The Bluegrass and Beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s not Lexington’s only opportunity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Dudley Webb.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s really not so much preservation as recycling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fourteen months after the CentrePointe development was announced, all that exists is a crater full of mud.

As I listened to developer Dudley Webb and Vice Mayor Jim Gray verbally wallow in it at the Urban County Council meeting Tuesday, I kept thinking of philosopher George Santayana’s famous line: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Gray had asked Webb to appear before the council to explain why the construction he had said would start six months ago has yet to begin. Gray also wanted to point out that because Webb hasn’t applied for a building permit, it won’t begin anytime soon.

Webb read a six-page statement filled with righteous indignation and enough spin to dizzy anyone who has closely followed the CentrePointe saga.

Webb said he has been unfairly targeted by Gray, other council members, preservationists, the Herald-Leader, bloggers, naysayers and negativism. He hasn’t been deceptive — just optimistic.

It was a speech so Nixonian, all he needed was a dog named Checkers.

Amid the bluster, Webb revealed some essential truths: He has never had financing in place to build CentrePointe, and he won’t know for perhaps 90 days whether he will.

Over the past seven months, while Webb was making a variety of excuses for CentrePointe’s delay, he knew that his unidentified foreign financier was dead. But he didn’t bother to tell the city and state officials who were approving a tax-increment financing plan based on CentrePointe.

Gray complained that the city had been “hoodwinked.”

“We didn’t hoodwink anybody,” Webb replied. “Each step of the way throughout this project, we’ve believed everything we have told you.”

Two other council members also tried to press Webb for answers, but several more were quick to defend him, to thank him for bulldozing the center of town and to apologize for bothering him.

Amid the bluster, they also revealed some essential truths: Lexington doesn’t seem to learn from its past, whether it be the collapse of Kentucky Central Life Insurance Co. or Wallace Wilkinson’s “world coal hole” fiasco.

Also, city officials have never had the political will to make developers and large property owners — especially those downtown — look out for the city’s best interests as well as their own. Money talks. In this case, even the illusion of money talks.

CentrePointe is just the latest example of these essential truths. But it won’t be the last, unless city officials find some political will.

“Lexington is a sitting duck,” council member Diane Lawless said afterward. “Unless we fix the systematic problems, we’ll continue to fight one zone change at a time, one building at a time, one block at a time — not just downtown but in the neighborhoods.”

Improved downtown zoning regulations are working their way through council, as is an ordinance that would require a building permit to be issued before the structure it would replace can be demolished.

Those are good starts, as is Mayor Jim Newberry’s suggestion that historic preservation be addressed in a comprehensive way.

Last year, Newberry ordered the city’s historic preservation office to identify structures that should be preserved. The results of that work will be unveiled in a public meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Downtown Public Library basement.

“I think you’ll find the results to be interesting,” Newberry told council members Tuesday.

Whatever is unveiled should be the start of a thorough conversation. So far, the city’s work has been done without consulting preservation groups or the public.

The conversation also must focus on more than traditional notions of preservation. It must look at the potential for adaptive reuse of old buildings, a technique that is helping other cities revitalize their economies.

Some good preservation work has been done over the years. But city laws and processes leave ample room for failure, as the CentrePointe block has shown. Try to do the right thing and restore an old building and the city will regulate you to the last cornice and gutter. But ignore an old building and the city will stand by as it falls down.

Many buildings on the CentrePointe block suffered from demolition by neglect for decades before they were demolished last summer. City building inspectors dropped the ball. For example, the circa 1826 Morton’s Row was deemed worthy of preservation years ago. But it wasn’t legally protected because its owner, the Rosenberg family, didn’t want it to be.

Market forces will ultimately determine whether CentrePointe is built as planned and succeeds over the long term.

Perhaps its four-star hotel will be filled. Maybe the people Webb says have made “handshake” agreements to buy 64 of the 91 luxury condos won’t suddenly die before they’ve handed over the cash. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see.

What’s important now is for Lexington to avoid the next CentrePointe.

