several people were thinking — was that it also would move the next renewal request, if there is one, to July 2010 instead of November 2010, when the mayor and Urban County Council members must stand for re-election. CentrePointe’s public credibility isn’t what it used to be.

Asked about that after the meeting, Turner said politics had nothing to do with his request.

Review board Chairman Mike Meuser, a lawyer, wanted to delay action on Turner’s request until the board’s next regular meeting in October. But a staff attorney told him that wasn’t allowed under city ordinance.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to me, either for the applicant or the community or the board to reauthorize these permits now,” Meuser said.

Still, the board ended up approving the extension request. Legally, it seemed to have no other choice.

In other news, Turner said J.W. Marriott, which Webb says plans to put a luxury hotel in CentrePointe, wanted interior design changes that will require some architectural revisions, such as moving elevators.

But Turner said the exterior design hasn’t been changed. I guess that means it still looks like some of those developments I saw going up around Atlanta in the 1980s.

While the review board was meeting at city hall, a bulldozer was rumbling around the CentrePointe site, three blocks west on Main Street. It was spreading fill dirt recently brought in so grass can be planted.

Despite the latest “30 or 60 days” estimate, I’m not holding my breath. CentrePointe may defy the global economic odds. Construction may really begin in a few months.

But I think a better bet might be on who will get next summer’s mowing contract for the empty block in the center of Lexington.

I never paid much attention to Lexington’s First Baptist Church, the Gothic limestone temple that overlooks West Main Street across from Rupp Arena.

Unil recently, I had never been inside. It has been a long time since many other people have, either.

When Pastor John C’deBaca gave me a tour, I was amazed. The 1,500-seat sanctuary has arched oak pews beneath a stunning vaulted ceiling of massive chestnut beams. There are four balconies, beautiful stained glass windows and a huge pipe organ.

There also are water-damaged walls and a stone front entrance that is closed and braced with wooden beams because city code enforcement officers fear it could collapse.

Rebuilding the entrance would cost about $75,000. Add another $24,500 for electrical work. And $14,000 for a new roof. Then there are the crumbling stairwells to the front balcony, water problems in the basement and worn masonry and exterior windows. The list seems endless.

What was once one of the South’s largest Baptist congregations has dwindled to about 50 people, many of whom are native Spanish-speakers. The congregation’s financial resources are no match for the urgent repairs their once-grand building needs.

“We’ve been working on it piecemeal as we can, but it’s a huge challenge,” said C’deBaca, who once taught building trades in Texas and now spends as much time ministering to his building as to his flock. “There’s a lot of potential in this building … if the community knew what was here.”

C’deBaca has been working with Tom Blues, the Urban County Council member, Bill Johnson of the Old Western Suburb neighborhood and others to come up with ideas to restore and perhaps find other uses for this 35,000-square-foot architectural gem.

So far, solutions have been elusive.

First Baptist Church’s history is as illustrious as its building. Founded as Town Branch Church in 1786, it was one of the first Baptist congregations west of the Allegheny Mountains. Its first pastor, John Gano, baptized George Washington.

The congregation met in a log cabin on the site, which also was Lexington’s pioneer cemetery. The church moved to Mill Street in 1819 but returned in 1859 and inhabited a succession of three buildings, two of which burned.

Most graves were moved to Lexington Cemetery in the mid-1800s. But when the last church building was demolished in 1913 to build the present one, the grave of John Bradford, publisher of Kentucky’s first newspaper, was found under the west wall. It was left there, according to state historical records.

First Baptist Church has suffered declining membership for decades. There were schisms and disputes, but location seems to have been the big factor.

There is little nearby parking, except for a small lot whose rental now provides income for the church. Some of the church’s 67 rooms are rented to Inner City Breakthrough Ministries.

What does the future hold?

“Ideally, I would like to see the congregation grow and prosper,” C’deBaca said. “But that hasn’t happened in the 11 years I’ve been here. We’re open to possibilities, and we need help.”

Perhaps the church could partner with other ministries, or turn the building into a religious conference center, Johnston suggested.

