The Bluegrass and Beyond

When I moved back here 15 years ago, Lexingtonians were battling with bumper stickers. Builders and developers had “Growth is Good” stickers on their bumpers. Preservationists had “Growth Destroys Bluegrass Forever” on theirs.

It was a pointless debate. Growth is inevitable. The question is how best to handle it.

Fortunately, discussions about growth and development are now less heated and simplistic and more productive. Both sides realize that Lexington’s future depends on steady, well-planned growth that encourages compatible economic development but doesn’t spoil the Bluegrass’ unique beauty and quality of life.

I gained some valuable insights into these issues recently by joining 28 other local people in a program called Citizens Planning Academy. We met two hours each Wednesday morning for six weeks to hear experts speak about all aspects of local growth and planning from a variety of viewpoints.

The program was organized by the land-use advocacy group Fayette Alliance and co-sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Lexington, the Fayette Farm Bureau, the American Society of Landscape Architects and The Plantory, a shared workspace for social entrepreneurs.

While Lexington has made mistakes over the years, it has been trying longer and harder than most cities to manage growth. The city’s first comprehensive plan was adopted in 1931. My house was then at the eastern edge of the city limits. Now, many people refer to it as being “downtown.”

The 1931 plan referred to Union Station, the long-ago-demolished train depot, as the most important building in town. Ironically, it is now the site of the recently renovated Helix  parking garage and the office where people take automobile driving tests and get their licenses.

In 1958 — 15 years before city-county merger — Lexington became the first city in America to set an urban growth boundary to limit suburban sprawl and protect rural land. Over the years, the Urban Services Area has been expanded from 22 percent of the county to about 30 percent.

From the 1950s to the early 2000s, Lexington experienced rapid, automobile-centric growth as residential subdivisions and shopping centers were built on former farmland. In recent years, there has been more focus on urban infill and redevelopment as everyone realized Fayette County’s farmland and open space is precious, finite and a vital to Lexington’s economy, image and quality of life.

Unlike most areas of Kentucky, Lexington is likely to see continued population growth, from a current 302,000 people to about 376,000 by 2030.  How are we planning for that growth?  Here are a couple of trends to watch:

Future growth will likely be more dense, more urban and less dependent on automobiles.

“We’re planning for a different type of population,” said Chris King, director of Lexington’s Division of Planning.

Many aging baby boomers and young people want to be able to walk or bike to work, shopping and entertainment. That means different styles of new neighborhoods and retrofitting older neighborhoods to make them less isolated.

Residential development and revitalization of in-town neighborhoods has been a key piece of the renaissance of downtown Lexington as a mixed-use area. That trend is likely to continue, King said.

That’s good, because it makes more efficient use of land. But increasing density is sure to spark conflict with some existing neighborhoods.

Another big factor in Lexington’s future growth will be outdoor water quality. Many developments in recent decades were built with inadequate infrastructure, which led to storm-water runoff problems and pollution of local streams. The city must spend millions of dollars to remedy past sins and prevent new ones under a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That means that sewer capacity will limit future growth much more severely in the past. But the consent decree also has prompted city officials to get creative with natural solutions for storm-water management and filtering: permeable pavement, stream-bank restoration and systems for capturing and reusing rainwater.

The exciting Town Branch Commons proposal could be another piece of “green” infrastructure, creating both a linear park through downtown and helping to manage storm-water runoff.

The Fayette Alliance plans another Citizens Planning Academy next year, but dates have not been set. Watch FayetteAlliance.com for more information about how to apply.

Morgan County’s strategic plan for rebuilding from a March 2012 tornado includes encouraging super energy-efficient construction of new homes and commercial buildings to lower operating costs. Habitat for Humanity has already built several such homes in Morgan and neighboring Rowan counties. This one was under construction in January. Photo by Tom Eblen

Each time I have visited West Liberty since the devastating tornado, people have expressed determination to rebuild. But they didn’t just want to put things back the way they were; they wanted to use the disaster to reposition their community for the future.

The Morgan County seat had been hurting for years before the twister, which killed six people on March 2, 2012. West Liberty was like so many other small towns that have struggled to adapt to the loss of cash crops and factories.

Last week, after more than a year of study and work, West Liberty leaders unveiled a new strategic plan for their community. It is a creative, forward-looking plan designed to attract national attention and support. If successful, it could serve as a model for struggling small towns throughout Kentucky and across America. (Click here to download a copy of the plan.)

“I’m very excited about it,” said Hank Allen, CEO of Commercial Bank in West Liberty and president of the Morgan County Chamber of Commerce. “There is such a will to rebuild, to not only get back to where we were but to be better than we were.”

One key aspect of the plan follows the lead of Greensburg, Kansas, which was wiped out by a 2007 tornado and attracted national attention by rebuilding using the latest energy-efficient technology.

West Liberty’s energy-efficient reconstruction plans include replacement houses with “passive” design and construction, which can cut energy costs as much as 70 percent over conventional construction. Habitat for Humanity has already built several such homes in the area.

The downtown business district also would be rebuilt using energy-efficient construction, including a geothermal loop that many buildings could share to lower their heating and cooling costs.

Allen says he thinks that will be one of the biggest factors in recreating a viable downtown. Rent was cheap in the old buildings the tornado blew away. But reconstruction will be expensive, pushing rents beyond what many mom-and-pop businesses can afford.

Commercial Bank is kicking off the geothermal loop as part of its headquarters reconstruction. Allen said designs are almost complete for a new bank building that should be certified LEED Gold. The pre-tornado bank building cost about $4,000 to $5,000 a month to heat and cool, but Allen estimates the new one will cost about $1,500 a month.

The bank building will include about 1,800 square feet of incubator space on its first floor to help small local businesses get back on their feet, Allen said.

The strategic plan also calls for encouraging downtown to be rebuilt with mixed-use structures housing businesses, offices, restaurants and apartments. That would create a more lively downtown with lower rents because of more efficient use of space.

Plans also call for installing free wireless service downtown to attract businesses and people in a region where wi-fi availability is now limited.

The strategic plan’s economic development initiatives have a big focus on eco-tourism, built around Morgan County’s natural beauty and local assets such as the Licking River, Cave Run and Paintsville lakes, and nearby destinations such as the Red River Gorge.

There would be encouragement for entrepreneurs to start businesses focusing on kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, canoeing, fishing and hunting. Plans also call for developing walking and biking trails along the Licking River through West Liberty.

Other economic development ideas in the plan also focus on existing strengths, such as trying to use the local ambulance service and hospital to develop new methods for rural health-care delivery.

The strategic plan grew out of a partnership among the city, Morgan County, local businesses, Morehead State University’s Innovation and Commercialization Center and the nonprofit Regional Technology and Innovation Center.

Midwest Clean Energy Enterprise LLC of Lexington was a consultant on the process. Jonathan Miller, a clean-energy advocate and former state treasurer, has been retained to help raise money nationally for the effort by promoting it as a model for small-town revitalization.

The Morgan County Community Fund, an affiliate of the Blue Grass Community Foundation, has been set up to help collect and distribute donations for the rebuilding effort.

These efforts got a big jump-start in February, when Gov. Steve Beshear and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers announced a package of about $30 million in federal, state and private money for various rebuilding projects.

“That really opened people’s eyes to what is possible,” Allen said of the financial package. “As a community, we must think really, really large. But we have a long way to go.”

Holmes Hall on Euclid Avenue was built by the University of Kentucky in 1956-1958 and designed by Ernst V. Johnson. Its most distinguishing feature is a covered walkway of stone, brick and concrete canopy. Photo by Tom Eblen

When local architects started emailing me about preliminary plans to demolish several Modernist-style buildings on the University of Kentucky campus, my first reaction was to roll my eyes.

Like many people, I have always struggled to appreciate, much less like, a lot of mid-20th century architecture. It seems so plain, boxy, cold and, in the hands of some architects, just plain ugly.

To try to understand why so many professionals consider these buildings important and worth saving, I decided to take a closer look and learn more about them.

Nearly 30 percent of UK’s structures date from the 1950s and 1960s, and many academic buildings and residence halls have been neglected for years. To his credit, UK President Eli Capilouto is trying to catch up, initiating construction and renovation projects all over campus.

Initial plans included demolishing as many as seven of the 13 campus buildings designed between the 1930s and 1950s by noted Lexington architect Ernst V. Johnson: Jewell (1938), Holmes (1956) and Donovan (1955) residence halls, the Engineering Quadrangle (1938), the Wenner-Gren Aeronautical Research Laboratory (1941), the Funkhouser Biological Science Building (1942) and the Mineral Industries Building (1951).

The wrecking ball may also be aimed at the Kirwan-Blanding residential complex (1967), designed by Edward Durrell Stone. He was one of America’s best-known and most prolific Modernist architects, and his work has always been widely loved — and hated.

“It’s easy to see why most people don’t turn on to it,” said Graham Pohl, a Lexington architect with Pohl Rosa Pohl.

Modernism was the first architectural style in centuries that didn’t reference the past. Modernism began in Europe nearly a century ago, but didn’t catch on in this country until after World War II. Then it was everywhere.

“People felt free to be expressive and experiment with forms and new materials that felt right to them,” Pohl said. “It was a product of economic growth and national optimism about the future.”

