The Bluegrass and Beyond

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.

Don Ament’s photo of a dogwood tree in his front yard was enlarged to 42 feet wide by 11 feet tall to cover a folding wall that separates an employee cafe from a meeting room at TempurPedic’s new corporate headquarters building in Lexington.   Photo by Don Ament

Many artists dream of landing a big commission. For photographer Don Ament, it came from Tempur-Pedic, the Lexington-based mattress company.

Representatives from Tempur-Pedic met Ament last March at Kentucky Crafted: The Market. Then they saw an image on his website of dogwood blossoms in sunlight. The website has images Ament made all over the world, but this one was shot in his yard in Lexington.

The company was furnishing its new headquarters building near Coldstream Park, and executives thought Ament’s photo would be perfect for a folding wall that separates the employee café from a meeting room.

This commission was challenging because it literally was big. The image, taken on a 2.25-inch square piece of film, needed to be enlarged and printed 11 feet tall by 42 feet wide.

Ament scanned the film to create a high-resolution digital file, then, with help from friend and fellow photographer Frank Döring, manipulated the image to sharpen edges and preserve color vibrancy. A company in Maine printed the photo in sections, and last week it was installed like wallpaper. The result is stunning.

“They could go anywhere for art,” Ament said of Tempur-Pedic. “But they seem really dedicated to local.”

Indeed, as Tempur-Pedic settles into its new 128,000-square-foot space, much more local art will be purchased, said Patrice Varni, a senior vice president.

The only other pieces now are two Italian glass and stone mosaics designed by Guy Kemper, a Woodford County glass artist who has done installations all over the world, some as big as airport terminal walls.

Kemper’s mosaics for Tempur-Pedic are abstract evocations, roughly 10 feet square, for the fourth-floor executive area.

One is called After the Storm. “It recalls the feeling of a Kentucky forest after a summer storm, when a steamy sun comes out and everything is dripping wet,” Kemper said.

The other mosaic, called Daybreak, is “a shot of color to energize the work environment and promote creativity,” he said. “A reference that you’ve had a good night’s sleep.” (On a Tempur-Pedic mattress, no doubt.)

Kemper said Tempur-Pedic executives and their interior designer, Gary Volz of Champlin Architecture in Cincinnati, approached him after seeing two mosaics he did for elevator lobbies at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the pieces by Don and Guy,” Varni said. “I’ve really been struck by the positive response from employees.

“There was a steady stream of people stopping by to watch the installations.”

Tempur-Pedic built its new headquarters, which has large windows and expansive views of the Bluegrass landscape, to replace a former warehouse that had evolved into offices and become overcrowded as the company grew.

“This building was designed with a particular focus on collaboration and integrating the various work groups, and engendering creativity and innovative thinking,” Varni said. “Art is a big part of that, that is meant to showcase and inspire creativity and innovation.”

Varni said the company has budgeted purchases of more art during the next few years, as its 360 employees settle into the building, figure out what would complement the space and learn more about the work of local artists.

“We feel very much a part of the community, because the company was founded here,” Varni said. “In our support for the arts, we felt first and foremost we should support local artists.”

Varni said the Kentucky Arts Council has suggested several local artists whose work might be a good fit.

“Art is such a subjective, personal taste kind of thing,” she said. “We like things that have some sense of nature and that run the range from more literal to more abstract. And we’re interested in a different range of mediums.”

As part of its mission to help Kentucky artists be able to earn a living from their art, the council sponsors Kentucky Crafted: The Market, which returns to Lexington Center from March 1 through 3.

Kemper and Ament hope more Kentucky companies will follow Tempur-Pedic’s example because the arts flourishes only in places where artists find good patrons. Plus, when that investment is made in the community, it help’s Kentucky’s economy.

“You don’t have to run to New York or Chicago to look for something great,” Ament said. “There’s more good work being done here all the time.”

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When I was little and we visited my grandparents in rural Fulton County, Granddaddy Kearby would take me out to the henhouse each morning to collect eggs. For a city boy, this little treasure hunt was big fun.

At some point, though, I noticed that the chickens who had been there on my first few visits had disappeared. It took a while for me to figure out that Granddaddy was now going out each morning before me, hiding store-bought eggs for me to find.

Grandfathers have been on my mind lately, because, in another month or so, I will become one. My older daughter and her husband are having a boy in late July, and I could not be happier.

I will have one advantage that my grandfathers, and my daughters’ grandfathers, did not have. Rather than living a day’s drive from my grandson, I will be a five-minute walk around the block. I want to make the most of the opportunity.

As Father’s Day approached, I was thinking about the role of grandfathers and the relationships that I had with mine.

Researchers point to all kinds of health and emotional benefits derived from strong relationships between grandparents and grandchildren. Grandparents can have more relaxed relationships with children than parents can. That is because they are not the primary caregivers and disciplinarians, with all the stress that comes with those roles.

A grandparent can be a less-intimidating teacher, mentor and sounding board for a child. They often have less energy than parents, but a little more free time. They can pass along wisdom and experience and provide a personal connection with the past.

My grandfathers were kind-hearted men with very different personalities. They had adapted in their own ways to their long marriages to strong-willed women.

Granddaddy Kearby was outgoing and curious. A retired railway postal worker, he was a New Deal Democrat who loved to meet new people, talk politics, tell jokes and read newspapers. He enjoyed playing with his grandchildren because he was basically a kid at heart.

He had grown up along the Mississippi River. His father, as Fulton County judge, built the old courthouse that is still the most impressive building in Hickman. He told us about swimming across the wide river as a boy, and of seeing Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.

My grandfather Eblen, whom we all called “Pa,” didn’t talk as much, but when he did, you listened. After working more than four decades for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in Eastern Kentucky and Lexington, he moved back to the Henderson County farm where he had grown up.

Pa loved to fish, and he built a big pond to indulge his passion and pass it along to his grandchildren. He and my father were crack shots, and they taught my brothers and me how to shoot and respect firearms. I learned a lot about patience by being around Pa, whether it was fishing or enjoying a blazing fire on a winter evening.

When I could get him to tell stories, he had some great ones, especially about working on an Army railroad during World War I, shuttling men and munitions to the front lines in France.

People learn a lot from role models. I think that a big reason my wife and I have been good parents is that we had good parents. We will be good grandparents because we had good grandparents. Still, I know I must temper my expectations.

Granddaddy Kearby and I had another egg-hunting game when I was little. When he came to visit one Easter, I convinced him to hide my plastic eggs in the back yard so I could hunt for them — over and over and over and over.

Finally, as he sat in a lawn chair reading his newspaper, I searched my back yard for a long time without finding a single egg. Eventually, I discovered that my weary grandfather had hidden my eggs below the fake grass in the basket I was carrying.

The moral to that story? Grandfathers don’t need to have unlimited patience, but a good sense of humor is mandatory.

Donna Pelfrey, the Morgan County Circuit Court clerk, moved her office to a room in a Morehead State University extension campus building outside West Liberty. She expects to be there for at least two years. Photos by Tom Eblen

WEST LIBERTY — I first met Donna Pelfrey, the Morgan County Circuit Court clerk, on March 6. She was standing in a debris-strewn street outside her demolished office, having just gotten a hug from Kentucky Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr.

A tornado had blown through town four evenings earlier, killing six people and demolishing everything in its path.

Pelfrey and state Administrative Office of the Courts employees had made their way into town the day after the storm to secure records in the office vault. When I met them, they were moving them to a temporary courthouse just outside town.

Pelfrey has been clerk for a dozen years and was deputy clerk for 24 years before that. Now, faced with the biggest disaster to ever strike her hometown, she was scrambling to help restore order. It was a family affair: her husband, Rick Pelfrey, outside plant manager for Mountain Telephone, was working night and day to restore cell-phone and land-line service to the county.