Council members and the mayor must get serious about good urban planning so they’re not constantly playing defense. They must improve building inspection and historic preservation processes, revisit the Downtown Master Plan and give it some teeth.

They must find the political will to strengthen Lexington’s laws so that development is as good for the city as it is for developers.

Download a pdf of Dudley Webb’s Statement and a letter of support from Marriott International Inc. that he gave council members Tuesday.

Like many journalists, I’ve always dreamed of writing the great American novel.

I have an idea for one. I even have a title: All That Glitters.

Here’s the plot: A real estate developer announces plans to build a massive tower in the center of town. He touts it as an economic boon. He calls it DazzlePointe, with the extra “e” on the end to add some class.

Some of this developer’s previous projects have been successful; others haven’t been. For various reasons, some people in town don’t trust him. But most of the city’s powers that be are, well, dazzled by his proposal.

Think of it as The Music Man without the music.

The developer has been secretly working on DazzlePointe for a couple of years. But when he unveils the renderings, they show a generic tower that looks as if it was designed in a couple of weeks.

The developer’s business plan is suspect. It’s straight out of the fast-buck days of a real estate bubble that’s getting ready to pop: A luxury hotel, nearly 100 million-dollar condos, upscale shops and restaurants.

Where’s the money for DazzlePointe coming from? It’s all cash, the developer says, but it’s coming from a foreign investor whose identity he can’t disclose.

The developer says he needs government help, in the form of tax-increment financing, to make the project truly special. Unless, that is, people want to ask too many questions; then he can build it on his own, but it will be much less special.

The money is in place, the developer says. He’s ready to go. Except for one thing: The block contains some very old buildings that his silent partner has let crumble for years while city officials looked the other way.

Many good architects say some of the old buildings are special. They say they could be incorporated into a beautiful contemporary structure that would be better for the city and still accomplish the developer’s financial goals. But the developer scoffs. The old buildings must go! City officials snap to attention, and the bulldozers roll in.

With the DazzlePointe site now cleared and ready for construction, everyone waits. And waits. Months go by. Then, city officials are told that the mysterious investor died. Months ago. Without leaving a will. But don’t worry, the developer says. Everything will be fine.

How will the novel end? I’ve thought about several possibilities.

The developer might find the money and build his tower, only to see it fail within a few years (perhaps after he has sold it and pocketed a handsome fee). The real estate bubble has burst, taking much of the economy with it. The tower’s business plan makes less and less sense with each passing day.

Another ending could be that the developer doesn’t really have the money to build DazzlePointe. But now, with the block cleared, he and his partner have more flexibility to build something else there. Except for the loss of the old buildings, things work out fine, because the new project makes more long-term sense than DazzlePointe ever did.

Of course, a third ending could be that DazzlePointe is built and is a long-term success, defying all of the skeptics — and all of the nation’s economic trends. But it has been years since I read many fairy tales, so I doubt I could write a good fairy-tale ending.

The part of this plot where I’m stuck isn’t the end; it’s the middle. I’m to the point where the DazzlePointe site is a big hole, the mysterious investor is dead and nothing seems to be happening.

How do the powers that be react? Do they continue taking everything the developer says as gospel? Or do they finally begin asking tough questions and demanding answers?

Here are some of the questions they might ask: When did the mysterious investor die? When did the developer find out? How long did he know it before telling government officials? Was it before the block was cleared? Was it before application for tax-increment financing was made or approved? Are there legal issues here that authorities should investigate?

As I said, this is the part of the novel where I’m stuck. How the powers that be react at this point could have a big effect on how the end of this story is written.

On second thought, maybe I should just stick to journalism. I probably wouldn’t make a good novelist. After all, this plot is so implausible, who would ever believe it?

Lexington, like most American cities, created a complex system of zoning regulations a generation or two ago to make its bustling downtown more neat and orderly.

In recent years, like most American cities, Lexington has been trying to figure out how to make its dull and dying downtown bustle again.

That’s because people are attracted to vibrant downtowns — especially the young, creative people who are the engines of the 21st-century economy.