But Pohl acknowledges that the style was widely abused. When so-called Urban Renewal reshaped America’s cities into concrete jungles built around the automobile, it included a lot of slap-dash architecture that was called “modern.”

“One of the reasons people don’t like Modernism is that it has been used as an excuse to do shoddy work,” Pohl said. “It’s more difficult to do good Modernism than good traditional work.”

Pohl said most of the buildings UK has considered tearing down are anything but shoddy. As an example, he cited Holmes Hall, an International-style building with an elegant stone and concrete stair-step canopy and interesting brick work.

Johnson’s buildings all have elegant brick work, perhaps because he was the son of a Swedish mason and worked his way through Yale as a union bricklayer.

“It’s more than decorative,” Pohl said of Johnson’s brick patterns on Holmes Hall. “It speaks to aspects of the building and the relationship between walls and openings. There’s a lot about that building that suggests someone thought deeply about it.”

Pohl also likes Stone’s Kirwan-Blanding complex, with its 23-story towers surrounded by smaller buildings arranged in a park-like setting. He likes the relationship of the vertical towers to the “incredibly elegant” horizontal canopies that connect the buildings.

“A lot of people see those forms as being part of their parents’ generation and they intentionally don’t want to relate to them,” said Pohl, adding that these buildings have much more architectural merit than anything that is likely to replace them in this era of budget-cutting austerity.

I grew up around the corner from Holmes Hall, on the block where UK is now building a massive dormitory complex. I have always admired Holmes Hall’s stair- step canopy, if not the rest of the building.

But I never liked Kirwan-Blanding — until, that is, I went to photograph it for this column on a beautiful evening last week. The moon was rising between the towers, which were bathed in the glow of the setting sun. Students were all around the buildings, studying among the trees and flowers or throwing Frisbees and footballs. I appreciated those buildings for the first time.

Architecture, like art, is often subjective, said Sarah Tate, an architect and founder of the Lexington firm Tate Hill Jacobs. She greatly admires Johnson’s work, for example, yet has never liked Stone’s. But that is not the point, she emphasized.

“Architecture is a reflection of history and culture, and that campus is a little museum of modern architecture,” Tate said. “Johnson’s buildings give us an architectural handbook of the influences that got us from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. I don’t think (UK officials) know what they have here.

“These mid-century buildings are part of our DNA,” she added. “You don’t want to take them all away. They are important links in our history and culture.”

Sasaki Associates, the Boston planning firm that UK hired to develop a new campus master plan, recently recommended as its first scenario renovating and reusing these historic Modernist buildings. UK officials should take that advice.

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Lexington didn’t finish in the money in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge, which gave $9 million to five cities to help them work on big ideas to improve urban life in America.

But Mayor Jim Gray isn’t too disappointed. More than 300 cities applied, and Lexington finished in the top 20, despite having little track record of applying for major foundation grants.

Gray said he and his staff learned a lot about how to do that. They also raised Lexington’s national profile in ways that could pay off in the future with the philanthropic arm of New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and similar foundations that fund city initiatives.

“I think there will be other bites at the apple,” Gray said in an interview last week. “We have an opportunity to leverage the visibility we got in making top 20.

“This process was a test case for how Lexington can dial up marketing to private foundations,” he added. “We have plenty of room to grow in this model. But what the Bloomberg Challenge showed is that we have the ability to compete.”

Bloomberg officials announced the five winning cities March 12. Providence, R.I., won the $5 million first prize, while Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago and Santa Monica, Calif., were each awarded $1 million.

Lexington applied for funding to speed up creation of CitizenLex.org, an online portal and system within government to collect citizens’ ideas for improving city life, gather the right people in and out of government around them, and track their accomplishments.

The idea for CitizenLex came from the Bloomberg competition process itself. Gray asked citizens to submit ideas for what Lexington should propose to Bloomberg, and he got more than 420 written submissions. So many of the ideas were good, the mayor said, that he wanted to figure out a way to make many of them happen rather than focusing on just one.

Gray and Lexington have yet to receive any detailed feedback from Bloomberg officials about how its application compared to those of the winners.

Many of the winning proposals were more concrete than Lexington’s. But, aside from Providence, none of the winning ideas struck me as being that revolutionary. Except for Santa Monica, all of the winning cities were much bigger than Lexington. Many were cities that, unlike Lexington, have been losing population and experiencing economic decline.

Providence’s idea is a high-tech plan to improve vocabulary and language skills among young low-income children. Research has shown that children from families receiving welfare have smaller vocabularies than their more-affluent peers, contributing to diminished academic performance and job opportunities.

Houston proposed a single-container recycling system, which Lexington already has. Chicago wants to better use city data to track trends. Philadelphia proposed a streamlined system for allowing local companies to bid for city contracts. Santa Monica, the smallest and wealthiest winning city, proposed a project to measure citizens’ overall well-being.

Lexington made a good impression on Bloomberg officials, Gray said, especially because of its high level of citizen engagement in the competition. That could bode well for future grants. The world of megabucks philanthropies devoted to city issues is small, he added, and they pay close attention to what each other are doing.

Gray still plans to push forward on CitizenLex, as funding is available. City officials also are working on pilot projects for many of the good ideas citizens submitted, such as bike trails and LED street lights.

Lexington has applied for a grant for CitizenLex from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation has donated millions to Lexington over the years, because the Herald-Leader was once owned by Knight Newspapers. Grant winners are to be announced in July.

“We’re on their radar now,” Gray said. “People know about Lexington.”

Losing Michael Speaks

Few University of Kentucky deans have had more impact on Lexington in a short time than Michael Speaks, dean of the College of Design for the past five years. He announced last week he is leaving to take a similar post at Syracuse University.

Speaks, a brilliant and ambitious man, had his share of admirers and detractors within the university. Beyond campus, he played a big role in making good architecture and design a topic of conversation among average Lexingtonians.

The Mississippi native arrived here as the CentrePointe controversy erupted. His contacts helped attract international talent to improve CentrePointe’s design and develop world-class plans for the proposed Arena, Arts and Entertainment District and Town Branch Commons.

Speaks will be missed. Whomever succeeds him must keep the conversation going.

Coba Cocina has a huge jellyfish tank and special effects lighting. Photos by Tom Eblen

With its golden dome, colorful lighting and huge jellyfish tank, the new Coba Cocina building on Richmond Road has created a lot of buzz.

The public will get its first look — and taste — Monday when Greer Companies opens the 400-seat restaurant, bar and confectionery, which serves Latin-inspired food at moderate prices in a Vegas atmosphere.

“We’re hoping to wow people with the building,” said Lee Greer, president of the Lexington-based company. “The food is the best I’ve ever had. If we can nail the service — we’re aiming for a New Orleans level of service — we’ll have something special.”

Coba Cocina is the prototype for what Greer hopes will become a restaurant chain. In many ways, it is a collection of the favorite things he and his father have seen and tasted in their travels throughout Latin America.

Phil Greer started the commercial real estate development and hospitality company in the late 1980s after many years as a teacher and coach at Tates Creek High School. Greer Companies owns a number of franchised hotels and restaurants, including 35 Cheddar’s in Kentucky and five other states.

After the University of Virginia and a brief career as an investment banker in New York, Lee Greer, 36, came home to work with his father. He immersed himself in the restaurant business and began gathering ideas for creating their own concept.

Many of those ideas found their way into the unique building designed by architect Todd Ott and interior designer Brittney Lavens of Lexington-based CMW Inc.

“It was all just described to us in adjectives,” Ott said of the instructions they received from the Greers. “Phil said, ‘Go away for a month and come back and wow me. If you wow me, you get the job.’”

Ott and Lavens spent the time researching Mesoamerican culture, ancient Incan and Mayan architecture and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Coba is a site of Mayan ruins in the Yucatán.Cocina is Spanish for kitchen.

The Yucatán is famous for cenotes — deep natural pits leading to water-filled caves. Coba Cocina is designed to make customers feel as if they are sitting inside one.

Ott said almost everything in the building is custom-made. There are wavelike panels of precision-cut wood on some walls and translucent wave panels over lighted ceilings.

Six chandeliers, which resemble Dale Chihuly sculptures, each contain 125 pieces of Italian glass hand-blown in Poland. Other lighting is computerized so color schemes can be changed to create different moods.

A column-shaped aquarium, 18 feet tall and six feet in diameter, will contain more than 300 jellyfish. The column rises to a gold dome in the center of the restaurant, giving the illusion of sunlight filtering into a cenote.

The reception desk and bar tops are made of backlit onyx. There are terrazzo and bamboo floors, and walls with enough curves to make a drywall mason cry. There are water walls, glass staircases and large expanses of iridescent tile.

“Some of the most exceptional craftsmanship was done locally,” construction manager Mike Balog said. “We tried to use as much Lexington talent as we could.”

Lee Greer wouldn’t say how much the family-owned company has invested in the building, although he acknowledged it is more than the $4.5 million estimate on the construction permit. Site acquisition and preparation cost an additional $1.2 million.

The building is designed to impress, but Greer knows that what will make customers come back is great food, service and value. That is the responsibility of a team of restaurant industry veterans: development director Larry Kerns, general manager Bahman Fakharpour and Alejandro and Shanyn Velasquez, husband-and-wife chefs from Texas.