I returned last week, 75 days after the tornado, to see how recovery efforts were going. I figured Donna Pelfrey would be a good person to ask.

I found her in the temporary courthouse, a Morehead State University extension campus classroom building. It is in the nearby community of Index, which has become the new nerve center of a Morgan County on the mend.

The building’s auditorium is both a makeshift courtroom and church, depending on the day of the week. Various agencies and businesses are upstairs and in the Regional Enterprise Center next door. West Liberty Elementary School is in a former industrial building at the top of the hill.

Pelphrey and her six assistants work in a big, windowless room of the MSU building, where they expect to be for at least two years. A new judicial center was being built next to the century-old courthouse where they worked when the tornado hit. Work is stalled while structural engineers assess the damage.

Much of the past 75 days has been a blur, Pelfrey said. She considers herself lucky: Her immediate family was unhurt, and her home was only slightly damaged. Still, the tornado killed a cousin and a woman she had worked with for 25 years. Her sister’s home was demolished. “That kind of stuff has been hard to deal with,” she said.

Pelfrey hears a lot from people who come into the clerk’s office every day. “What I hear more than anything is people having insurance trouble,” she said. “They’re fussing about their insurance, and adjusters, and they can’t get what they need.”

Some still seem traumatized. “They have a lot of stories to tell,” she said.

They talk of having impulsively taken shelter in a certain corner of their home — the only corner left standing when their house collapsed. Then there was the woman who, seeing the tornado coming, tried to take shelter in the Family Dollar store. The door was locked, so she clutched the rails of the shopping cart corral as hard as she could to keep from being blown away.

Only once in our conversation did Pelfrey come close to tears. That was when she recalled all of the strangers who have poured into West Liberty since May 2 to help clean up, or who have sent clothing and supplies for her neighbors in need.

“When you saw church buses and truckloads of people volunteering their time, that was the most surprising thing,” she said. A roofing company from another town went from house to house, putting tarps on damaged roofs for free.

Pelfrey said she hasn’t heard any reports of scam artist repairmen who often show up in towns after disasters. She said she knows of only two or three people who were charged with looting.

Cleanup and reconstruction have put a lot of people back to work, but the future remains uncertain. Pelfrey says she thinks it will be at least two years before West Liberty returns to anything approaching normal.

The restoration of Salyer Cemetery, where monuments were flattened, has boosted people’s spirits, she said. The pizza restaurant is supposed to reopen this week, and there is a sign on Main Street saying the Chinese restaurant will return soon.

There’s no word yet on the fate of Freezer Fresh Dairy, which for years was West Liberty’s most popular hangout. There are doubts about whether some downtown businesses, which were struggling before the storm, will ever come back.

After weeks of waiting for insurance settlements, demolition and reconstruction work is now under way along Main Street, which makes Pelfrey’s daily commute through town a little more encouraging.

“Every time you see something come back, it lifts your spirits,” she said.

Kentucky Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. comforts Morgan Circuit Court Clerk Donna Pelfrey on March 6 in tornado-damaged  West Liberty. Behind Minton is Justice Will T. Scott. Both the unfinished new justice center at left and the county courthouse where Pelfrey’s office was located were heavily damaged.

Like most buildings on West Liberty’s Main Street, this one is “closed for renovation” as residents work to recover from a March 2 tornado that devastated the Morgan County seat.

A makeshift flag pole decorates remains of the new Morgan County Judicial Center, which was under construction in downtown West Liberty when a March 2 tornado swept through.

Several downtown buildings in West Liberty are being demolished two months after a March 2 tornado devasted the town. Here, a bulldozer works behind some Main Street buildings.

A former attorney’s office across from the old Morgan County Courthouse suffered extensive damage in the March 2 tornado. The rear of the building has been demolished since then.

The century-old Morgan County Courthouse suffered extensive damage in the March 2 tornado, but County Clerk Donna Pelphry said officials hope to renovate the structure for another use.  The building is shown here May 16.

Morgan County’s historic plaque, knocked off its post by the March 2 tornado that devastated West Liberty, sits propped up on the remains of a World War I monument. The county’s old courthouse is to the left. The new judicial center, which was under construction when the tornado hit, is to the right. Both buildings were heavily damaged.

Workmen begin extensive repairs to the second story of a commercial building on Main Street in West Liberty on May 16.

Rendering of CentrePointe along Main Street, where four local architects designed pieces of the building to give it more variety and help it blend in with historic buildings across the street. Rendering by EOP Architects

After four years of public debate and continuous improvement to the design, Lexington’s Courthouse Area Design Review Board today approved developer Dudley Webb’s plan for the CentrePointe mixed-use development. Board approval was unanimous. Nobody from the public spoke against it.

That was because the design is dramatically better than what the Webb Companies unveiled in March 2008 for the block in the center of downtown Lexington bounded by Main, Upper, Vine and Limestone streets.

EOP Architects of Lexington completed the design, with local architects Graham Pohl, David Biagi and Richard Levine contributing signature designs to the Main Street facade to help the development blend in with historic buildings across Main Street.

Approval by the review board was needed because much of the CentrePointe project lies within the boundaries of the old Fayette County Courthouse historic overlay district.

EOP used the basic site plan developed by Studio Gang Architects of Chicago, but made the tower larger to accommodate a Marriott hotel and created a signature building at the corner of Vine and Limestone streets that Webb says will house a Jeff Ruby restaurant and an Urban Active gym.

EOP’s lead architect, Rick Ekhoff, and the other architects made small but significant improvements to their designs in response to feedback from the review board at an informal meeting Feb. 15. The public also got to have a say March 1 at a public meeting at ArtsPlace attended by more than 250 people.

Those improvements included:

• Adding more windows and design elements to the Upper Street side of CentrePointe, where the service entrance will be.
• Enlarging a gallery through the middle of the development connecting Main and Vine Streets. It will now be 25 feet wide and 45 feet tall, with a sky-lit roof and retail on each side, Ekhoff said. The gym and reception space outside the hotel ballroom will overlook the gallery, which Ekhoff said will be a good place to display public art.
• Making improvements in the architects’ facade treatments along Main Street.

Ekhoff said the design took into account the possibility that streets surrounding CentrePointe would be changed from one-way to two-way. And he added that all of the design input from the review board and public had “enriched” the result.

By the end of what has been a long and contentious process, the only change the review board insisted on was removal of a pedway over Upper Street, which Webb agreed to do. With that, the vote was taken and review board chairman Mike Meuser said, “Good luck with this very important project.”

Now that the design has been approved, Webb said it can be used more effectively to market the project to potential lenders and tenants. “It could happen very quickly,” Webb said, adding that three lenders have expressed interest in financing CentrePointe.

The process worked, and the CentrePointe project and downtown Lexington will be much better off for everyone’s effort.

The design of CentrePointe along Upper Street was improved to avoid it looking like a service entrance. Also, the proposed pedway was withdrawn. Rendering by EOP Architects

My new house when it really was new, 1907. Photo by Thomas A. Knight

By the time you read this, Becky and I have either moved to our renovated, century-old house near downtown or died trying.

Our move this weekend completed an exciting and exhausting five-month odyssey that began when we offered to buy this house from a nice lady who had lived there for nearly 40 years.

I was curious about the house’s history, and the Lexington Public Library’s Kentucky Room turned out to be a valuable resource. My best find was a promotional booklet for the then-new neighborhood, published in 1907 by Thomas A. Knight, a well-known photographer.

The booklet included several photographs of the street, including a portrait of our then-new house. The picture cleared up several mysteries: a missing front chimney, a strange door that used to be a window and a low spot in the front yard that was then a giant tree stump.

Old city directories in the Kentucky Room showed that the house had been owned by a road contractor, a cabinet maker, a traveling salesman, a physician and an insurance executive. But we were only the third owners since 1928, when a Louisville & Nashville Railroad engineer bought the house. He died in 1952, but his widow lived there until about 1970.