The issues are complex, but one thing many planners, developers and citizens have come to agree upon is that those strict rules — and the bureaucratic systems and adversarial cultures that have grown up around them — can be a big part of the problem.

It’s a Catch 22: The rules, regulations and government processes designed to improve a city as it grows can sometimes have the opposite effect. That’s because developers and regulators sometimes don’t have enough flexibility to use common sense or foster excellence.

“There’s certainly a feeling that we can do better,” said Chris King, Lexington’s chief planner.

Lexington simplified downtown zoning three decades ago, and that has helped. The city’s Infill and Redevelopment Task Force and several public and private organizations continue to study the issues, look at what other cities are doing and recommend changes.

Last week, the Downtown Lexington Corp. hosted a delegation from Columbus, Ohio, whose members talked about what happened when that city tore up the downtown rule book and took a different approach. The result, they said, has been a more vibrant, attractive downtown with more than $1 billion in new private investment and a steady increase in residents.

It all began in 1996, when Columbus formed a 22-member committee to study downtown development issues. The group, which represented the various stakeholders and interest groups, wrote an ordinance that scrapped many of the city center’s old zoning rules.

The ordinance set out a vision for downtown as “every one’s neighborhood” — a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly place where people would want to live, work and play. And it created the Downtown Commission, a nine-member board appointed by the mayor with enormous power and flexibility.

By law, the commission must be made up of people who live or work downtown and include a variety of interests — a developer or Realtor, an architect, a landscape architect or urban planner, a historic-preservation professional and a land-use lawyer.

The commission was charged with finding ways to make new development work — and to make it well-designed and compatible with its surroundings. “It’s totally subjective,” said Harrison Smith, an 80-something real estate lawyer who has headed the commission since its creation.

Developers like the system because they can go one place for approval — rather than a host of city agencies with narrow interests — and get decisions quickly. Rather than rejecting developers’ plans, the commission and its staff work with them to improve plans and make them acceptable. It shifts the conversation from, “You can’t do this, because … ” to, “You can do this, if … ”

Commission meetings are open to the public, and anyone can speak — no time limits. Decisions can be appealed to the City Council. But in more than 10 years, only two developers’ applications have been rejected and none has been appealed, Smith said.

“We do in 60 days what it would typically take a year to do,” said Kenneth Cookson, a Columbus attorney and downtown activist. “And, boy, have we spawned competition in the design community. They have had to take it up a notch or two.”

Want to tear down an old building to make a parking lot? It won’t be approved. Want to do a big, creative sign on your building that some people might consider public art? It will be approved — if the commission thinks it makes downtown look better and not worse.

“The key — and it’s a risk — are the people (on the commission),” Smith said. “It doesn’t work unless you get pros.”

King, the Lexington planner, was intrigued by Columbus’ approach and thought some elements of it might work in Lexington. “It would take a lot of vetting,” he said.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray was impressed and said he might appoint a task force to “examine it and see what makes sense here.” But he echoed Smith’s caution that such a powerful, flexible commission is only as good as its members and their mandate.

“They seem to have created a framework that encourages good, sympathetic and compatible development, and it’s market-driven,” Gray said. “It’s good for the developers and good for the city.”

Where’s CentrePointe?

Developer Dudley Webb said late last fall that construction would begin in December on the $250 million tower in the middle of downtown Lexington. It’s now January, and the site is a big gravel pit waiting for something to happen.

To make way for CentrePointe, Webb bulldozed the block bounded by Main, Vine, Limestone and Upper streets. He took out 14 structures, including 182-year-old Morton’s Row, the second-oldest commercial building downtown. The National Trust for Historic Preservation called it one of America’s biggest losses of 2008.

City officials have asked the state for permission to use incremental tax revenues generated by CentrePointe over the next 30 years to pay for some of the project’s “public” infrastructure, as well as other downtown improvements.

So where’s CentrePointe?

“Everything’s still on track,” Darby Turner, Webb’s attorney, said Thursday. “It’s a little slower process than we had hoped. … We’re still moving right along.”