Alejandro Velasquez oversees a high-tech kitchen designed to quickly turn fresh ingredients into dishes served with just the right temperature and presentation. Of the restaurant’s 200 employees, 40 work in the kitchen.

“Our food is simple, but it has a lot of flavor,” said Velasquez, a second- generation chef. “It’s been a great brainstorming effort to figure all of this out.”

The menu includes creative adaptations of tacos, fajitas and other traditional Mexican dishes. Among the signature entrees are agave-glazed salmon and barbecued ribs, specialty burgers, Cuban sandwiches, chicken, tilapia and steaks.

Only four entrees are priced at more than $13. At $24, filet mignon is the most expensive item on the menu. The restaurant also serves weekday lunches and Sunday brunch, with no entrees priced at more than $9.

The upstairs Cobar Cantina has a large selection of beer and wine, premium bourbons and tequilas, specialty margaritas and signature cocktails. Cobar also has small-plate “tapas” dishes priced from $4 to $8.

A third concept within the restaurant is Cocoh!, serving gelato, coffees, confections, cakes and other baked goods. Pastry chef Shanyn Velasquez directs this kid-friendly operation.

Lee Greer said he and his team want Coba Cocina to be a unique experience — one that will become so popular in Lexington that it will create a market for expansion and make their big investment pay off.

“Everything I’ve ever done in some form or fashion is in this building,” Greer said. “We knew it would take a lot of investment. We wanted to do it in Lexington, get it right and see where it goes.”

IF YOU GO

Coba Cocina

What: Restaurant serving Latin American-inspired food in a Las Vegas atmosphere. Also has a Latin lounge with signature cocktails and tapas dishes and a confectionery with gelato, premium coffees, fresh baked goods and pastries.

Where: 2041 Richmond Rd., at St. Margaret Dr.

Coba Cocina hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Thu.; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Fri., Sat.; 9:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun. (Cobar Cantina stays open one hour later every day except Sunday.)

Cocoh! Confectioner hours: 6:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun.

Learn more: (859) 523-8484 or Cobacocina.com

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 The CentrePointe block awaits development. Photo by Charles Bertram

For a project yet to be built, CentrePointe has had a big impact on Lexington.

The most immediate impact was the election of Mayor Jim Gray in November 2010. Were it not for the controversy surrounding CentrePointe, I doubt then-Vice Mayor Gray would have run against, much less unseated, Mayor Jim Newberry.

What Gray understood — and Newberry didn’t — was that CentrePointe focused many people’s longtime frustrations about development in Lexington. People didn’t like the secrecy, the politics and the often-mediocre results.

Most of all, people wanted more say in how their city looks. They didn’t want Lexington’s architectural heritage bulldozed at a developer’s whim. Development occurs on private property, but everyone must look at it and live with it.

Five years later, CentrePointe is still a grassy field waiting for developer Dudley Webb to find financing and tenants. But the project has taught Lexington some valuable lessons.

One lesson is the value of historic preservation. Webb was quick to demolish an entire block, including some buildings that were more than a century old and could have been renovated into unique, valuable space within his larger development.

Lexington’s biggest development trend since then has been for entrepreneurs to renovate fine old buildings and adapt them for new uses — restaurants, bars, stores, offices and homes. These projects make economic sense and preserve Lexington’s history and unique charm.

Another lesson is that good design matters. With CentrePointe stalled and Gray in the mayor’s office, Webb felt pressure to hire top architectural talent and get public input to redesign his project. That work dramatically improved his development plan.

The CentrePointe redesign also helped pave the way for Louisville-based 21c to decide to build one of its acclaimed hotels and contemporary art museums across the street.

The 21c Museum Hotel will be in the century-old Fayette National building, which will get an extensive renovation.

That momentum helped Lexington attract world-class talent to design competitions for two public projects that could transform downtown: the Arena, Arts and Entertainment District and Town Branch Commons.

The arena area plan calls for renovating Rupp Arena, building a bigger convention center and gradually redeveloping more than 30 acres ofunderused, city-owned surface parking lots.

The winning plan for Town Branch Commons would turn marginalized downtown property into a linear park along the historic path of Town Branch Creek. Such projects in other cities have created popular amenities that have attracted many times their cost in new private investment.

Gary Bates, a highly regarded American architect now based in Norway, was chosen to develop the arena district plan.

The winning Town Branch Commons plan was designed by Kate Orff of New York, one of landscape architecture’s rising stars.

Why is such world-class talent suddenly being attracted to Lexington? Because the city has set the bar higher. Why is that important? Because if Lexington wants to attract the best employers, it must create an environment where the best and brightest people want to live and work.

One final lesson from CentrePointe is that Lexington needs better laws and processes to both encourage good development and prevent bad development, especially downtown.

A city task force has spent a lot of time studying “design excellence.” Now, with new leadership from Councilman Steve Kay and help from a consultant, task force members have begun trying to figure out how to turn talk into action.

That won’t be easy. It is not just a matter of creating laws and systems to keep developers from doing bad things. It is about creating laws, systems and incentives so developers can do great things. This will require rules that provide both clarity and flexibility. It will require high standards, but also processes that minimize hassle and unnecessary costs for developers.

I don’t know if the Webb Companies will ever succeed in building CentrePointe. And I worry that the longer the block sits empty, the harder it will be to attract outside investment for other major downtown projects.

But something will eventually be built on the CentrePointe block, and now is the time to make sure that it and other new construction downtown enhances the city rather than detracts from it.

 Watch a video about the CentrePointe block’s demolition:

Time lapse: Tearing down a block, one building at a time from David Stephenson on Vimeo.

To read previous CentrePointe columns and see photos of the project as it evolved, click here.

A CentrePointe gallery:

Darryl and Linda Bond live in the house in St. Martin’s Village where he grew up. His father and uncle did much of the concrete work  for the neighborhood. Photo by Tom Eblen

It looks like many Lexington subdivisions built in the 1950s and ’60s — rows of modest brick and stone houses with well-tended yards.

But St. Martin’s Village took the American dream to a whole new level in Lexington: It was the first large subdivision where black people could buy a home.

“They were the crème de la crème for African-Americans in the 1950s,” said Porter G. Peeples, longtime president of the Urban League. “You were somebody if you got a place in St. Martin’s.”

It had always been hard for black people to find good housing in segregated Lexington. Few banks would lend in traditionally black parts of town. White neighborhoods were off-limits, by strict social custom, if not legal covenant.

For example, a 1907 marketing booklet for the new Mentelle Park development off Richmond Road promised: “No Negroes can ever own property or live in the park. No adjacent or near-by Negro settlements.”

When rumors circulated in 1925 that black-owned land off North Limestone would be developed into a subdivision for blacks, more than 200 white citizens gathered in a nearby church and organized a successful effort to block it.

But after World War II, Lexington’s business leaders realized their little college and farming town needed to attract industry if it was to have a strong economy and viable middle class. Factories hired a diverse work force. Things had to change.

Ovan Haskins, an insurance executive who helped start the Lexington Hustlers semi-pro baseball team, realized a long-held dream in 1948 when he bought land off Newtown Pike and began building 26 homes for sale to blacks on what is now Haskins Street.

But the big break came in 1955, when Joe Fister teamed with Chuck Seeberger and Joe Tuttle to build a 200-lot subdivision for blacks on 40 acres of farmland Fister owned on Price Road off Georgetown Road.

St. Martin’s Village was named for St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639), a mixed-race monk in Peru who is the patron saint for those seeking interracial harmony. The main street was called De Porres Avenue.

“This will be as good as any subdivision in Lexington,” Seeberger said in a 1955 Lexington Herald article that carried the headline, “First Negro Subdivision Planned on Fister Tract.”

Seeberger, president of the development company, was a Kansas native who had lived in Los Angeles before moving to Lexington, where his father-in-law owned an insurance business. He wanted to become a developer, building homes for people who had never been able to afford one, and he recognized an unmet need.

“People from the white community said, ‘You don’t need to be doing this — the status quo is just fine’,” said his son, Kirk Seeberger. “It upset him, but he expected it.”

Seeberger recalled his father, who died in 2003, describing how some St. Martin’s Village homeowners would weep at their closings.

“They said they never thought they would ever own a nice house in Lexington, Kentucky,” he said.

Many of those black homeowners were professional people — and, eventually, city leaders. The late Harry Sykes, who became city manager and mayor pro-tem, lived in St. Martin’s Village, as does former Councilman Robert Jefferson.

Two brothers, Alvin and Bennie Bond, did much of the concrete work on houses in the subdivision. That included “sweat equity” to help them buy their own homes across the street from each other on De Porres Avenue.

“I was born and raised in this house,” said Darryl Bond, 48, one of Alvin’s children. He and his wife, Linda, raised three children there and now operate a licensed child care center in the house. Like his father, Darryl Bond also does concrete work.

Bond’s lifelong tenure in St. Martin’s Village isn’t unusual: he guesses that 80 percent of the homes are occupied by original owners or their descendants.

“It’s a nice neighborhood,” Bond said. “Everybody knows everybody. Everybody pretty much looks out for everybody else. If kids are misbehaving, somebody will correct them.”

Michelle Davis, 55, who also lives in the De Porres Avenue house where she grew up, agreed.