The house spent a couple of years as rental apartments before she sold it to the lady we bought it from and her husband, who died last spring. She remembers the neighbors thanking them for rescuing the house from hippies, who were growing marijuana in the dining room. The house was such a wreck, she said, that the first time her sister saw it, she cried.

Over the next few years, the lady’s late husband and his contractors did major restoration. They jacked up the downstairs floor and installed a new roof, wiring, plumbing, heating and air conditioning.

Still, there was much work to be done after we bought the house. For more than two months, I choreographed a parade of contractors. They refinished old wood floors and installed new ones. They removed acres of wallpaper, repaired plaster, painted, plumbed, wired and tiled.

We hired professionals for jobs that I didn’t have the skills for — or would never have finished in my lifetime. I did a lot of small stuff: light carpentry, some painting and a lot of caulking and fix-it chores.

Moving is hell, but some of the renovation work was fun. And I am pleased with the results. Like any major experience, it was educational. Here are some of the things I learned:

• Home renovation always takes longer and costs more than you think it will.

• My house’s former owners were newspaper subscribers. An electrician found a 1938 Courier-Journal in the crawl space. I know that the living room’s pocket doors were last opened on or about Dec. 6, 1979, because that day’s Lexington Herald was used to seal them shut.

• Old wallpaper can hide a multitude of sins. So can new caulk and paint.

• Old carpet can hide beautiful heart-pine floors. Or a big mess. You never know until you pull it up.

• A leaky valve beneath a kitchen sink will fail at the worst possible time, such as early on Thanksgiving morning, after you have had $700 worth of unfinished hardwood flooring installed.

• I could buy a new BMW for what it would cost to line and cap my three unlined masonry chimneys. I can’t afford either.

• I now know most of the clerks at Ace Hardware, Home Depot and Lowe’s by sight, if not by name.

• I don’t need a gym to get a good workout. The most challenging moves of my stretching regimen involved straddling a clawfoot bathtub — one foot on a window sill, the other on a step ladder — screwing a shower curtain rack into a 10-foot ceiling.

• Be good to good contractors and they will be good to you.

• Caulk, paint and Advil are my friends.

Thousands of travelers cross the Clays Ferry bridge of Interstate 75 into Fayette County every day, never knowing what lies over the hill below them. Most Lexingtonians don’t know what is there, either.

Behind an Old Richmond Road building that used to be the Jolly Roger truck stop, there is a steep cliff. At the bottom of that cliff is the Boone Creek Gorge, one of the most ruggedly beautiful and inaccessible landscapes in Central Kentucky.

Before Boone Creek flows into the Kentucky River, it passes tall limestone palisades, an ancient waterfall, giant trees and rare wildflowers. The gorge is home to trout, wild turkey, deer, mink, otter and real Kentucky wildcats. It also holds the remains of a pioneer cabin, an 1803 grist mill and a cave where, legend has it, Daniel Boone hid from Indians.

“People don’t know this is here, because almost nobody ever gets to see it,” said Lexington businessman Burgess Carey, who took me on a hike through the gorge. He hopes to change that.

Carey bought more than 20 acres of the gorge in 1994 and cleaned up a mess from the former truck stop’s leaking fuel tanks. In 2000, he opened a small private fishing club to help pay for the property’s upkeep.

Now, Carey has bought and leased additional land between the fishing club and where Boone Creek empties into the river. He hopes to create Boone Creek Outdoors, a 167-acre recreation facility that would offer kayaking, limited camping and trails for bird-watching, hiking and mountain biking. The main attraction would be guided, small-group “canopy tours” above the gorge using zip lines and suspension bridges.

To do that, Carey must overcome opposition from some neighbors and local organizations that think his plans violate zoning laws and could hurt the sensitive environment. After a four-hour hearing Friday, which attracted a large crowd of both supporters and opponents of the project, Lexington’s Board of Adjustment continued the hearing until Jan. 27.

Carey, a lifelong Lexingtonian and outdoor enthusiast, thinks Boone Creek Outdoors could attract as many as 20,000 visitors a year and seasonally employ between eight and 30 workers.

The canopy tour would be an educational experience, not just a thrill ride, said Carey, who is working with some of the industry’s best course designers.

The tour would showcase the gorge’s beauty from above and explain the history of this section of the Kentucky River valley, site of some of the state’s first pioneer settlements. “It has the potential to grow into a national-class attraction,” he said.

Carey’s plans call for about $2 million in capital investment. He said that money would come from private financing and a $250,000 state tourism loan. The canopy tours would be key to making Boone Creek Outdoors a financially viable business.

Carey said tour revenues also would enable him to better protect and manage the gorge, as well as to restore land damaged by grazing cattle. The biggest threat to the environment isn’t visitors, he said, but invasive plant species, many introduced in the 1960s during I-75′s construction.

“We’ll manage it much like a ski resort: if you don’t behave yourself, you can’t come back,” Carey said. “Are we going to have an issue with popularity? I hope so. But we can control it.”

The city planning staff has recommended approval of Carey’s request for a conditional use permit. Other supporters include most of the adjacent property owners, the city’s environmental commission and the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Tim McQueary, the city’s forester, told the Board of Adjustment that the canopy tour course wouldn’t damage trees.

The decision is up to the board of citizen volunteers. At Friday’s meeting, several citizens and groups spoke against Carey’s request, including the Old Richmond Road and Boone Creek neighborhood associations, the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation and the Fayette Alliance.

Opponents had concerns about environmental impact, traffic and emergency access. But perhaps the biggest concern was whether the project would set a legal precedent that could threaten the integrity of zoning throughout Fayette County. Much of that issue depends on whether Boone Creek Outdoors is legally considered an amusement park, which city law prohibits in the agricultural zone.

“I really like the idea that Burgess has,” said Gloria Martin, a neighbor and former Urban County Council member. But she argued that his project is an amusement park, and therefore needs a special zoning amendment for proper regulation. Her view was shared by Knox Van Nagell, executive director of The Fayette Alliance.

“Eco-tourism could be a great thing, but it must be done carefully,” Van Nagell said. She urged Carey to withdraw his application until legal issues could be resolved to ensure both responsible operation of Boone Creek Outdoors and protection for rural zoning countywide.

City officials, Carey, his supporters and opponents face an important challenge. Long-term protection of the Boone Creek Gorge will require money and thoughtful management. Without something like Boone Creek Outdoors, where will that money and management come from?

The challenge here is to figure out how to both protect and allow more people to enjoy this spectacular natural resource — and to influence future generations to protect and enjoy it, too.

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SHAKERTOWN — The Shakers were known for their crafts, architecture, music and dancing — not to mention their celibacy, which helps explain why they are history.

But Maynard Crossland hopes to employ some of the Shakers’ other famous traits — ingenuity and entrepreneurship — to improve the fortunes of Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill.

“We have a great story to tell, a great resource that needs to be protected,” said Crossland, who recently took over as president of the non-profit corporation that owns and manages the 19th-century Shaker Village in Mercer County and nearly 3,000 acres surrounding it.

Maynard Crossland. Photo by Charles Bertram

Like most historic sites, Shaker Village is suffering from changes in tourism and the economy. The organization has trimmed staff and programming, and dipped into its $9 million endowment to fund expenses, which include maintaining 33 historic buildings and 22 miles of dry-stone fences.

“We need to embrace some change here,” said Crossland, 56, former director of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, where he managed about 60 state historic sites and oversaw creation of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

“It’s obvious to me that the profits we make at the restaurant, the inn, the craft store or even ticket sales to the museum are not going to be enough,” he said.

Shaker Village needs to more aggressively seek donations and grants, he said. But it also must innovate to raise more cash, as the Shakers did more than a century ago with their farming and seed business.