Turner said engineering and permitting work is under way and construction could begin later this month.

Harold Tate, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, said it has taken longer than expected for CentrePointe to get state permits to close lanes on some surrounding streets, but that should happen soon.

Webb’s plans call for the 35-story tower to house a four-star J.W. Marriott hotel, luxury condos, shops, offices, restaurants and an entertainment venue.

If CentrePointe is still on track, it would be unusual. Market conditions have changed dramatically since last fall, and similar developments in other cities have been halted or delayed. Financing is hard to come by. But Webb has always insisted that CentrePointe won’t be affected by the credit crunch, because foreign investors he won’t identify have put up cash for construction.

Count me among the skeptics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Webb were to announce that he’s putting CentrePointe on hold. In fact, it could be the best thing.

The worst outcome for Lexington would be a half-built CentrePointe — or one that’s built and then fails in an economy less hospitable to luxury hotels and condos. That’s what Councilman Don Blevins Jr. meant a few months ago when he worried aloud that CentrePointe could become “a vertical Lexington Mall.”

If CentrePointe were put on hold, it could eventually become a better project — one that’s smaller, better designed and more economically viable in the long term. (But still, unfortunately, one without some of Lexington’s irreplaceable historic fabric.)

Delaying CentrePointe would cause a short-term problem. With the countdown clock ticking on the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, nobody wants to be left with a big hole like the one that occupied the next block over in the early 1980s. But that problem could be solved with enough dirt and sod to create a temporary CentrePointe Park.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe CentrePointe construction will begin soon. Maybe CentrePointe will be finished and won’t look as generic and out of place as I fear. Maybe its condos will sell and its hotel will be filled for many years. Maybe the project will generate enough new tax revenues to pay for some wonderful downtown improvements, such as restoration of the old Fayette County Courthouse.

But I’ll believe it when I see it.

Herald-Leader reporter Beverly Fortune reports on changes developer Dudley Webb has made in the design for his proposed CentrePointe tower in downtown Lexington. The development — on the leveled block bounded by Main, Upper, Vine and Limestone streets — would house luxury condos, a four-star hotel, offices and shops.

What do you think?

If Tuesday’s public hearing had been at Keeneland instead of the Urban County Council chambers, here’s how I would have handicapped it:

The Lexington Distillery District project was the clear favorite. Everyone spoke of its good breeding and conformation, and they thought it was a great bet with the promise of a big payoff.

The CentrePointe development was a more complicated wager. Many speakers thought it was a beautiful horse, a sure thing. A few were skeptical, criticizing it as too big, ugly and lame to be a winner. Most, though, were willing to take the gamble, because the potential payoff seemed worth the risk.

Of course, horse races are over within two minutes. This one will last three decades.

What the Urban County Council and state officials must decide before the end of the year is whether Lexington can and should use tax-increment financing for these projects — two of the biggest developments proposed for downtown Lexington in a generation.

Tax-increment financing, or TIF, would allow Lexington to use 80 percent of new tax revenues generated by a huge private development in a blighted area over 30 years to pay for the infrastructure needed to make the development possible.

TIF will be a great deal for Lexington if the private developments succeed. Not only will the city get the developments, but it will get to keep tax revenues that would otherwise be shared statewide.

The Lexington Distillery District project is a textbook example of why the TIF law was created. The project would rehabilitate two former distillery complexes on Manchester Street and convert 28 of the most neglected acres in Fayette County into an entertainment, arts and multi-use neighborhood. Similar projects have worked wonders elsewhere.

The Distillery District’s developers are seeking $80 million in future tax revenues for such things as streets, sidewalks, utilities and parking. The developers plan $110 million in private investment.

The Webb Companies plans to spend more than $200 million in private financing to build Centre Pointe, a 35-story tower that would have a four-star Marriott hotel, 70 luxury condominiums, offices and restaurants.