Or the church could sell the building, which would raise money to restart its ministry elsewhere. A developer could then turn the building into a concert hall, museum or exhibition space, a community center or even apartments, offices or restaurants.

One catch is that the building couldn’t be dramatically altered and still be eligible for historic tax credits that could help pay for its renovation.

Julie Good, executive director of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation, did her master’s thesis on old churches that have been renovated for other uses. “There are so many examples of adaptive reuse of buildings like this,” she said.

“You have a great building that should be preserved at an important downtown location,” said Blues, the councilman, as we gazed up at the chestnut-beam ceiling.

“If this could be seen by people with good business sense and imagination, I’m sure we could figure out something.”

When I first heard about plans to turn the block of Mill Street between Main and Short into a pedestrian mall, I thought it was a good idea.

After seeing how a larger pedestrian mall has transformed downtown Charlottesville, Va., I think it could be a truly great idea.

I went to Charlottesville recently with a group of friends for a bicycle tour. On Friday and Saturday evenings, we went to the Downtown Mall for dinner.

The place was hopping. Hundreds of people were eating, shopping, listening to live music and visiting with each other.

The eight-block mall on what used to be Main Street has 30 restaurants and 120 shops in a mix of old and new buildings. At one end is a children’s museum and an amphitheater that hosts big-name performers and has free weekly concerts by local bands.

The mall has become a big tourist draw and economic engine. More importantly, it has become Charlottesville’s community front porch. Most of the people we saw there seemed to be locals. Some said they come every week between May and October.

It’s a good example of the urban planner’s maxim that if you build a city to appeal to its residents, others will want to be there, too.

The Downtown Mall was hardly an overnight success. More like a 35-year slog.

As with many American cities in the early 1970s, suburban growth had turned Charlottesville’s downtown business district into a ghost town.

So, in 1975, Charlottesville got on the bandwagon of cities building pedestrian malls. Many of those malls failed, such as Louisville’s River City Mall, although it would later be reborn as the popular Fourth Street Live.

But Charlottesville stuck with it, trying new ideas and making periodic improvements over the years. The city recently finished a $7.5 million renovation, which included new pavers and free wireless Internet service.

As with most successful developments, good design is key. The former street is 60 feet wide, with pedestrian corridors on each side and cafes in the center, shaded by giant willow oak trees. The trees make the mall pretty as well as comfortable in the summer heat.

The trees’ rapid growth was a pleasant surprise, said Rhetta Bearden, a guide for the local historical society who gave several of us a great downtown walking tour.

Planners knew that Main Street had once been part of “Three Notch’d Road,” a pioneer path from the James River to the Shenandoah Valley that got its name from hatchet marks on trees to blaze the trail. But they didn’t know there were springs beneath it that would make the willow oaks flourish, Bearden said.

If you compare Charlottesville and Lexington, you find that Lexington is a bigger city, with a bigger metro area. It also has more college students.

So what would it take to make downtown Lexington more of a people magnet?

There certainly seems to be public interest. Just look at the growing crowds for Thursday Night Live, Gallery Hop and big events such as this weekend’s Independence Day festivities.

One pedestrian block of Mill Street doesn’t compare with Charlottesville’s eight-block mall, but it fits nicely into a bigger picture. The block is strategically located between Cheapside and Victorian Square, both of which are having success recently with restaurants and bars.

With a little money and imagination, Mill Street could become the heart of a downtown entertainment district that would pull University of Kentucky students a few blocks north, Transylvania University students a few blocks south and a variety of Central Kentuckians in from the suburbs.

My guess is that a new skyscraper wouldn’t do nearly as much to revitalize downtown Lexington as a bigger community front porch.

Nothing refreshes you like a good vacation. Riding a bicycle more than 350 miles up, down and around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia may not be everyone’s idea for a refreshing vacation, but it worked for me and the 2,000 others on the annual Bike Virginia tour.