“People don’t realize how inventive the Shakers were and how diligent they were at their entrepreneurship,” Crossland said. “Those parts of the story are as relevant today as they were then. It’s just being able to figure out the best way to tell that story and to market it to a wider audience.”

Visitors now take self- guided walking tours among the Shakers’ buildings, picking up pieces of their history from written materials while watching costumed men and women make Shaker crafts. The story needs to be more cohesive, compelling and interactive, Crossland said.

“For people my age, (the current way) may work, but for 10-year-olds, it’s not the way they learn,” he said. “They’ve really got to be able to touch it, feel it, smell it — not just see and hear it.”

More than just a history lesson, Shaker Village should be an “experience” that meets modern visitors’ needs for education and recreation, Crossland said.

On his to-do list: More healthy menu choices at the restaurant, in addition to the classic Kentucky staples. More variety of merchandise in the craft shop, including more lower-priced items and children’s souvenirs. More flexible admission charges to attract more visitors.

Crossland wants more people to use the property’s natural areas. There are trails for hiking and horseback riding, plus a boat tour on the Kentucky River. He also would like to have concessions where visitors could rent a horse, bike, kayak or canoe. He hopes to bring in more bird watchers and bird hunters (the property’s first quail hunts were this fall).

He wants to use the property’s gardens and farmland more to promote sustainable agriculture and local food. And he plans to look at an idea that has been discussed for years: building a conference center outside the historic village to attract groups and supplement accommodations at the inn.

Crossland hopes to create more regional partnerships, such as those it now has with the Woodford Hounds, a fox-hunting group, and the Dry Stone Conservancy, a masonry preservation group. For example, he said, historic preservation students could learn restoration techniques by working on Shaker Village’s buildings.

“We really need to open this site up and have it embraced by people in the Lexington, Danville and Harrodsburg communities as a resource,” he said. “They are our best ambassadors.”

Shaker Village is planning special Christmas activities to attract locals and improve staff teamwork. On Dec. 3, Shaker Village Illuminated will include candlelight tours, children’s crafts and storytelling for special carload admission prices.

“Our challenge here is to figure out ‘what is the experience’ and then present that in the most efficient, customer-friendly way we possibly can,” Crossland said. “This staff has the brain power to figure it out. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s going to happen.”

Click here to read Janet Patton’s story about Shaker Village’s restoration.

Lexington architect Susan Hill just couldn’t figure it out. Soon after Locust Trace AgriScience Farm opened this school year, lights in the main building started turning themselves on and off in the middle of the night.

That was not good. The Fayette County Public Schools’ most innovative new facility is designed to generate as much energy as it consumes. Conservation is essential to this goal. To that end, sound-and-motion sensors operate lights so energy won’t be wasted when nobody is in a room.

Hill and her team puzzled over the mystery until it finally, well, dawned on them.

“We had a rooster in the animal science lab who was getting up at all hours and causing lights to go on and off all over the place,” she said. Lighting sensors were quickly adjusted to respond to motion only. Problem solved.

Architects usually don’t have to think about cock-a-doodle-doo-proofing a building. But this kind of issue has been the challenge and the fun of the project for Hill, a partner in the Lexington firm Tate Hill Jacobs, who has been intrigued by environmentally sustainable design since she studied under pioneering solar architect Richard Levine at the University of Kentucky.

Locust Trace is a different kind of public school, designed to prepare high school juniors and seniors for careers in the equine industry and agriculture, where a return to sustainability is the trend. School officials wanted their facility to set a good environmental example — and be less expensive to operate and maintain.

The $15.5 million campus is one of the most “green” developments in Kentucky. It also has become a laboratory for new building methods and materials that is attracting national attention from architects, builders and educators.

Locust Trace was built on 82 acres off Leestown Road that the federal government donated to the school system. From the very beginning, Hill and other planners studied the site’s location and topography to make the best use of it.

The design team collaborated with dozens of people from the school system, community and various industries. That included everything from seeking the advice of Kentucky Horse Park experts about footing in the livestock arena to technical assistance on air-flow technology from Lexington-based Big Ass Fans.

Sunlight and prevailing winds were analyzed to orient the classroom building and large arena building to make the best use of sunlight and natural breezes. The buildings use 21 Big Ass Fans — large high-volume, slow-speed fans — to help regulate indoor air flow and temperatures.

The arena building, for instance, is heated and cooled with five large fans that pull air through louvers along a roof gallery that are opened and closed manually or with automatic sensors. Clerestory windows along the gallery provide most of the arena’s light.

Both buildings make extensive use of solar energy. Sunlight is maximized by window design and “solar tubes” that funnel magnified sunshine through the ceiling. Roof-mounted photovoltaic panels convert sunlight into as much as 175 kilowatts of electricity.

Power not needed immediately is fed into the Kentucky Utilities grid to offset power drawn from it on cloudy days. Electricity is shut off at night, except for a few outlets needed to run things like fish tanks.

“We spent a lot of time with school officials to see what we could cut out, what we didn’t need” to minimize energy use, Hill said.

She said the main building’s roof has the nation’s third-largest array of solar thermal cells, which heat water to supplement the building’s geothermal heating system. Buildings are made of metal, limestone and insulated concrete. Floors are low- maintenance polished concrete and rubber.

A well provides pure limestone water for animals. Eventually, if state regulations allow, well water could be used for human consumption.

Permeable pavement, rain gardens and a green roof manage storm water runoff. Rain is collected in underground tanks for use with livestock and irrigation. An artificial wetland was built to naturally process the campus’ wastewater. Shredded paper and plant matter are being composted for fertilizer.

“It’s a different kind of curriculum, a different kind of student,” Hill said. “But it allows us to try out lots of ideas that might be appropriate for a regular school once we learn more about them.”

The architect said the best part of working on Locust Trace has been trying new techniques, materials and designs to reduce energy use — and operating costs.

“There was a great willingness on the part of school system officials to take a little risk to learn the lessons,” she said. “That’s really important.”

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David Shepler, IBM's Watson program manager, explains to high school students how to play Jeopardy! against the computer. Photo by Tom Eblen

LOUISVILLE — High school students attending the Idea Festival’s opening day Wednesday got a lesson in the possibilities of computer science, courtesy of the field’s biggest non-human celebrity: Watson, the IBM computer that beat the human champions on Jeopardy!

Six students were selected to play against Watson after David Shepler, who managed the IBM project team that developed the computer, gave a lecture about the science behind how it works.

He also talked about how that technology could eventually be used for things a lot more important than winning a television game show.

“Watson’s going to do a lot of things to free up our time to be creative,” Shepler said. “He’s not going to be creative; he’s going to leave that to us.”

Watson is basically a huge, fast processor of stored information. It has computing power equivalent to 6,000 personal computers, and a staggering 15 terabytes of memory. (One terabyte equals 1,024 gigabytes.)

The innovation of Watson’s design is in how it processes information.

Competing on Jeopardy! provided publicity that made the computer instantly famous, Shepler said. But, more importantly, the game show was a great test of the engineers’ ability to improve the way computers interact with humans.

“Jeopardy! questions aren’t written for computers,” Shepler said. That meant Watson had to be programmed to understand human language and thought patterns, to react quickly and to make judgments about the probable accuracy of answers. That involved “teaching” the computer such things as speech conventions.

For example, Watson wanted to call King Henry VI, “Henry Vee Eye” rather than “Henry the eighth.” And it initially called Malcolm X “Malcolm the tenth.” But Watson eventually caught on.

Such computing prowess has unlimited applications, Shepler said. The IBM team is first focusing on medicine, looking toward the day when Watson-like computers could help a doctor diagnose a patient’s illness. The computer could digest the patient’s medical and family histories, be programmed with vast quantities of medical knowledge and be able to quickly sort through it to make suggestions to the doctor.