“It’s a family-oriented neighborhood; almost like a big extended family,” she said. “We all grew up together. We were always in each other’s houses. We even got to know each other’s relatives from out of town when they would visit. It’s home.”

Joseph Fister breaks ground for St. Martin’s Village in April 1955. Watching, left to right, are J.J. Tuttle, Tom Robinson, Chuck Seeberger, Don Saylor and G.W. Gard. Herald-Leader file photo.

A rendering for Scape/Landscape Architecture’s plan for Town Branch Commons, showing how it might look west of Rupp Arena. Images provided.

Kate Orff, whose New York landscape architecture firm was chosen last week to design Town Branch Commons, has made a name for herself by looking below the surface and beyond the conventional.

The approach served her well with Lexington’s Downtown Development Authority, which hopes to create green space through the center of the city along the path of the long-buried Town Branch Creek.

Orff said in an interview that her team figured out quickly that the key to this project wasn’t recreating the stream as it used to be, but working with the complex limestone geology and hydrology beneath Lexington’s streets and structures.

She also realized that Town Branch Commons should do more than create beautiful public space to attract people and private development. It should play an important role in solving Lexington’s persistent storm-water and water pollution problems.

In addition to being a partner in the firm Scape/Landscape Architecture, Orff is an assistant professor of architecture and urban design at Columbia University. As founder and co-director of the university’s Urban Landscape Lab, she leads seminars on integrating earth sciences into urban design and planning.

With Town Branch Commons, Orff said she saw an opportunity to accomplish goals that are often seen as contradictory: increasing commercial development and sustainably improving the environment.

“This Lexington project is an amazing opportunity for me to try to bring those two realms together,” Orff said. “I really think that’s the future, this concept of green infrastructure.”

Orff said green infrastructure has many advantages: It is less costly to build and maintain than concrete and pipes. It is less prone to massive failure, because it is less centralized. And it provides the side benefit of public green space.

“But you have to think very systematically,” she said. “It requires more, frankly, of the urban space. It’s more of a dispersed strategy of touching the water where it lands at multiple points in multiple ways. But a more dispersed model leaves you more room for resiliency.”

Orff, 41, grew up in Maryland and earned a bachelor’s degree in political and social thought from the University of Virginia, then a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University.

She started Scape/Landscape Architecture in 2004. The firm’s projects have ranged from a 1,000-square-foot park in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a 1,000-acre landfill regeneration project in Dublin, Ireland.

Orff has made several national lists of up-and-coming designers. Last year, the organization United States Artists chose her as one of 50 American artists to receive $50,000 fellowship awards.

She was co-author, along with photographer Richard Misrach, of the 2012 book Petrochemical America, which created an ecological atlas of the petrochemical industry’s effects on the 150-mile Mississippi River corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as “Cancer Alley.”

Currently, Orff’s firm is doing projects in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Greenville, S.C., where she is working on an environmental education center with Jeanne Gang, the Chicago architect and MacArthur “genius” award winner who did the site plan for the proposed CentrePointe development in Lexington.

Perhaps Orff’s most high-profile effort is a proposal to restore the Gowanus and Red Hook sections of New York harbor with a system of designed oyster beds. Before harbor dredging and industrialization, oysters flourished there. One oyster has the ability to cleanse 50 gallons of water per day. (She explains the project in a TED talk online. Watch it at the end of this post.)

Her “Oystertecture” plan, which will begin with a pilot project in March, has attracted a lot more attention since superstorm Sandy showed the vulnerability of the Northeast’s urban coast. Orff is part of a task force New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed to study those issues.

To prepare her Lexington proposal, Orff said she studied water flow data and made floodplain maps to understand downtown’s hydrology and geology. For local knowledge and engineering expertise, she engaged Lexington-based EHI Consultants and Sherwood Design Engineers, a major national firm.

Orff also met with city officials to understand Lexington’s consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, which will require millions of dollars in fixes for long-ignored water quality problems throughout Fayette County.

“Before we ever started to design, we did a very comprehensive series of maps that included flooding, the SSO (sanitary sewer overflow) events and so on,” Orff said. “We had a very clear sense of how water was moving and the amounts of water and what would be possible and what would not be possible.”

Orff said her team also tried to work with what already existed or was proposed for downtown “rather than tearing down and starting over from scratch, because clearly a lot of money has been spent already.”

Orff plans to return to Lexington in a few weeks to meet with stakeholders and the public to gather feedback and ideas. Then, more civil engineering will be needed, as well as a plan for how to build the project in phases.

“We are aiming to refine the plan and provide some alternatives for different areas,” she said. “I think the way our scheme kind of fits within the landscape, it provides a lot of alternatives and backup plans.”

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Conceptual sketch of a proposed park between the Kentucky Utilities and Phoenix buildings along Vine Street as part of the winning design for Town Branch Commons. Illustration: Scape/Landscape Architecture PLLC

All five finalists submitted imaginative plans for Town Branch Commons, but the entry from Scape/Landscape Architecture PLLC was the clear winner.

Scape’s plan is the most authentic to Lexington. It is the most practical and affordable. It disrupts current traffic patterns the least. And it highlights the role natural ecology can and should play in solving Lexington’s storm-water problems, not only downtown but throughout Fayette County.

Kate Orff, the New York firm’s lead partner and a rising star in the world of landscape architecture, is well-known for paying close attention to the natural ecology of places where she designs. She clearly did her homework on Lexington.

The inspiration for Scape’s plan goes deeper than Town Branch Creek. It showcases Central Kentucky’s karst geology, where water unexpectedly rises from and disappears beneath limestone formations just below the lush Bluegrass soil.

Rather than trying to rebuild a long-buried creek, Scape’s plan artfully creates water features that interpret the region’s natural springs, pools, sinks and boils at strategic points along the creek’s historic path. They would rise and fall with the seasons.

One thing that made her plan the most practical and affordable is that it can be done in phases, as money is available. Also, the city already owns almost all of the land it would need and should be able to acquire the rest of it.

Property for the two largest pieces of this linear park is now surface parking lots. So two of downtown’s ugliest and most under-utilized pieces of land would become beautiful magnets for people and surrounding private investment.

Unlike the other finalists, Scape’s plan calls for minimal change in current traffic patterns. The biggest proposed change would be replacing the Martin Luther King Boulevard viaduct between High and Main streets with a pedestrian walkway to a new park below. But, if necessary, the project could still go forward if the viaduct remained.

The plan also would eliminate the crook at the west end of Vine Street around Triangle Park, which city leaders have been trying to close for years. It also would rearrange some lanes and sidewalks on Vine Street to make space for a boulevard-style park in the center of the street between Limestone and Broadway, but without significantly reducing traffic capacity. Ideally, Vine Street would go from one-way to two-way traffic, but it wouldn’t have to.

The plan would create green space downtown that would act like rain gardens to manage and filter storm water using much of the existing underground infrastructure. That aspect of the plan is brilliant.

City officials should be looking throughout Fayette County for places where stream restoration, rain gardens and other natural techniques can be used to manage runoff and filter runoff from streets, parking lots and development. In many places, this approach could be more attractive and less costly than traditional engineering solutions.

In both result and process, this Town Branch Commons design competition has been remarkable. After getting proposals from 23 firms, Lexington chose five finalists and gave each a $15,000 honorarium to work on a detailed plan. That money was donated by the Nashville family of Lee Ann Ingram, an investor in Shorty’s Market on Short Street.

The result was that Lexington got the benefit of having five teams of the world’s best landscape architects and urban designers take a deep look at the city’s issues and propose detailed solutions — at no cost to taxpayers.

How could little Lexington attract such talent? One reason is the personal connections Michael Speaks, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Design, has in the global design community. Another is Mayor Jim Gray’s vision for a world-class downtown. And another is the successful Arena, Arts and Entertainment District Task Force process, which engaged a world-class master planner (Norway-based Space Group) and is now following through on its recommendations.

Lexington has a lot of work to do before these grand plans can become reality. But, for the first time in a very long time, it at least has some truly grand plans.

Click on photos to see larger images. For more images and information, go to Townbranchcommons.com.

Hardly a week goes by that people don’t tell me how they wish the open block where the Webb Companies hopes to build CentrePointe could become a public park instead.

As the block awaits redevelopment, it is planted in grass and surrounded by a plank fence to resemble a horse pasture. It has become a popular gathering place during downtown festivals. (At other times, it is off-limits, just as horse pastures are.)

CentrePasture’s popularity points to a couple of ironies about Lexington.

One is that we have a lot of open space, but little public space. The other is that we are surrounded by some of the world’s most beautiful rural landscapes — an artful blend of the natural and man-made — but our central business district is a generic jungle of concrete and asphalt. There are only a handful of small parks or plazas downtown, and few trees of any size.

Although recent renovations of Triangle and Cheapside parks have been excellent, the comments I hear make me think Lexington residents still yearn for more public space downtown.

Town Branch Creek resurfaces west of Rupp Arena. Herald-Leader photo

The Downtown Development Authority on Monday will choose the winner of a design competition for Town Branch Commons — some form of linear park on city-owned property along the path of the long-buried stream that gave birth to Lexington.