This was my sixth Bike Virginia, a five-day tour that each June goes through a different part of the Old Dominion. I went with a group of about 20 friends from Central Kentucky, plus a couple of riding buddies from when I lived in Atlanta. One of our group referred to it as “summer camp for adults.” That’s a pretty good description.

While on the trip, we had dinner a couple of nights along the huge pedestrian mall that attracts hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of locals to downtown Charlottesville each night to eat, shop and visit with each other. It’s a great place, and a larger version of the idea proposed for Mill Street between Main and Short streets in downtown Lexington. I’ll be writing about what lessons Lexington can learn from Charlottesville’s experience in my column in Wednesday’s Herald-Leader.

Marlendale Farm has been in Ellen Clark Marshall’s family for six generations.

What the General Assembly does in the next week or two, she thinks, could determine whether it stays in the family much longer.

Marshall’s parents stopped breeding Thoroughbreds on the 200-acre farm on Newtown Pike nearly 40 years ago. Since then, the insurance agent and her two sisters have leased most of the land to other horse breeders.

But the standardbred breeder who has rented 130 acres for six years isn’t renewing his lease in December. He’s moving his horses to Pennsylvania to take advantage of lucrative incentives funded by slot machines at the state’s racetracks.

As we sat on her patio looking out over lush green pastures, Marshall showed me a long list of other horsemen she said she has approached, without success, about leasing her farm. Many of them also are shipping horses to Pennsylvania and other states with slots-enhanced race purses and breeder incentives.

“I’m frantic trying to find someone to lease this farm,” she said. “How am I going to pay my taxes, my insurance and maintenance? The farm pays for the farm.”

Unless the General Assembly approves legislation backed by Gov. Steve Beshear to allow slot machines at Kentucky race tracks, Marshall fears she will have to sell her land.

That could include the home where Marshall has lived for most of her life. The oldest part of the home is an enclosed log cabin built decades before her ancestor Caleb Tarleton acquired the property in 1826 from John Bradford, publisher of Kentucky’s first newspaper.

As small horse operations leave for other states, Kentucky risks losing its signature industry, Marshall said.

“People are going to go where the money is to sustain their operations,” she said. “Where does that leave me? Where does that leave my 200 acres?”

More than who owns the land, Marshall worries about the land itself. Central Kentucky’s unique landscape is disappearing at such a pace that the World Monuments Fund has identified it as one of the 100 most endangered places on earth.

If horses follow tobacco as a declining industry in Central Kentucky, landowners who aren’t independently wealthy will have little choice but to sell their property for development. As suburbia sprawls, the lush green pastures will disappear.

Some opponents of slots at tracks are skeptical of giving the horse industry a monopoly on expanded gambling. Others worry about gambling’s social costs. Still others fear that expanded gambling will prop up the horse industry in the short run, only to kill it in the long run.

State Sen. President David Williams, R-Burkesville, has said he recognizes the horse industry’s competitive disadvantage but opposes expanded gambling. He recently proposed raising $83 million a year for race purses and breeder incentives through a lottery ticket surcharge and other taxes and fees.

But Beshear would not add Williams’ plan to the agenda for the special legislative session that begins Monday. The governor wants lawmakers to vote on his slots proposal.

Solutions to the horse industry’s economic problems may be debatable. But Carter Duer, the breeder who is ending his lease on Marshall’s farm, said the problem is real.

Most people in the Kentucky horse industry aren’t billionaires who breed and race as a hobby. “It’s the way we make our living,” Duer said.

Duer said he stopped leasing a second Lexington farm two years ago and shipped those horses to Pennsylvania. His last remaining local operation will be the 360-acre Peninsula Farm on Ironworks Pike, which he owns.

“I’d move them all up (to Pennsylvania) if I could, but I have too much invested here,” he said. “There’s no advantage in Kentucky, except Kentucky itself.”

As Marshall and I talked on her patio, Wayne Ball, who does maintenance on her farm, joined us. He ticked off a list of people shipping horses out of state and farms up for sale. “We’re losing our grip on the horse industry,” he said.

“No,” Marshall replied. “We’re throwing it away.”