Other possible applications include technical support, law and security. At the Idea Festival, though, Watson’s main job was to play Jeopardy! against high school students.

The students were smart. They were quick. And they gave the computer good competition, especially on categories such as “Presidential Rhyme Time,” which involved both word play and accumulated knowledge. The students were quicker than Watson to figure out that the question to the answer “Barack’s Andean pack animals” was, “What are Obaman’s llamas.”

In the end, though, the computer was a decisive winner, winning twice as much imaginary money as the best of the two three-student teams.

The Idea Festival continues through Saturday at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, go to IdeaFestival.com.

In many ways, Valentine Awa is lucky. She and five of her eight children now live in Kentucky, where they can work, go to school and live in peace after years of terror in their native Congo and poverty in refugee camps in the Central African Republic.

But Awa says she can’t be happy until her youngest child — an 7-year-old girl who is frequently ill — joins the family in Lexington.

Occasionally, Awa said, she is able to speak briefly by phone with the child she hasn’t seen in years, and her two grown daughters, who are caring for her as best they can amid the poverty that grips that part of Africa.

“They say she cries, Mommy! Mommy!” said Awa, a native French speaker who struggles with English. Awa said she sends them money each month from her modest earnings to help with living expenses.

Awa, 50, is getting help from Kentucky Refugee Ministries and the office of U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., and from a French professor and her students at Transylvania University, where Awa works as a housekeeper.

Awa’s case is more complicated than most. But, sadly, it is not an unusual circumstance among the more than 400 Congolese refugees who have been resettled in Central Kentucky.

“There are multiple examples of people who are trying to get their children here,” said Barbara Kleine, who heads the Kentucky Refugee Ministries office in Lexington. “It’s a painful process.”

Many cases involve families separated by fighting or in refugee camps, Kleine said. Others stem from complicated family relationships, inconsistent answers given in immigration interviews, lack of documentation and government bureaucracy on two continents.

Awa’s saga began in early 2000, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo was torn by civil war, she said through an interpreter, recent Transylvania graduate Julianne Norman, who has taken up her cause.

Awa’s husband was a retired soldier, and the military wanted to press him back into service. After he repeatedly refused, he was beaten. Ten days later, he died from his injuries. Awa and her children fled across the border into the Central African Republic, wandering four days through the forests to avoid capture. They finally reached a refugee camp, where there was little food or work.

After a year, they returned to the Congo. The military men returned, telling Awa that her sons would be conscripted because of her husband’s refusal to rejoin the army. Again, the family fled the Congo. And again, there was little food or work in the refugee camp.

This time, though, Awa said an elderly man promised to feed and protect her family in exchange for sex. That resulted in her youngest daughter, Amélie, who remained behind with him when Awa and her other daughters were granted refugee status and allowed to emigrate to United States.

Amélie couldn’t get refugee status because she was born in the Central African Republic, Awa said. Since the old man died in February, Awa has been trying to regain her daughter. But that could take years, said Lydia Curtz, who is working on her case for Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

It is a difficult case because Awa didn’t initially declare her daughter, perhaps because of the circumstances of her birth. Several years have now passed, there is little documentation, and Awa made errors in her applications, Curtz said.

If the child is finally given permission to emigrate, Kentucky Refugee Ministries will pay to bring her here. But Awa must repay the loan, as she is doing for passage for herself and her children.

Awa’s case has inspired Simonetta Cochis, a French professor at Transylvania, to see how her students might work with Kentucky Refugee Ministries to help Lexington’s French-speaking Congolese refugees with longer-term settlement issues. That could include translation services, tutoring for children and even fund-raising for special circumstances, she said.

“They are coming from a different world into our world, which can be very complicated,” Cochis said. “People feel so tremendously overwhelmed by what is going on in Africa. When you hear stories like Valentine’s, how can you not want to help?”

Brennan Donahoe was on a bicycle ride with a friend, coasting down a hill, when his skinny tires hit freshly mown grass on the pavement. His bike went out from under him, and he came to rest in a wire fence.

Donahoe knew he had landed hard, because his helmet broke in half. But he would have tried to get back on the bike had his friend, a third-year medical student, not told him to lie still.

A CT scan later showed that Donahoe had broken his neck, and he spent three months in a collar to keep his head immobile.

“They said it was the same break as Christopher Reeve, but with no compression,” he said, referring to the late actor who spent nine years as a quadriplegic after being thrown from a horse during a 1995 equestrian competition.

Donahoe’s fate was much different: He will compete Sunday in his first Ironman triathlon. The grueling race in Louisville consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run. “My goal is to finish,” he said.

People find all kinds of reasons not to exercise and stay in shape. If Donahoe, 35, wanted to make excuses, he could find plenty.

In addition to having broken his neck, Donahoe became a new father five months ago when his daughter, Emerson, was born. He also works as a truck driver and is away from his Lexington home three nights a week while delivering supplies to fast-food restaurants scattered from Gatlinburg, Tenn., to St. Louis.

His wife, Annette Manlief, an English teacher at Scott County High School, said she supports her husband’s physical fitness goals and the training time they require. Her sister, Lisa Lay, shares their home and helps with the baby.

Donahoe trains six days a week. He swims on Monday, runs and swims on Tuesday, runs and bikes on Wednesday, bikes and runs on Friday and Saturday and runs on Sunday. He takes Thursday off because it is his longest work day each week.

Travel doesn’t get in the way of training. “People think it’s funny when you’re fueling a truck with running clothes on, or getting a bike out of the back of the truck,” he said. “But I don’t want to be like all the fat truckers.”

He doesn’t need to go to a gym to lift weights. Over the course of a week, he will unload as much as 35,000 pounds of restaurant supplies from his truck.

Donahoe started doing triathlons in 2004 after biking for many years. He worried after his accident about whether he would ever be able to do one again. While wearing the collar, he said, “I sat on the couch and played Xbox for three months.”

Once his doctor cleared him for activity, Donahoe resumed training. “I couldn’t wait,” he said. “I had missed it so much.” He competed in a triathlon five months later and hasn’t looked back.

“My neck still bothers me some, but I can deal with it,” said Donahoe, who has done several shorter triathlons. “If you look at (the vertebra) on an x-ray now, it is still crooked. They tell me if it happens again it would be hard to walk away from.”

But Donahoe is determined to stay in shape and not be slowed by fear. He does, however, watch the pavement in front of his bicycle very carefully.

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NICHOLASVILLE — You don’t need a fancy gym to get in shape. Or expensive equipment. Or a lot of time. You don’t need to be young, either.

Just ask Dyer Rodes, 81, who works out three times a week with Eric Karls at 6ft Fitness, a homemade gym at a warehouse in a Jessamine County industrial park.

“I’ve always tried to do something to exercise,” Rodes, a longtime runner, said after one of his intense, hour-long workouts. “I think everybody ought to be doing some exercise — whatever your body allows you to do. I can’t do everything I used to could do.”

But Rodes can still do a lot. And so can the other regulars at 6ft Fitness, who over the past year have steadily increased their strength and aerobic capacity.

“There are no magic moves here,” Karls said. “It’s just a lot of hard work.”

After stretching, Karls gives the class a different routine each session. They do push-ups and pull-ups. They lift and swing kettlebell weights. And they lift, carry and toss other weights made of everything from used truck tires to Army duffle bags filled with sand and old beer kegs filled with water.

“It’s nothing fancy; almost everything here is used,” Karls said. “Anything odd and unusual that you can carry or pull or drag.”

Karls, 33, said he was a high school football and strength coach in Chicago before moving to Central Kentucky to be near the family of his wife, Kelly. After he discovered kettlebells and took a rigorous certification class to learn how to exercise with them, he started doing workouts in his garage instead of a gym.

The construction manager set up a side business in his employer’s warehouse to teach people his exercise techniques. Many involve kettlebells — heavy balls with handles that look something like tea kettles. Karls’s weigh between five to 35 pounds.