This project would involve bringing parts of the creek back to the surface, either literally or symbolically, to create attractive public spaces for nature and a variety of activities. A jury of design professionals was to recommend a winner to the DDA board after closed-door presentations Friday by the five finalists.

The competition attracted 23 entries. The finalists are among the world’s best landscape architects and designers: Coen + Partners in Minneapolis; Denver-based Civitas; the Netherlands firm Inside Outside; Scape Landscape Architecture of New York; and Copenhagen-based Julien De Smedt Architects working with Balmori Associates of New York.

All five finalists’ designs will be on display at the Downtown Arts Center from Tuesday until Feb. 22, including during Gallery Hop on Feb. 15.

I can’t wait to see the designs, especially after hearing the finalists make presentations about their previous work Thursday at the Lexington Children’s Theatre. They showed amazing projects from all over the world, including in cities such as Bilbao, Spain, that had far more daunting problems than Lexington has.

(An interesting side note is that three of the six presenters were women: design legends Diana Balmori and Petra Blaisse and one of landscape architecture’s rising stars, Kate Orff.)

(Also worth mentioning: several of the landscape architects showed projects that used wetland parks to effectively solve storm-water problems. Lexington officials should remember that as they decide how to spend millions of dollars on storm water issues under terms of the federal consent decree.)

I can already hear Lexington’s naysayers: This whole idea is impractical, unaffordable and frivolous. It is none of that.

The compelling argument for Town Branch Commons is not esthetic, but economic. This sort of urban public space has been an effective way to attract people and investment dollars to cities of all sizes, from Seoul, South Korea to Yonkers, N.Y.

People who have attended recent Commerce Lexington trips have seen it work in Greenville, S.C., where a long-neglected riverbank became Falls Park; and in San Antonio, where a once-buried stream similar to Town Branch became the Riverwalk, now Texas’ second-largest tourist attraction after the Alamo.

New York’s High Line project turned an abandoned elevated rail line into a linear park that has transformed a once-decaying section of lower Manhattan. Despite huge cost overruns, the Millennium Park that Chicago built over an urban rail yard has more than paid for itself with the private development it has attracted.

The kind of public-private partnership envisioned with Town Branch Commons is under way in Atlanta, which is turning an abandoned rail line around the city into 1,300 acres of parks and 33 miles of trails, and in Louisville, which has raised more than $60 million in private money for the 21st Century Parks project that is creating 4,000 acres of linear parkland and 100 miles of trails around that city.

What excites me about the potential of Town Branch Commons was mentioned frequently by the world-class designers who submitted plans. This isn’t about building Disney World in a swamp; it is an authentic reflection of Lexington’s history, geography and culture.

Pioneers chose Town Branch as the site for their town, laying out Lexington’s grid according to the creek’s path rather than a compass. Its banks were where early Lexingtonians gathered for fun and refreshment before the stream was polluted, built over and eventually buried.

Town Branch Commons will require public money and even more private money. But it could be a great long-term investment, one that uses the authenticity of Lexington’s past to create both an amenity and economic generator for the future.

Greg Dike, right, executive director of the Morehead Area Habitat for Humanity group, helps build an interior wall for a house near Morehead with a group of volunteers from Lexington on Jan. 19.  Photos by Tom Eblen

MOREHEAD — When Greg Dike became the director — and only employee — of Habitat for Humanity’s Rowan County unit more than two years ago, he thought he knew the mission. Then that mission got a whole lot bigger.

A cluster of tornados tore through Eastern Kentucky last March 2, killing 22 people. Eight died in neighboring Morgan and Menifee counties and dozens more were left homeless.

“When the tornadoes came, we decided to expand our service area,” said Dike, 61, whose previous careers included electrical engineer, United Methodist minister and emergency room nurse.

Dike figured that Habitat could provide valuable help in storm recovery for a couple of reasons. Habitat, an ecumenical Christian ministry, builds houses that low-income working people can afford to buy, in part through their own labors. Plus, the three-county Morehead Area unit of Habitat specializes in super energy-efficient housing.

Morehead Area Habitat’s most common house has 1,100 square feet of living space on one floor and costs about $45,000 to build. Through smart design and lots of insulation — including a foundation insulated below the frost line — each house has an average heating and cooling cost of only about $12 a month. A poorly insulated house or mobile home often has a monthly utility bill of $200 or more.

So far, in addition to its regular work in Rowan County, Habitat has built one house each in Morgan and Menifee counties for storm victims, Dike said. Six more are under construction in Morgan and two more in Menifee, with seven additional houses planned in those counties.

Judge Executives Tim Conley in Morgan County and James Trimble in Menifee County have been very supportive, and have helped Habitat identify building sites.

“They see Habitat as a way to get people into quality housing,” Dike said.

Because some people who lost their homes in the storms were elderly, disabled or otherwise unable to take on even a small mortgage, as typical Habitat clients do, the Kentucky Housing Corp. and other organizations and foundations have provided several hundred thousand dollars in grants to build homes. The state Habitat organization also has been very helpful, Dike said.

Materials for each house cost about $35,000, so the total price is kept low largely through volunteer labor. While Habitat is always happy to receive cash donations, Dike said, his biggest need is regular construction volunteers.

Dike is working with Diane James of Lexington, a longtime Habitat volunteer and former construction manager, to recruit and organize groups of regular volunteers from Central Kentucky, which is only an hour or two away by car.

The ideal volunteers are men or women who can gather several friends together and commit to one or two work days a month, ideally on the same house so they can become familiar with it.

“I think there are a lot of people out there with skills,” Dike said. “We’re not looking for award-winning carpenters; just people with some skills and common sense.”

Dike and James hopes to hear from churches, businesses or just groups of friends who think they could commit to a series of work days over the next few months. Those interested in volunteering can email James at buildwestliberty@gmail.com or call Dike at (606) 776-0022.

“It’s an easy trip, and we get a lot of work done in a day,” James said. “Most people have really enjoyed it.”

That’s certainly what I found earlier this month, when I accompanied James, Dike and a group of volunteers from several Lexington Disciples of Christ churches who were framing interior walls on a Habitat house near Morehead.

“I just love doing it,” said Bettye Burns, a retiree who volunteered through her church for a women-only Habitat build in the early 1990s and has been doing it ever since.

“It’s fun, and I’ve learned so much,” Burns said. “I credit Diane for me not getting empty-nest syndrome when my kids grew up. I was so busy helping her build houses, I didn’t have time for that.”

Steve Seithers, who began volunteering through his church in 1992, said he enjoys the fellowship and sense of accomplishment he gets from Habitat work. “Plus, it helps make a difference in people’s lives,” Seithers said. “This is something I can do, so I’m doing it.”

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Chad Needham has renovated some of Lexington’s most damaged historic buildings and turned them into valuable commercial space. Photos by Tom Eblen

When Chad Needham moved back to Lexington after a few years away working in corporate marketing, he started a pizza company. Then he recognized another business opportunity all around him.

He noticed that older neighborhoods he had become familiar with while attending Bryan Station High School and Transylvania University were changing, and for the better. People were beginning to renovate classic, old buildings as places to live, work and play.

So, in 2009, the entrepreneur bought the old Spalding’s Bakery building at East Sixth and North Limestone streets. It stood across from the recently renovated Al’s Bar, which had become a popular hangout for young people interested in live music, poetry readings and good bourbon.

Needham gave the circa-1880 bakery a complete makeover, using its historic fabric, salvaged antique wood and adding some contemporary twists. The building is now leased to Arcadium, a bar featuring “vintage” arcade games.

He then turned his attention across the street to the liquor store, which was not exactly an asset to the neighborhood. After renovating that building, he leased it to the young founders of North Lime Coffee & Donuts and artist John Lackey.

Needham then took on a dilapidated Victorian house down the street. Meanwhile, others were doing similar work along the North Limestone corridor, including Brokenfork Design, Griffin VanMeter and Marty Clifford.

Needham has moved closer downtown for his seventh and most challenging project: a pair of early 1800s houses on Constitution Street that he plans to rent as offices.

“The Spalding’s Bakery was really bad, but this is worse,” Needham, 40, said as he took me through one of the houses and described how it had suffered from squatters, a fire and a long-leaking roof.

“These are the classic worst properties in good neighborhoods,” he said. “But they have a great character about them. You try to keep the good old and get rid of the bad old. And the bad old is usually the newer stuff that was added.”

He plans to have the first house finished by April. The former Transylvania soccer standout already has a lease signed for it with the Kentucky Youth Soccer Association, which is moving its office there from Chevy Chase.

“It’s going to be a cool office,” he said. “Essentially, a new structure within an old one.”

Needham is saving original doors and woodwork where possible. But the houses are getting new roofs, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and interior insulation, except where interior brick will be left exposed. Much flooring must be replaced. In one house, a new staircase is being built from reclaimed heart pine lumber salvaged from an old tobacco barn.

His business model requires that he buy old buildings cheaply and carefully watch his renovation costs, he said. He self-finances building purchases, because bank financing is rarely obtainable for a project like this until it is finished and leased.

Except for the Victorian house, which he sold, Needham has retained his other renovated buildings as commercial property. Rental income helps him finance future projects.

“The challenge of this business is that it takes a lot of money up front and it takes a lot of time,” he said. “And you have to do a lot of the work yourself. If I were to hire contracting companies, I don’t think on the other side that I could keep rents affordable.”