Mayor Jim Newberry is working with the Webbs to use CentrePointe as the focus for a 14.25-acre, $48 million downtown redevelopment project that would include such popular amenities as improved streetscapes, a $16 million renovation of the old courthouse that houses the Lexington History Museum and a permanent home for the Lexington Farmers Market.

It also would include a lot of money for amenities that would directly benefit CentrePointe, such as an adjacent $10 million underground parking garage and two $1.5 million pedestrian walkways.

Architects have criticized CentrePointe’s design and size, preservationists opposed its destruction of historic buildings, and others have questioned its economic viability and secretive private financing. But most of the speakers at Tuesday’s hearing praised CentrePointe as a needed shot in the arm for downtown.

Unlike a horse race, these projects aren’t competing with each other so much as with global economic forces that have shifted dramatically since they were proposed.

As Lexington places its bets, we should keep this in mind: The payoff will come only if these projects can go the distance. There’s no such thing as a free ride, either in horse racing or in tax-increment financing.

If you live in Lexington, you don’t need to wait until the Nov. 4 election to have your say about the future.  There are several opportunities this week to comment on three development projects that could have a big effect on our city’s future.

On Tuesday, in the Urban County Council chambers, there will be public hearings on proposals to use tax-increment financing (TIF) to support two private developments.

At 6 p.m., the public is invited to comment on plans by a group that wants to turn a long-neglected section of Manchester Street into the Lexington Distillery District, a multi-use and entertainment area.

I think the Distillery District is a visionary project that has a lot of potential to improve downtown.  It is a great example of what the state’s TIF law was designed to do. You can read some of what I have written about the project by clicking here and here.  See the project’s own Web site here.

At 7 p.m., the public is invited to comment on TIF projects related to the Webb Companies’ proposed CentrePointe development on the block bounded by Main, Vine, Upper and Limestone streets.

If you follow this blog and my column in the Herald-Leader, you know I don’t think much of CentrePointe or the TIF projects attached to it.  If you want to know why, click “CentrePointe” in the categories list at right. Click here to see CentrePointe’s Web site.

A different kind of project with a lot of potential to improve Lexington is the Legacy Trail, a nine-mile pedestrian and bicycle trail from downtown to the Kentucky Horse Park.

Organizers plan a series of information and listening sessions Thursday and Friday with area “stakeholders” and a party Saturday morning at Coldstream Park to gather comments and suggestions from the general public.  There also will be an information booth at Thursday Night Live at Cheapside.

I’ll be writing more about the Legacy Trail project later this week.  Click here for the Legacy Trail’s Web site, which has more information about the public event Saturday.

I’m sure it’s because I’ve heard too much of the slop that has replaced intelligent discourse in our presidential campaign. But as I listened Thursday night to Urban County Council members and others discuss whether to go forward with a tax-increment financing project tied to the CentrePointe development, one phrase kept running through my mind: Lipstick on a pig.

Granted, some good lipstick was offered up:

Developer Dudley Webb agreed to pay the estimated $50,000 cost of a state-required TIF feasibility study for his proposed 35-story CentrePointe tower, which would house a four-star hotel, luxury condos, offices, restaurants and shops.

Mayor Jim Newberry indicated, and Webb’s attorney seemed to agree, that any decision about building a $10 million parking garage under Phoenix Park could wait a couple of years until we see if CentrePointe is built and the garage is needed.

Those two moves made it more attractive, and less risky, for council members to let the CentrePointe TIF process play out, and they voted 10-5 to do just that.

It won’t hurt to further scrutinize the downtown redevelopment projects city officials want to pay for with TIF money. And it certainly would be good to have a public hearing, so citizens could have their say. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 14, at 6 p.m. in the council’s chambers.

I’m skeptical of asking the state to approve a CentrePointe TIF project, for several reasons, not the least of which is that state law must be bent like a pretzel for this project to qualify.

Plus, as Vice Mayor Jim Gray keeps pointing out, a TIF project makes sense only if the development it is tied to makes sense. That’s because CentrePointe must be a long-term financial success to provide the tax money needed to fund TIF public improvement projects.