Karls chose the name 6ft Fitness from what he said is many people’s mistaken belief that they are fit enough to climb over a six-foot fence if they wanted to. The class meets Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings all year long. He charges $150 for any 12 sessions participants want to attend. (More information: (859) 494-9119, 6ftfitness.com)

For the past year, the core class of about six people has ranged in age from a 20-year-old college student to Rodes. “He’s not your average 81-year-old,” Karls notes with admiration. “The problem with Dyer is getting him to reel himself in.”

In addition to Karls and his wife, class members include Jason Miller, 37, of Versailles, who works for an insurance company; Robbie Lyons, 57, a Jessamine County farmer; and Karen Holder, who owns the Merle Norman Cosmetics stores in Lexington. Holder didn’t want to divulge her age. “I could draw Social Security,” she said with a smile. “I don’t, but I could.”

When the workouts begin, age seems irrelevant. Each class member is working flat-out against the limitations of his or her own strength and stamina.

“We all like to talk about how hard it is,” Holder said. “It’s more challenging than anything I’ve ever done. But you feel so good after a workout.”

Lyons, who grew up in Ireland playing soccer and in more recent years played rugby with a Lexington club team, is mainly interested in getting aerobic exercise after two heart surgeries. “It’s been great,” he said.

The workouts are tough, both physically and mentally. “But you build up to it,” Holder said. “We didn’t start out like this.”

What keeps everyone going, class after class, is the encouragement they get from each other and Karls, who goes around the class each week giving pointers and answering questions. And, of course, a little subtle competition is involved.

“You have to have a certain personality to like this; you have to enjoy a little pain,” Miller said. “This pushes you further than you ever think you can go. But after a workout, you have no problem sleeping. I can tell you that.”

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For those of you keeping up with all of the magazine rankings for best and worst cities for this and that, Kiplinger, the respected personal finance magazine, has published a new list.

Kiplinger lists Lexington as No. 6 in among best cities to live in terms of value. Kiplinger said it worked with Kevin Stolarick, research director at the Martin Prosperity Institute, to analyze metro areas according to economic environment, cost of living and quality of life. Kiplinger said it then sent a staff reporter to each city to help determine the final rankings among the top 10.

Here are the rankings. For more information, visit Kiplinger’s web site.

1. Omaha

2. Charlotte

3. Nashville

4. Colorado Springs

5. Knoxville

6. Lexington

7. Little Rock

8. Wichita

9. Cedar Rapids

10. Cincinnati

(Tip: Mark Turner of Commerce Lexington)

I had always wondered what it would be like to ride a bicycle in Holland. Now I know: It is like driving a car in America. Most people do it, and the transportation system is designed to make it easy.

I spent last week biking around Holland, from busy city streets to rural roads beside windmills and tulip fields. It was a lot of fun and a great chance to see what we can learn from the Netherlands about making Kentucky more bicycle-friendly.

My wife, Becky, and I were among a group of 18 cyclists organized by veteran bicycle tourists Janette and Mike Heitz of Lexington. They have done this trip many times, and I can see why.

For seven days, guide Francien van der Lee led us in riding nearly 200 miles from Amsterdam to Haarlem, Leiden, the Hague, Delft, Rotterdam, Gouda and back to Amsterdam. We slept and ate breakfast and dinner on the passenger barge Feniks, which took canals from one city to the next while we biked there.

We saw some Dutch people riding bikes for recreation and exercise. But there were thousands more using bicycles the way Americans use cars: to commute to work, take kids to school and run errands. We saw groups of children on school field trips, women in their 80s cycling home with groceries, businessmen in suits and women in high heels. They were all in better shape for it, and so were their wallets.

Travelers in the Netherlands have many options in addition to bicycles, automobiles and motorbikes. High-speed trains take people – and their bicycles – between cities, where they can then catch buses and trams. Boats are everywhere on the many canals and rivers, from personal rowboats to “waterbus” ferries.

It helps that the Netherlands is flat; the biggest “climb” a cyclist faces is over a canal bridge or dike. It is a small, compact country, less than half the size of Kentucky with nearly four-times as many people. Gasoline costs more than $9 a gallon. So average people wearing normal clothes ride practical bicycles everywhere.

Dutch bikes often have bags on either side of the back wheel or a crate in front of the handlebars to carry things. Many bikes are equipped with child seats. There are cargo bikes that look like big wheelbarrows. Train stations and universities have huge bicycle parking lots and garages; still, bikes are chained up everywhere.

This surprised us: except for young children learning to ride, or spandex-clad people on racing bikes, almost nobody wears a bicycle helmet. Studies show helmets dramatically reduce cycling head injuries. Yet, the Netherlands has a higher percent of cyclists and a lower percentage of cycling injuries than almost any other country. How can that be?

I suspect the main reason is that Dutch roads are designed to handle bicycles as well as motor vehicles, and to keep them safely separated from each other and from pedestrians as much as possible, especially at intersections.

Every road of any size has a bicycle lane, often separated from cars and pedestrians by a slight difference in height. Bicycle lanes also are a different color than roads and sidewalks – usually light red.

Bicycles have their own traffic lights, just like cars and pedestrians. At intersections without lights, triangles painted on the pavement indicate who has right-of-way; traffic coming from where the triangle points must yield.

Cars and bicycles mix on the narrow, centuries-old streets in city centers. But motorists and cyclists seem to pay more attention to each other and road rules than Americans do. Dutch law presumes the motorist to be at fault in a car-bike collision.

Country roads have white stripes on each side, marking bicycle/passing lanes, and a center lane for cars. It can make things tricky when cars need to pass each other, but it forces everyone to slow down and pay attention.

Lexington’s new Complete Streets design initiative is based on many of the ideas I saw working so well in Holland. The state Transportation Cabinet is beginning to catch on, at least in Central Kentucky. Still, Kentuckians could learn a lot from the Dutch about designing roads for all kinds of travelers.

Bicycles make sense, especially for many short trips. Consider these statistics from a national study: 40 percent of all trips people make are less than two miles, and 28 percent are less than one mile. In the Netherlands? No, that is in this country.

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Imaging software to unlock secrets from ancient texts. Virtual combat training environments for soldiers. Rear-projection stage sets for operas.

Since its creation seven years ago, the University of Kentucky’s Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments has been developing all kinds of cutting-edge audio and visual technology. Now, it has a cutting-edge building in which to do that work.

The VisCenter recently moved into the new $18.6 million Davis Marksbury Building near Rose and Maxwell streets. It is UK’s first new building to be certified under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards.

The 45,000-square-foot building includes the latest in research facilities, as well an environmentally friendly design and systems that will do everything from manage rainfall runoff to reduce power consumption. Solar panels on the roof will provide about 10 percent of its electricity.

In addition to the VisCenter, the building houses two other departments of the College of Engineering: computer science, and electrical and computer engineering. It is next door to the James F. Hardymon Building, which houses advanced networking research, creating a “digital village” that will make collaboration easier among faculty and students.

“I’m now running into people every day that I wanted to interact with for years, but I never saw them,” said Brent Seales, director of the VisCenter, which previously was downtown in two rented floors of the Kentucky Utilities building.

Collaboration is at the heart of the VisCenter mission. It works throughout the university to help other departments create and commercialize new audio-visual technology that can help train students, improve Kentucky’s economy and generate money for the university.

It has more than a dozen active faculty and about that many staff members. At any given time, it works with about 50 students, from doctoral candidates to a couple of local high schoolers. Its research has ranged far and wide.

Perhaps the most visible project was its collaboration with UK Opera Theatre this winter to create vivid, rear-projection stage set technology for a production of Porgy and Bess. The sets then were rented by The Atlanta Opera for its sold-out production.

Further commercializing that technology could become a financial winner for the university. But Seales also would like to see it used in Kentucky schools to improve student productions.