Needham works alongside his crew, which often includes his father, Phil Needham, who at age 71 is a competitive bicycle racer. A veteran Thoroughbred breeder, Phil Needham bred Mine That Bird, a gelding that won the 2009 Kentucky Derby as a 50-1 shot and went on to finish second in the Preakness and third in the Belmont Stakes.

“I’ve got a good crew, and what we can’t figure out we’ll subcontract out,” Chad Needham said. “I enjoy this process. It’s a creative process. I try to make each one as good as it can be, but you’ve got to figure out where to stop.”

He said his venture has been modestly profitable so far and is allowing him to create assets that will generate long-term income for his family, which includes wife Denise, a dressage horse trainer, and daughter Bella, 5.

“You really end up with a new building that has a lot of character,” he said. “But I couldn’t do this without the end-users. Everything I’ve done has found a customer.”

Needham also said he gets a lot of personal satisfaction from the work.

“I like giving these great old buildings a second life and seeing the area turn around,” he said. “It’s a nice feeling to keep investing in a neighborhood where I had fun times when I was at Transy.”

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Richardsville Elementary generates more energy than it uses, which resulted in the Tennessee Valley Authority sending the school district a check for $37,227. Photo by Tom Eblen

The numbers are in, and America’s most energy-efficient school building has performed even better than expected.

I wrote about Richardsville Elementary near Bowling Green in August 2010 as it was nearing completion. The 77,466-square-foot school was designed to be “net-zero,” meaning it would generate as much energy each year as it used.

Warren County has been a national leader in energy-efficient schools, with each new building outperforming the last. This rural, 550-student school was to be the star — the nation’s most energy-efficient school.

Most of the school’s energy savings come from advanced design and materials, which are not much more expensive than conventional construction. But the key to net-zero was a $2.7 million solar-panel system to generate electricity. On cloudy days, the school can draw power from the Tennessee Valley Authority grid. On sunny days, the excess power generated feeds into TVA’s system.

Plans called for the solar-panel system to pay for itself within 14 years. But the payback will be quicker because performance has exceeded expectations, said the architect, Kenny Stanfield of Sherman Carter Barnhart in Louisville.

In the first full year of operation, the school generated 10 percent more electricity than it used, and TVA sent the school district a check for $37,227.

“So not only does the school not have a utility bill, but it’s a positive revenue stream,” Stanfield said.

Unfortunately, other state utilities don’t pay cash, only offering credits, for excess power generation.

That is likely to change as utility economics make it more attractive to buy electricity from small producers than build costly power plants.

Since Richardsville opened, Sherman Carter Barnhart has built four more Kentucky schools that are “net-zero ready,” meaning all they need is solar-panel generation systems. Two are in Warren County; the others are in Meade and Anderson counties. Two more are being designed, for Bardstown and Taylorsville.

Solar-panel prices continue to fall every year, making school power generation more attractive. Stanfield said they now cost about half what they did when the Richardsville project was bid.

Fayette County’s first venture into this arena is Locust Trace AgriScience Farm. Architect Susan Hill of Lexington firm Tate Hill Jacobs says April-October data showed the school’s solar systems generated more power than the school used, but the key test will be how it performs during the cloudy, winter months.

Fayette County Public Schools recently announced long-term construction plans. Energy-efficient technology will be a big part of those new buildings, spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said, but it is too early to know specifics. The district also has an aggressive program to improve energy-efficiency at existing schools.

The Explorium has occupied a back corner of Victorian Square for 22 years. Photo by Tom Eblen

Dudley Webb should think twice before letting the Explorium leave Victorian Square, the downtown complex he developed with a lot of city help in 1983, sold in 1994 and repurchased last August.

The children’s museum leases 24,000 square feet in Victorian Square for not much more than it paid when the museum opened 22 years ago. Its rent is considerably less than what other tenants pay.

“Nobody is trying to displace them,” Webb told reporter Beverly Fortune last week. “But we need an understanding that nobody can be on scholarship anymore. Everything has got to work on a businesslike basis.”

The Webb Companies and Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate of Cincinnati paid $1.7 million for the 226,000-square-foot complex built behind 19th-century façades on the northwest corner of West Main Street and Broadway. The partners say they plan to spend $10 million to “reinvent” Victorian Square, which has always struggled.

You can’t blame Webb for wanting a good return on his investment. Since the Explorium didn’t have a long-term lease, Webb has every right to replace it with a better-paying tenant. Still, I hope they can negotiate a price that will allow the Explorium to stay, because it is a great resource for Kentucky children.

Ironically, the children’s museum was created in part to draw people downtown and to Victorian Square. While the complex has always had a few interesting shops, galleries, bars and restaurants, it has lacked dynamic anchors to draw crowds and fill up its interior space. The closest it has come to those anchors is the Explorium, deSha’s restaurant and Lexington Children’s Theatre, which owns its own space.

“Reinventing” Victorian Square won’t be easy. But before losing one of its main attractions, Webb should be really sure he has a better anchor tenant signed, sealed and delivered. The last thing he needs is more empty space to fill.

Webb thought he had financing and tenants lined up nearly five years ago when he evicted businesses from a downtown block and demolished 14 buildings for his proposed CentrePointe development. Since then, the block has been an empty field.

Developer Phil Holoubek hopes to announce construction plans soon for the Main and Vine property that has been vacant for two years. Photos by Tom Eblen 

Southland Christian Church opened its new Richmond Road campus this weekend on the former site of Lexington Mall, a 31-acre parcel that had been a civic embarrassment for years.

The church bought the long-vacant shopping mall in 2010 from Maryland-based Saul Centers, which had let it languish for more than a decade. Dillard’s, the last store in the mall, closed in 2005.

Once the church develops commercial space at the property’s edge along Richmond Road — a former pond that now looks like a strip mine — one of Lexington’s biggest eyesores should be gone.

If we are lucky, and the economy continues improving, other prominent sites that are ripe for redevelopment might finally get some attention.

The next one that comes to mind is Turfland Mall, which opened in 1967 as Lexington’s first suburban shopping mall. After years of decline, the central mall shut down after Dillard’s closed in 2008. As with Lexington Mall, Turfland was owned by an out-of-state company that seemed to have forgotten about it.

Last month, amid a Hopkinsville bank’s attempts to foreclose on the 367,000-square-foot mall, Lexington developer Ron Switzer bought it for $6 million. He said he plans to demolish all but the Staples store. Staples and Home Depot, which owns its end of the mall, have remained open, along with several businesses in the parking lot.

“What we want to do is take an eyesore and come up with an attractive plan for a development,” Switzer said last month, adding that specific plans are not set.

Turfland Mall was purchased last month for redevelopment.

I wish Switzer the best of luck in revitalizing Turfland. The same goes for the owners of two adjacent properties at Harrodsburg and Lane Allen roads — the former Verizon building, which is for lease, and land long occupied by The Springs Inn. The once-popular motel closed in 2008 and was demolished the next year. A CVS drug store was built on 1.56 acres; the remaining 5.1 acres are for sale.

Another prime redevelopment site that could see action soon is the point where Main and Vine streets come together at the eastern edge of downtown. A former bank, antiques store and alteration shop were demolished in April 2010, and developer Phil Holoubek hoped to replace them with an urban-style mixed-use development.

But Holoubek’s efforts were frustrated by the economic slump, tight credit markets and the city’s inability to build a parking deck on the block.

Holoubek and a Louisville developer then tried to build a CVS drug store on the site, but its suburban-style design faced widespread opposition. The deal died when it was discovered that the site plan hadn’t taken into account an underground utility vault that was too costly to move.

Last week, I was giving Holoubek a hard time about how scruffy his vacant lot has looked for the past two years. I noted the CentrePointe block down the street has been sown in grass and well-maintained while it has awaited development.

Holoubek said he expects by the end of this month to announce a tenant for Main and Vine and a development plan that looks like it belongs downtown. Should that deal fall through, he promised to call in landscapers.

Among other prominent Lexington parcels ready for redevelopment:

■ The 11-acre Continental Inn site at New Circle and Winchester roads. The property was bought by a group of investors, including former state Democratic Party chairman Jerry Lundergan, and most of the dilapidated motel was demolished in 2007. Since then, property owners and the Eastland Parkway Neighborhood Association have sparred over semi-trailers being parked there.

The Continental Inn site is advertised for sale. At the right price, it could make a good location for a car dealership or even a mid-priced hotel, said Ken Silvestri, a commercial real estate broker who keeps a close eye on the Lexington market.

■ The former site of Thoroughbred Chevrolet on Richmond Road between New Circle Road and Man o’ War Boulevard also is a good candidate for redevelopment, Silvestri said. It has been vacant since the dealership closed in July 2010 after General Motors did not renew its franchise.

My house when it was new in 1907 and photographed for a marketing booklet. Below, Maxine Harding Comley, who lived there from 1924-43. Below, a recent photo of the house. Photos by Tom Eblen and Thomas Knight (above).

I called Maxine Harding Comley with many questions. But before I could ask, she had one for me: “Have you found my secret hiding place?”

Every old house has a story. I was told that this 90-year-old lady in Frankfort could tell me a lot about mine.