CentrePointe makes no economic sense to a lot of people. The mystery surrounding its financing — whether it is real, and where the money is coming from — deepens public skepticism. Last week’s turmoil in the financial markets offered further reason for caution.

When Webb unveiled CentrePointe on March 4, he said he needed TIF financing to make it work. Faced with public opposition, he then said he didn’t need it. Now, while claiming he doesn’t need it, Webb and his brother, Don, and nephew, Woodford, are working hard to get it.

Some council members speculate that the Webbs need the city’s TIF stamp of approval to secure financing for CentrePointe. Or that they need the $10 million city-owned parking garage. Or that they need the city on board so they can seek loan guarantees or other support if CentrePointe runs into trouble.

Some council members who support the TIF project argue that if Lexington doesn’t partner with CentrePointe, it could lose an opportunity to fund some much-needed downtown improvements, such as renovation of the old Fayette County Courthouse that now houses the Lexington History Museum.

They think powerful rural legislators will gut the TIF law next year, so Lexington had better grab what it can now. They may be right, but a flawed CentrePointe TIF application would only give those legislators a fat target.

And who could blame them? Is it in Kentucky’s best interest to build Lexington a downtown parking garage that’s twice as expensive as it could be? Or to spend $3 million on pedways between CentrePointe and two public parking garages?

It would be short-sighted for the General Assembly to abolish TIF financing. Despite Kentucky’s historic urban-rural jealousy, it’s more true than ever that cities are the economic engines that drive the state. TIF is a great tool for keeping those engines chugging along.

The General Assembly must move beyond the old notion that investing in the Golden Triangle is bad for the rest of Kentucky. Burkesville or Grayson aren’t competing with Lexington — Kentucky is competing with Illinois, and they’re both competing with the rest of the world.

The old Kentucky way of thinking focuses on whether UK can compete with U of L on the football field and basketball court, rather than on whether they both can compete with North Carolina and MIT in the classroom and laboratory.

The game should no longer be about how to divide Kentucky’s pie, but how to make the pie bigger. Sound urban TIF projects that conform to the law will do that. Flawed ones like CentrePointe probably won’t.

If Lexington does send a CentrePointe TIF application to Frankfort, I think state officials will view it as pork. And rural legislators know how to butcher a hog.

Journalists tell people things they don’t know. They provide a forum for public discussion. They hold up a mirror to society. And they chronicle the present so that, years later, people can know the past and perhaps learn something from it.

A fine example of that last role can be seen in a powerful multimedia presentation put together by Herald-Leader photojournalist David Stephenson.  Click here to watch it.

The presentation is a collection of photographs, time-lapse images, videos and audio man-on-the-street interviews.  It chronicles this summer’s demolition of the block where developer Dudley Webb plans to build the 35-story CentrePointe complex, which is to include a four-star hotel, luxury condos, offices and restaurants.

Most of the 15 buildlings on the block were more than 100 years old. The most notable among them was called Morton’s Row. It dated to 1826 and was one of the oldest commercial buildings left in downtown Lexington. You can read more about the block’s history by clicking here.

I’ve written a lot about CentrePointe.  If you’ve followed the debate, you know I think the block needed redeveloping, but that Webb missed a great opportunity to give Lexington a more valuable and more exciting project than the gigantic, generic CentrePointe tower. Looking at the renderings, it could just as easily be in suburban New Jersey as downtown Lexington.

A development with good, contemporary architecture could have woven in some of the historic fabric from Morton’s Row, the Dame building and perhaps a few more of the old structures to create a place that skillfully used Lexington’s rich past to point toward the future.  That sort of development is being done by innovative cities all over the country — and all around the world. If you do much traveling, you’ve seen them for yourself.

When people ask me now what I think about CentrePointe — and I think they’re looking for a short answer — I quote this comment Urban County Councilman Don Blevins Jr. made during a council meeting July 2:

“My fear is that a large four-star hotel with huge condominums on top of it is going to fail. I hope I’m wrong. I hope they’re wildly successful and the downtown is vibrant and we sell all those condos and the hotel is full from here to eternity. But what if I’m right? What we’d have is essentially a vertical Lexington Mall right in the heart of downtown.”