The center has developed technology to create high-resolution copies of ancient manuscripts, and Seales is hoping to improve on that enough to read Roman papyrus scrolls damaged when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and buried the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

That work has led to discussions with Israeli authorities about a project to create high-tech scans of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a system that would allow scholars to compare previous images of them to see how the scrolls have changed over time.

The VisCenter created virtual training environments for the Army, so, for example, soldiers could practice walking down a dark village street in Afghanistan before they faced the real thing.

The center also has an FBI contract to develop microphone beam technology, which would allow sound to be isolated and amplified without a microphone actually having to be close to a subject.

While obviously helpful for surveillance, such technology could have significant commercial applications. For example, it could be used for actors onstage or question-and-answer sessions in an auditorium.

The VisCenter is working on three-dimensional fingerprinting technology for the Department of Homeland Security. It would provide much more accurate biometric information than the old mashed-inky-fingers-on-paper method.

The center’s staff also has produced several highly regarded documentary films, including Coal in Kentucky and Imaging the Iliad.

One major project seeks to create audio-visual technology that would make it easier for surgeons to see body parts they are operating on, as well as to consult long-distances with other physicians. Another project is trying to minimize distractions surgeons face in the operating room. Still another hopes to create visual images of the human vocal system for more accurate diagnosis of voice problems.

“We’ve built a certain niche,” Seales said, which helps the center attract projects from both the academic and business worlds, plus outstanding faculty members and students. “A big part of our mission is to engage the community and, hopefully, inspire innovation.”

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Welcome to Lexington. We thought you would never get here.

We have been getting ready for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games for five years — and thinking about them even longer.

The Kentucky Horse Park opened in 1978 with the World Championship Three-Day Event. Each year since then, the park has played host to what is now called the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event.

Years of improvements have made the Kentucky Horse Park perhaps the world’s finest equestrian facility. It is a big contributor to the local economy, with museums, horse shows and other events. But we have always had something bigger in mind, and that is what brought you here.

After the first World Equestrian Games were held in Sweden in 1990, we considered going after the second Games four years later. We competed for the 2006 Games but lost to Aachen, Germany. Our 2004 bid for this year’s Games was chosen over Normandy, France, which will host the 2014 Games.

Over the past few years, Lexington’s city motto may as well have been, “Clean up! Company’s coming!” We have raced to complete many long-deferred highway, street and sidewalk improvements. Be careful: some of the cement may still be wet.

As you can see, our natural landscape is gorgeous. John Filson, one of the first people to visit and write about Kentucky, described this place in 1784 as a “new Eden.” But much like Adam and Eve, we have not always appreciated it.

Lexington has tried for a half-century to control urban sprawl, with mixed success. Only recently have most people in the Bluegrass realized it is not a good idea to continue paving over the landscape that makes us unique. It gives me hope that eventually more people will realize that blowing up Kentucky’s mountains to extract coal isn’t such a good idea, either.

The Bluegrass has many beautiful, old buildings. The oldest ones date from a time two centuries ago when Lexington was the most progressive city on what was then America’s western frontier. We would have many more of those old buildings, but we spent the last half of the 20th century demolishing them, often to make way for nothing more special than a parking lot.

And how, you may wonder, did Lexington end up with a fenced pasture in the center of town? Don’t ask; it’s too embarrassing.

Central Kentucky is filled with good, friendly people who genuinely want you to enjoy yourself while you are here. There are many fine restaurants, museums, galleries and other attractions, although they are not always easy to find. Ask one of us for recommendations.

Kentuckians are proud of their home, but we have a bit of an inferiority complex. That’s partly because many of us are afraid of change, suspicious of new ideas and wary of taking risks. We have always been too quick to settle for second-best.

But that’s not just a Kentucky trait; transplants often have a clearer view than natives do of a place’s worth and potential. A good example is Pearse Lyons, an Irishman who came to Kentucky three decades ago and started Alltech. His energy and money are a driving force behind the Games you are about to see.

Kentuckians are working hard to show you a good time, but glitches are inevitable. Be patient. And if you get anxious, try a bottle of Alltech’s Kentucky Ale or a few sips of Kentucky wine or bourbon. (By the way: 95 percent of the world’s bourbon whiskey is made within a two-hour drive of Lexington. Most distilleries offer free tours. Some even give samples.)

So, welcome to Lexington. You love horses. We love horses. This should be fun.

What is it like to bike the new Legacy Trail? That’s what I wanted to know before Sunday’s opening.

Early last week, as the sun was rising on a beautiful late-summer morning, I took a preview ride on the trail’s 7.5-mile main section with project manager Keith Lovan, Mayor Jim Newberry and Steve Austin, director of the Bluegrass Community Foundation’s Legacy Center, which is working with the city to build the trail.

We met at the Northside YMCA on Loudon Avenue and rode north to the Kentucky Horse Park. As we mounted our bicycles in the parking lot, the first thing I noticed were handsome limestone walls and pillars. They mark each end of the trail, adding a touch of Bluegrass elegance.

We pedaled over a small hill, behind a hotel and along Newtown Pike beside Lexmark. The trail then went over New Circle Road on a private bridge that IBM, Lexmark’s predecessor, built decades ago to connect its complex.

That bridge was one of two pre-existing features that made the Legacy Trail  possible. The other was a small tunnel under Interstate 75, built when the highway split the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream and Maine Chance research farms.

Other fortunate breaks for the project: economic stimulus money from the Obama Administration, and the fact that the trail required easement negotiations with only six property owners.

We left Lexmark’s property by crossing the first of seven arched steel bridges and a meadow along Cane Run Creek. The trail again took us along Newtown Pike beside Rosenstein Development property to the intersection of Citation Boulevard. We waited for the crosswalk, as everyone will have to do for a few more years. Once a planned upgrade of Newtown Pike is completed, the trail will have its own bridge over the busy highway into the Coldstream Research Park.

“I think it’s great that the trail is so visible,” Newberry said. “As motorists drive along and see cyclists on the trail, it might make them think about getting a bike, or getting out the bike they already have.”

We rode along Citation Boulevard, then glided down a small hill where the trail goes  beneath a bridge. This mile-long section of trail through a flood plain is made of pervious concrete, which allows water to pass through it. It is more environmental-friendly than asphalt, but costs four-times as much, Lovan said.

We crossed through the tunnel under I-75 to Maine Chance Farm, where we could see the sun rising over the Irish round tower on Castleton Lyons Farm in the distance. On the north side of the farm, we came to a pretty meadow that UK donated to the trail. We agreed it would become a popular picnic spot.

We rode past Spindletop Hall and reached the northern trailhead at the Kentucky Horse Park. There is a parking lot there, as there is at the YMCA and Coldstream Park. Across Ironworks Pike, the trail continues a short distance, entering the horse park beside the campground gate.

On the morning of our ride, there was still a lot of work to be done. We went around a few paving crews and had to stop and lift our bikes across most of the bridges, which hadn’t been connected to the trail yet. But by Sunday, it will be a smooth ride, Lovan said.

Landscaping won’t be finished and all of the interpretive signs and public art won’t be installed until next year. Eventually, the trail will be 12 miles long, extending south from the YMCA down Jefferson and Third Streets to the new Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden at East Third and Midland Avenue.

“If this is not wildly popular, I will be stunned,” Newberry said of the Legacy Trail before he hitched a ride to an appointment downtown and Lovan, Austin and I turned around to ride back to the YMCA. “I think it’s spectacular. It’s a fabulous addition to the community.”

I agree. The $10 million investment in the Legacy Trail is a drop in the bucket of what we routinely spend on highways and other public improvements. The long-term benefits – in public health, recreation and community enhancement – will be huge.