A year ago, my wife and I bought one of the five original houses on Mentelle Park, a street whose developers promoted it in 1907 as Kentucky’s prettiest and most modern subdivision.

Early on, my house had a series of occupants: a road contractor, a cabinet maker, a traveling salesman, a doctor and an insurance executive.

Then, in 1924, the house was bought by Bob Harding, a locomotive engineer with Louisville & Nashville Railroad. He was a widower with two daughters when he married his second wife, Jewel. They had a daughter, Maxine. The family moved to Mentelle Park when she was 2.

After our phone conversation, I visited Comley and brought her recent photographs of the house. After a few tears, she shared fond memories of her childhood home and neighborhood.

She recalled that the manager of the old Lafayette Hotel (now city hall) lived in a big house on the corner. The people next door owned Congleton Lumber Co. The Congletons had several children who were among her many playmates.

“We had 20 or 25 children in the neighborhood, and we had a lot of fun,” she said, recalling kickball games by the stone pillars at the end of the street and hide-and-seek games in the bushes along the grassy, tree-shaded median.

“Kick the can was a good game to play out in the middle of that street,” she said with a wry smile. “The neighbors didn’t care much for it at night.”

Because Comley’s father was often away, driving coal and lumber trains through the Eastern Kentucky mountains, her mother converted three downstairs rooms into a rental apartment. The front window of what is now my study was turned into the apartment’s outside door.

“We had some nice tenants,” she said. “But we all shared one bathroom. That wasn’t fun.”

As we thumbed through my photos, Comley described how each room used to look. “You can still see the old house in these pictures,” she said, noting the fancy mantels and woodwork, the leaded-glass window in the living room and the bathroom’s claw-foot tub.

The Hardings installed gas heaters in the coal-burning fireplaces. Still, the house’s cottage-style roof kept the upstairs bedrooms cold in winter and hot in summer. Comley recalled sleeping summer nights on the floor of a small upstairs room, putting her pillow on the floor-level window sill to try to catch a breeze.

Her stories made me thankful that the couple we bought the house from installed central heat and air conditioning, plus an upstairs bathroom. Comley said walking down that steep staircase to the bathroom in the middle of the night wasn’t easy.

Finally, I showed Comley photos of an upstairs bedroom with solid pine wainscoting around the walls. “This was my room!” she said. “It was so nice and big.”

Then she told me about her hiding place. Between the dormer and another front window, she said, one of the wooden panels could be removed, creating a child-size entrance to a “secret” room behind the wall.

“My friends and I would hide in there,” Comley said, her eyes twinkling. “No telling what’s back in there.”

Comley lived in our house for nearly 20 years, until she married Bob Comley in December 1943. The next spring, she graduated from Transylvania University with a degree in music and economics.

While her husband ran restaurants in Frankfort, Comley taught first grade at the old Bridgeport School for 25 years and played the organ at Highland Christian Church for 50 years. The Comleys recently celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary. They have seven children and so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren that she has lost count.

Bob Harding died in 1952, eight months after retiring from 45 years of railroad service. Two of the Comleys’ children lived with her mother while they were students at Transylvania. Jewel Harding died in 1971.

The house was rented for a couple of years before the Rev. John and Margaret Therkelsen bought and renovated it. He died in 2011, a few months before we bought the house and began our own renovation.

Last week, I found time for a closer inspection of Comley’s childhood bedroom. I had noticed one panel of wainscot that didn’t fit quite right. I chipped away some paint, removed a screw, and the panel popped out.

Behind it was a space about six feet long and two feet wide, undisturbed for decades. On the floor were a few once-colorful pages from a 1920s carpet catalog and an empty antique Ball Mason jar, all covered with a thick layer of dust.

I called Comley to tell her I had found her hiding place. “It’s not a secret anymore!” she said with a laugh, then apologized for not leaving more valuable treasure.

“It’s a wonderful house,” she said. “You take good care of it for me.”

Neema Dominic puts in volunteer hours painting a foreclosed home on Savoy Road that is being renovated by Habitat for Humanity.  Habitat has renovated four foreclosed homes in Lexington this year and will do a fifth next year as part of a city program to keep foreclosed homes from becoming vacant liabilities in their neighborhoods. Photos by Tom Eblen

Lexington has a couple of big housing problems: there is too little affordable housing, and there are too many vacant houses in neighborhoods all over the city, especially since the wave of foreclosures that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

A partnership between city government and Habitat for Humanity has offered small help for both problems, but it has left officials optimistic that it could lead to bigger solutions.

On Wednesday, Mayor Jim Gray will help dedicate a renovated house at 224 Savoy Road in a well-kept, middle-class subdivision off Versailles Road. After a foreclosure in 2010, that house and another down the street sat empty for more than two years. That worried neighbors, including Urban County Council member Peggy Henson, who lives around the corner.

“These were sturdy, good, well-built homes,” Henson said. “But they weren’t going to stay that way the longer they sat empty.”

Those two houses were among 10 foreclosed, vacant properties the city was able to acquire with federal stimulus money through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

The city turned the 10 properties over to Habitat for Humanity for $1 each. Five had homes that could be renovated; the others will become building sites for new Habitat homes. Four of the renovations have been completed; the fifth will be done next year, as will the new construction.

Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based non-profit organization made famous by former President Jimmy Carter’s volunteer efforts on its behalf, builds affordable homes for low-income people willing to put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity” to become homeowners.

In Lexington, Habitat has typically built new homes, usually in neighborhoods north of Main Street in the East End, West End and Winburn, where inexpensive lots were available. This venture was Habitat’s first at renovating existing homes in other neighborhoods, and Rachel Smith Childress, the organization’s Lexington executive director, said it turned out to be a winner for everyone.

“Our families like them because they’re in other nice neighborhoods and have amenities that aren’t typically part of our homes,” she said. “Plus, it removes vacant houses from neighborhoods, increases property values for everyone and increases property tax revenues for the city.”

For example, the house at 224 Savoy Road, which was built about 1960, is brick with hardwood floors and vintage knotty pine paneling. The kitchen includes a dishwasher. None of that is in a new Habitat house.

But the house needed work, including bathroom and kitchen remodeling, which was done by Habitat staff, volunteers and future Habitat homeowners. Whirlpool donated other needed kitchen appliances.

Money for the renovation was donated by business sponsors Paul Miller Ford, Ford Motor Co., PNC Bank and the PNC Foundation. Support for the other renovations has come from Ashland Inc., Calvary Baptist Church and Back Construction.

More than 500 hours of work was performed by the new owners of 224 Savoy Road, Emmanuel Katchofa, and his wife, Marceline Ilunga. He was a physician in the Congo before they and their five children fled the war-torn country and were resettled in Lexington by the U.S. State Department and Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Katchofa and Ilunga both now have jobs, although he is unable to practice medicine because his license is not valid in this country.

Legal refugees from the Congo and other troubled African nations now make up about half of the 15 or 20 Lexington families Habitat is able to help become home owners each year. That is because refugees come here without bad credit histories and with strong motivation to succeed, Childress said.

Henson said she and her neighbors are happy to have the vacant house on Savoy Road restored and occupied.

“It was a real blessing to the neighborhood,” she said. “Those properties are looking great now, and it will be really good to have folks living there.”

Although federal stimulus money is no longer available, Henson and Childress hope Habitat’s partnership with the city on rehabilitating vacant houses or building on abandoned lots can find new ways to continue.

“We’re talking with the city about property and buildings and partnerships,” Childress said. “But the need for affordable housing goes beyond home ownership.

“Everyone is not going to be a homeowner. We really have a huge gap in decent rental housing that is affordable in Lexington. It’s a huge need.”

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Few mayors come into office knowing much about architecture, design or urban planning, even though those issues are at the heart of some of the biggest, most expensive and longest-lasting decisions they will make.

And that is why many of those decisions are not very good. Multimillion-dollar projects with a huge impact on city life and image are often victims of political compromises, well-connected developers, traffic engineers and low bidders.

That is why Joe Riley, longtime mayor of Charleston, S.C., and the National Endowment for the Arts created the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors and the American Architectural Foundation.

Since 1986, the institute has brought together more than 900 mayors and 650 professionals to discuss creative, contemporary approaches to city planning and design.

Earlier this month, the University of Kentucky’s College of Design hosted an institute conference that brought seven mayors to Lexington. They came from a diverse group of cities: Cambridge, Mass.; Joplin, Mo.; Clarksville, Tenn.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Waterbury, Conn.; and Pennsylvania’s Reading and Lower Merion.

The mayors spent two days with a group of world-class design professionals. At an opening reception, Mayor Jim Gray and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, both graduates of the institute, urged them to seize the opportunity.

“Like any great business, you’ve got to be planning,” Fischer said.

Each mayor was to give a 15-minute presentation about a local project. It would then be discussed by the other mayors and the professionals. The “experts” weren’t there to design for the mayors; they were mostly advising them on how to get the help they need to achieve their cities’ goals.

The professionals included two names familiar in Lexington: Gary Bates of Norway-based Space Group, who did the Rupp Arena, Arts & Entertainment District plan and is now doing a master plan for Louisville; and Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, the MacArthur “genius” award winner who did the site plan for Lexington’s proposed CentrePointe development.