But even if CentrePointe is successful, the gain will have come with a loss that was so unnecessary.

CentrePointe illustrates one of Lexington’s biggest failings in the past few decades. At mid-20th Century, Lexington had one of the nation’s best collections of antebellum architecture and some of the prettiest countryside God has created. We let too many of those buildings be torn down, and we were too careless in paving over a lot of bluegrass countryside to create suburban Anywhere, USA.

Growth is good. But the once-popular Lexington bumper sticker is only partially correct. Some growth is good; some growth is cancer.

I can’t help but think that if journalists in previous decades had had the technology and skill that David Stephenson and his colleagues have today, we would never have allowed this summer’s complete demolition of the block bounded by Main, Upper, Limestone and Vine streets.

Can you imagine being able to watch a wrecking machine destroy such former Lexington landmarks as Union Station?  The Post Office that stood across from it on Main Street? Ingelside manor?  At the time each of them was demolished, some people thought it was a good idea.

Click on the link above and watch 182 years of Lexington history disappear on the screen in five minutes and 10 seconds. Maybe whatever comes next on that block will be good for Lexington. But however good it may turn out to be, it will have come with a price worth remembering.

Tax-increment financing for a downtown revitalization project tied to Dudley Webb’s CentrePointe development isn’t dead, but it’s on life support.

What’s the chance it will survive the Urban County Council? Slim.

If it does, what’s the chance it will get state approval? Probably none.

But, for now, it lives, by an 8-7 council vote.

That means council members have more time, opportunity and reason to demand answers to the many questions Lexington residents have about CentrePointe, the 35-story hotel, condo, office and retail development that could reshape downtown for generations to come.

Some council members, such as Jay McChord, think CentrePointe is a great project that will rejuvenate downtown.

“What if it goes right?” McChord asked, saying that the city could miss out on a chance to keep some tax revenues that otherwise would go to the state.

Others said it was just too early in the process to quit, since the city isn’t obligating itself to anything quite yet.

“I don’t see a reason to throw a rope over a limb and hang ourselves today,” said Julian Beard.

But, based on other council members’ comments, the TIF seems to have slim chance of success unless CentrePointe’s developers are willing to provide a lot more information.

Darby Turner, the lawyer for the Webb companies, offered some new information Tuesday. He identified the builder (Bovis), the hotel operator (J.W. Marriott), a construction timetable (look for something to come out of the ground by December).

But Turner shed little new light on the biggest question of all: Where’s the $200 million to build CentrePointe coming from, and is that financing real?

Turner said equity financing is secured, but he again refused to identify the source. He said a major law firm would act as trustee for the money. But then he refused to identify the law firm.

Feel better now? Seven council members didn’t, and others seemed nervous.

Many questions persist: Where’s the money coming from? Is there a market for the hotel, the condos and the retail space?

Sure, you might say, that is Webb’s problem. But if the city starts building its own projects based on CentrePointe’s anticipated success, it’s our problem, too.

If the state shoots down this flawed TIF application, will it poison the well for good ones in the future?

And here are some other questions council members should ask:

■ With so little financial information available, could the city successfully sell TIF bonds without providing some sort of taxpayer guarantee to investors?

■ If public improvements are begun and CentrePointe’s mysterious financing falls short, could the city be put in a position of bailing out CentrePointe to protect its own projects?

Vice Mayor Jim Gray, the CEO of a major construction company, was the first to vote against the TIF, saying that he doesn’t think CentrePointe is economically viable and that he doesn’t trust Webb.

Gray’s bottom line: “It doesn’t pass the smell test.”

As long as the city continues to consider tying its fortunes to CentrePointe, other council members need to keep sniffing, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It should be an interesting weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can Lexington learn from the CentrePointe fiasco?

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

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

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

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

A vision for downtown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better public process

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rethinking preservation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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