If you go

Legacy Trail opening

Sunday, 1 p.m. until dusk

Parking at the north and south trailheads -Northside YMCA on Loudon Avenue and across from the Kentucky Horse Park campground entrance on Ironworks Pike – and at Coldstream Park.

More information: Legacycenter.ning.com

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

Like so many others, I was stunned last week by news that banker Sam Barnes had died of a heart attack at age 63 while in Georgia to attend his son’s wedding.

Sam was widely loved and respected. Since moving from Atlanta in 1993 to head Fifth Third Bank’s operations in Central Kentucky, he had enthusiastically adopted Lexington as his home.

Sam devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to community organizations: United Way, Urban League, Transylvania University, the Blue Grass Community Foundation, LexArts, Commerce Lexington, Downtown Lexington Corp., the Lexington Philharmonic and the Kentucky Horse Park Foundation, to name just a few.

I saw Sam and his wife, Sue, at so many community events that I often wondered when he ever found time to run a bank.

“If I could create a model of the ideal community leader to replicate, it would be Sam Barnes,” said downtown developer Phil Holoubek.

What were the traits and behaviors that made Sam such an effective community leader? What can others learn from his example? I asked a dozen Lexington leaders those questions, and their answers were surprisingly similar.

Sam had many traits common to good business people: he was hard-working, strategic, proactive, visionary yet practical. He ran efficient meetings. But what others valued most was his passion for community service, his respectful nature and his human touch. Almost everyone mentioned his lack of ego and his willingness to listen.

“Sam was a listener,” said LexArts President Jim Clark. “I could always go to him with an idea, confident that his response would be thoughtful and candid. I never got the sense that he had an agenda other than aligning the interests of Fifth Third Bank with community programs that would yield positive economic and social returns for Central Kentucky.”

“He made everyone feel special and important,” said Debra Hensley, an insurance agent who served on many boards and committees with Sam. “He respected opposing viewpoints and learned from everyone. And, he had a sense of humor.”

Urban League President P.G. Peeples said Sam was always warm and approachable, and he got things done. “Most importantly, he never cared about who got the credit, just that it was done and benefitted others,” Peeples said.

Commerce Lexington President Bob Quick said Sam would never ask others to do anything he wasn’t willing to do. “There was nothing too small that he would not jump into if he felt it was worthwhile,” Quick said.

“When Sam became involved in an endeavor, he gave his full attention” to it, said Transylvania University President Charles Shearer. He recalled asking the banker to serve on the finance committee when he joined Transylvania’s Board of Trustees in 1995.

“He responded by saying that most organizations want to put him on the finance committee, but he would rather serve in another capacity,” Shearer recalled. “Following his request, Sam was appointed to the Student Life Committee, where he demonstrated a genuine interest in life on campus. He regularly attended the meetings and related well to the students.”

Renee Jackson, president of Downtown Lexington Corp., was impressed by Sam’s dignity and integrity. “I never witnessed him belittle anyone, even if it was clear that he didn’t approve or agree,” she said. “He handled issues discretely without embarrassing anyone.”

“He trusted and supported individuals who were doing the work of community improvement,” said Steve Austin, director of the Legacy Center at the Blue Grass Community Foundation. “He had a generous spirit.”

Keeneland President Nick Nicholson was impressed by Sam’s dedication to community service. “I never felt he was just going through the ‘corporate motions,’” he said. “He made more of a contribution to his adopted community than many (whose families) have been here for generations.”

Several people mentioned Sam’s compassion for others. Holoubek said that when his wife, Marnie, lost her father while she was working for United Way and Sam was leading the annual fund-raising campaign.

“Sam stepped up and led a great campaign, but he also found time to serve as a mentor, friend and even a father figure for Marnie during this difficult time,” he said. “We’ll never forget his incredible generosity and friendship, and I’m sure there are others who have similar stories about Sam.”

“Sam was the type of person who was always looking at what he could do to make Lexington a better place,” said Linda Gorton, an Urban County Council member. “His warm, friendly, non-abrasive leadership was a style we could all emulate.”

One more thought: Sam Barnes’ most visible recent accomplishment was the Fifth Third Pavilion at Cheapside Park, made possible by a $750,000 contribution from the bank. Since opening in April, the pavilion has made Cheapside a much more popular downtown gathering space, with thousands now attending the weekly Thursday Night Live events.

Lexington officials should consider naming the pavilion for Sam Barnes. It would be a fitting tribute. The pavilion would not be there without him, and, like Sam, it has helped bring this community together.

Memorial service

A memorial service for Sam Barnes will be at noon Wednesday at Calvary Baptist Church, 150 East High Street. There will be no visitation. A private burial will be conducted at a family cemetery in Cleveland. W.R. Milward Mortuary — Broadway is in charge of arrangements.

Here’s a trivia question for you: Who was Lexington’s first business tycoon?

The answer is William Morton, who was known around town two centuries ago as “Lord” Morton. No image of Morton is known to exist, but he was described by contemporaries as tall, stately and dignified, which explains his noble nickname.

Morton is remembered today for two reasons: Morton Middle School is named for him, because of his early support for public education; and because he built one of Lexington’s first grand mansions, whose bicentennial will be celebrated Thursday at 10 a.m. with a ceremony and tour.

Morton came to Lexington from Philadelphia around 1787. He was one of a handful of entrepreneurs who transformed a pioneer blockhouse into the most important trading city on America’s young western frontier.

As early Lexington prospered, primarily through manufacturing and the cultivation of hemp and tobacco, its citizens craved the finer things in life. Morton provided them, opening a store in 1787 at the corner of Main and Upper streets.

By the early 1800s, Morton owned a tannery where the Lexington Convention Center now stands and a row of commercial buildings along Upper Street between Main and Vine streets. The last of “Morton’s Row” was demolished in 2008 to make way for CentrePasture.

In 1803, Morton became the first president of the Kentucky Insurance Co. It was created to insure commercial shipments, but its cleverly worded charter also allowed it to become the city’s first bank. People then were suspicious of banks, because they printed their own money and often went bust, leaving customers with worthless paper.

Morton was active in civic affairs, serving as a city trustee and an officer in the local militia. He made a lot of money, and he did some good things with it. He and Walter Warfield purchased a lot on Market Street in 1804 where Christ Church was built, and he became one of the Episcopal congregation’s first vestrymen.

He was an early trustee of Transylvania University. Upon his death in 1836 at age 84, Morton left about one-third of his estate — the then-enormous sum of $12,000 — to start one of Lexington’s first public schools. At the time, wealthy children went to private schools. Poor children went to work.

Morton’s other legacy was a 20-acre estate he bought in 1795 at what was then the northern edge of town. He built a Federal-style mansion, with a tall front door flanked by Palladian windows, that many people regarded as the finest in town.

Two years after Morton’s death, the property was bought by Cassius Clay, who became famous and unpopular for campaigning against slavery with his newspaper, The True American. He lived in the house until 1850.

Clay sold the property to Dr. Lloyd Warfield, who subdivided three-fourths of it. In 1873, Warfield sold the home and surrounding five acres — bounded by Limestone, Fifth, Sixth streets and what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard — to Henry T. Duncan. He started the Lexington Daily Press newspaper and served two terms as mayor.

Duncan’s family sold the property to the city in 1913, and it became Duncan Park. The much-altered mansion has had many renovations over the years, and it needs another one. As city property, it has had many uses. It now houses The Nest: The Center for Women Children and Families, a non-profit social service agency.

Many successful Lexington businessmen have been quickly forgotten after their deaths. Morton’s memory lives on because he invested some of his wealth in making Lexington a better place — and because he built a fine piece of architecture that is still worth celebrating.

This drawing, from Clay Lancaster’s Antebellum Architecture of Kentucky (University Press of Kentucky, 1991) shows the Morton House as it originally looked in 1810. Below, the house as it looks today. It is bigger than it looks; the front door is 10 feet tall.