Others offering advice included Neil Denari and Roger Sherman, two Los Angeles architects who design projects all over the world; Roberto de Leon of de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop in Louisville; and landscape architects Shane Coen, whose Minneapolis firm has an international reputation, and Paul Morris, who as deputy secretary of the North Carolina Department of Transportation tries to marry good design with highway engineering.

The institute has some strict rules: The professionals cannot be hired to do work for the mayors’ cities for a year. Also, sessions are limited to mayors and design professionals; no observers. The goal is open, honest discussions, because achieving good urban planning and design often involves a lot of strategy and politics.

The design by De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop for a restroom at Louisville’s Riverview Park mimics a traditional Kentucky tobacco barn in an artful, and low-maintenance, way. Photo by De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop

Michael Speaks, the UK college’s dean, and his faculty also were there to advise, something they do for Kentucky cities when asked. Speaks said he hopes to create a program similar to the institute as an ongoing resource for Kentucky mayors.

Several mayors said afterward that the conference was an eye-opener.

“It was a terrific, creative, collaborative learning process,” said Liz Rogan, president of Lower Merion’s Board of Commissioners. “I learned that there are creative solutions and processes and different ways of seeing things.”

Melodee Colbert-Kean, mayor of Joplin, came with the most complicated project: rebuilding a city devastated by a tornado in May 2011.

“It was incredible,” Colbert-Kean said of the session. “The information they have given us will go a long way toward redeveloping our city the way we want it to be.”

There was one public session at the end of the conference. Gang, de Leon and Denari showed some recent work, which offered lessons about the value of good design.

For example, de Leon showed designs for a restroom building at a riverfront park in suburban Louisville. In most cities, this would be a concrete-block box, painted beige. But de Leon designed a beautiful, low-maintenance, reasonably priced piece of highly functional metal-and-concrete art that echoes the look of a traditional Kentucky tobacco barn. It isn’t simply a park services building; it is an icon.

Denari said it is important that any city or company planning a major project hire the right design professionals and give them time to think through all of the client’s needs and problems — some of which the client may not even realize they have.

“It’s about thinking, ‘How can we maximize this project?’ ” de Leon added. “How can we maximize what we’re willing to spend to get the most value?”

Historic district zoning has been an effective way to improve property values and the quality of life in old Lexington neighborhoods that were subjected to years of abuse and neglect.

So leaders of the Ashland Park Neighborhood Association want to try a new approach: protect their gem before any significant damage can occur.

The Urban County Planning Commission on Oct. 25 will consider a request for H-1 zoning overlay protection for South Hanover Avenue, Desha Road and small sections of five contiguous roads: Fincastle, Richmond, Fontaine, East High and Slashes.

The neighborhood association’s 13-member board unanimously supports the request and has spent months assembling a detailed case for it. After a series of public meetings, the association collected signatures of support from a substantial majority of affected property owners.

Still, they must get past a vocal minority and correct misinformation about what restrictions historic designation would place on property owners.

“We just want to ensure the historical and architectural character of our neighborhood and protect our property values,” said Tony Chamblin, the neighborhood association’s president.

The neighborhood association has received support in its request from city historic preservation officers and the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation.

The affected streets were some of the first to be developed from statesman Henry Clay’s Ashland estate. Developers hired America’s most famous landscape architecture firms to do the work: the Olmsted Brothers of Brookline, Mass., whose work included New York’s Central Park.

Between 1919 and 1934, the neighborhood was developed into a beautiful mix of single-family homes and apartment houses. There are outstanding examples of many architectural styles popular at the time: Colonial, Craftsman, Tudor, Bungalow, American Foursquare, Dutch Colonial, French Eclectic and Italian Renaissance.

Thanks to its beauty and location, Ashland Park has suffered little of the abuse experienced by some nearby neighborhoods. It remains an excellent model for high-quality, mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood design.

But without historic zoning protection, there are no guarantees for the future.

Chamblin has lived for 20 years on South Ashland Avenue, a part of the neighborhood that got historic zoning protection in 1989. “The residents who live on our street are very, very pleased that that happened,” he said.

City records show that property values have risen considerably faster on South Ashland than on nearby unprotected streets. Several century-old mansions have been restored or converted back from apartments to single-family homes. It is, once again, one of Lexington’s most beautiful streets.

Studies locally and nationally have consistently shown that historic zoning protection raises residential property values and stabilizes neighborhoods. That is because owners can invest in their homes knowing that the character of the neighborhood won’t be degraded.

The entire Ashland Park area was listed as a National Register Historic District in 1986. But that has few of the protections guaranteed by city historic zoning law, which covers more than 1,900 building in 14 districts throughout Fayette County.

Lexington’s historic zoning overlay requires property owners to get approval from the Board of Architectural Review for any significant changes to their building’s exterior to ensure compatibility with the neighborhood. That process is free, and, in most cases, relatively quick and easy. It also can include valuable free advice from the city’s Division of Historic Preservation.

Contrary to popular myth, Lexington historic districts have no restrictions on paint colors, landscaping or interior changes. In fact, the restrictions are less onerous than those in some of Lexington’s deed-restricted suburban neighborhoods.

Typically, historic zoning is opposed by two kinds of property owners: those who own rental property and those who want future flexibility to demolish their building or convert it to another use.

Some homeowners object because they fear historic zoning could make it more costly to maintain their home. In some cases, that is true, although city officials say they take economics into consideration when evaluating proposed exterior changes, such as a change in materials for a new roof.

Still, studies have shown that quality maintenance translates into higher property values in historic districts. More investment results in a better return.

It’s hard to imagine a residential neighborhood more qualified for historic protection than Ashland Park: Henry Clay, the Olmsteds and as amazing a sample of well-preserved, early 1900s architecture as you will find in any American city.

Planning Commission and Urban County Council approval of this new historic district should be a slam-dunk. Let’s hope it is.

Lexington should have some answers in a few months to old questions about Town Branch Creek. What lies beneath? Would it be practical to resurface some or all of it as a downtown amenity?

Lexington was founded along Town Branch in 1775. But like many urban streams around the world, the creek was abused, polluted and finally buried in culverts more than a century ago.

The Downtown Development Authority last week asked for proposals from firms interested in creating a master plan to use a resurfaced Town Branch Creek, or some representation of it, as a commons through downtown. The plan is due April 30, after which more engineering and financial analysis likely will be needed.

Town Branch Creek resurfaces west of Rupp Arena. Photo by Charles Bertram

Like many people, I used to be skeptical of the idea. But that was before I saw what San Antonio did with River Walk and read about what other cities are doing to reclaim once-buried urban waterways. Plus what New York City has done with the High Line, an abandoned elevated rail line that is now a hugely popular linear park.

In Yonkers, N.Y., a $48 million project is uncovering six blocks of the Saw Mill River, a tributary of the Hudson that was buried in the 1920s. Two blocks of the stream have been uncovered so far, creating a park-like area with benches, the New York Times reported last month.

The project has been a catalyst for several hundred million dollars of mixed-use development in New York’s fourth-largest city. Old industrial buildings are being converted into apartments, offices and commercial space.

The Saw Mill River is “no longer a resource people want to hide,” Ned Sullivan, president of the environmental group Scenic Hudson, told the Times. “Not only is it a catalyst for revitalization of the downtown, but now it will become the centerpiece of the city.”

Seoul, South Korea, offers an even more ambitious example. In 2005, that city finished a two-year, $348 million project to “daylight” more than three miles of a buried stream called Cheonggyecheon (pronounced Chung-gye-chun) and turn it into public recreation space.

The stream had been the heart of Seoul for 600 years before industrialization and population growth turned it into an open sewer. In the 1950s, it was buried by an elevated highway that has been removed.

Since the project’s completion, nearby property values have risen and an estimated 90,000 pedestrians visit the stream’s banks on an average day. Like San Antonio’s River Walk, it has become a major tourist attraction.

It is intriguing to imagine such an urban green space through downtown, especially one that would highlight the historic authenticity of Town Branch Creek, whose path literally determined the shape of early Lexington.

Town Branch flows underground from its source near the Jif peanut butter plant along Midland Avenue. It crosses Main Street and runs roughly along Vine Street to just past Rupp Arena, where it becomes an exposed stream. Much of the underground path is beneath public streets and rights of way and city-owned parking lots.

Jeff Fugate, president of the Downtown Development Authority, wants this master plan to be creative but realistic. Possibilities could range from resurfacing the creek or parts of it to some sort of symbolic interpretation of Town Branch’s historic path.

However Lexington hopes to use Town Branch as a magnet for people and development, it will require philanthropy in addition to public money. Not to mention an inspiring plan. “If you want to leverage philanthropy, you have to have a vision to show people,” Fugate said.

Like cities all across America, Lexington is seeing an urban renaissance, with more people wanting to live, work and entertain themselves downtown. Private development and commerce follow smart investments in civic infrastructure, such as the Fifth Third Pavilion at Cheapside and the recent renovation of Triangle Park.

Alltech on Monday will open what is sure to become a popular tourist destination near Rupp Arena. It is a bourbon distillery housed in a beautiful new building beside the Kentucky Ale brewery and a visitors center in a renovated old ice house.

Alltech founders Pearse and Deirdre Lyons know a good brand when they see one. I suspect it is no accident that their newest product is called Town Branch Bourbon.