The Bluegrass and Beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click each photo to enlarge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think their self-pride actually helped to create their reputation,” she said. “From starting out in a place where they believed in themselves and their potential rather than doubting it, they were able to do some pretty impressive things, many of which I hope we’ll see and in some way replicate.”
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What kind of city should Lexington become?

That’s the big question each year when Commerce Lexington gathers local leaders and takes them to another city in search of ideas.

“Lexington is at a pivotal point — economically, culturally and physically,” Mayor Jim Newberry told the 275 people on this year’s trip as they gathered last Wednesday in Austin Music Hall in the capital city of Texas.

Everyone agreed. They also knew that economic success in the 21st century will belong to those cities and regions that embrace knowledge and technology.

So what was there to learn in Austin? Lexington is a prettier place and has much better weather. Yet, Austin is booming and seems wired for a bright future.

That’s because, over the past three decades, Austin has made smart, strategic decisions about creating an economic and social climate where technology companies flourish and the people who work for them can enjoy a high quality of life. Spinoffs from that climate include a rich live music scene.

Austin has worked hard to preserve its history, protect its environment and embrace creativity.

Creative people can be different — sometimes very different.

Austin’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” The motto might as well be official, because every government and business leader who spoke to the visitors from Lexington touted the notion.

“We have created, maybe you think, a monster,” said Pike Powers, an attorney and former Austin Chamber of Commerce chairman. “But what keeps us on the map is our young people, our creative people. They are the draw for technology companies and bright researchers.”

Some Lexington leaders joked that we should print T-shirts saying, “Make Lexington Weird.”

Others, who know our city better, pointed out that buttoned-down Lexington has always had a weird streak. Many people just don’t want to admit it, much less embrace it.

Someone offered a better T-shirt motto: “Lexington: Show Your True Colors.”

What does embracing creativity really mean? For one thing, it means tolerance.

“The ‘Keep Austin Weird’ thing has become a rallying point for championing diversity, for truly embracing that which is different,” said Ed Bailey, vice president of brand development for Austin City Limits, the successful Public Broadcasting System music show. “In Cleveland, where I come from, that’s not really valued. Here, it is.”

It also means encouraging citizens to become involved in decision-making.

“In Austin, civic engagement is a contact sport,” said Robena Jackson, a consultant who was once the Austin chamber’s “vice president for quality of life.”

Austin residents won’t allow a few elites to make big decisions about their city behind closed doors. There are dozens of groups, such as the Austin Area Research Organization, where issues are studied and debated.

The Austin City Council meets each Thursday, and the marathon sessions can last up to 15 hours. All who want to speak can have their say; no three-minute limits like in Lexington. Oh, and the meeting takes a break at 5:30 p.m. so everyone can listen to a local musician.

“People in Austin demand a voice,” Jackson said. “And leaders in Austin know they have to listen to them to get things done.”

Austin is often seen as a liberal island in conservative Texas. But Austin’s current mayor and two former ones said local government doesn’t try to be the solution to problems so much as a facilitator. Government seeks to help entrepreneurs succeed, not get in their way.

Locally owned businesses are valued. Entrepreneurship is celebrated. The city, state and University of Texas work closely together to develop the economy. Progress is tracked, results are measured. There’s a bias toward action.

Austin leaders were quick to say that their city is far from perfect. Housing is too expensive, air quality is often poor, traffic can be a mess. But they said leaders haven’t been afraid to try things and fail, and they’ve learned from their mistakes.

“We made a lot of this up on the fly,” Powers said. “Sometimes things work wonderfully for us, and sometimes we fall flat on our face.”

Creativity. Tolerance. Entrepreneurship. Early and meaningful public involvement in decision-making.

Some people in Lexington already believe in those ideas. What if many more did?

Lexington might come to see controversy as an opportunity for discussion, rather than an embarrassment to avoid. We might take more risks. We might try to be great instead of just good enough, knowing full well that somebody will always complain if things don’t turn out perfectly. Or even if they do.

That’s what I learned in Austin.

Steve Austin, who directs the new Center for Community Legacy Initiatives at the Blue Grass Community Foundation, formerly headed the “smart growth” group Bluegrass Tomorrow. He is one of those people who tries to think like a hockey player. You know, focus on where the puck is going, not where it is now.

While in Austin, Texas, on the Commerce Lexington trip, he noticed an interview in Austin Monthly magazine with Guy Forsyth, a singer and songwriter. Down in the article, Forsyth was quoted as saying home prices have tripled since he moved to Austin in 1990, pricing him out of many neighborhoods, despite his success.

A generation ago, musicians began coming to Austin because they were being priced out of California. “Austin has peaked, but they don’t know it,” Austin said. “Being the next hot thing has passed for them.”

If young musicians can no longer afford to live in Austin, will they stop going there? Where will they go instead? “Why couldn’t it be Lexington?” he wondered.

Many of the record 275 people who went on Commerce Lexington’s 69th annual Leadership Visit go year, after year after year. They get ideas for improving Lexington. They make and develop contacts for improving their businesses and careers. And they get a lot of work done.

This week’s trip to Austin, Texas, was the sixth Commerce Lexington trip for Barry Brauch, the CFO of American Founders Bank. He said there’s often an expectation that the group will come back with some big idea that quickly transform Lexington, but it just doesn’t happen that way. What happens is small ideas are planted, germinate and bloom sometimes years later with a distinct Lexington twist.

“It’s like making a mosaic that, over time, gives a picture of what Lexington can be,” Brauch said as the group headed back to Lexington on Friday afternoon.

The best way for people to get to know each other is to travel together. There’s a lot of value in gathering together the mayor, all 15 Urban County Council members, the school superintendent, many of the city’s top bankers and business leaders, a local legislator and the speaker of the state House of Representatives, who lives in Bowling Green and may not otherwise spend a lot of time thinking about what’s good for Lexington and how what happens in Lexington is good for Kentucky.

“I can’t imagine, without this trip, how much more fragmented Lexington would be,” Brauch said. “Some people think Lexington is divided. I think they’ve just never lived somewhere that’s really divided.”

For business people, who often are focused on minding their own business, it’s a time to step back and think about what’s good for the entire city. “You feel plugged in, and when things come up back home later, you know how it fits into the overall things people are trying to accomplish,” Brauch said.

Brauch cited a small example: When artists, performers and creative entrepreneurs come seeking loans, bankers often look askance. They don’t understand the business models, and they worry when the collateral is more intellectual than concrete. But politicians and bankers in Austin explained to that such loans, when done carefully and intentionally, are good for business and good for a city.

Linda Gorton, an Urban County Council member, says these trips teach Lexington leaders as much what to avoid as to emulate. For example, last year’s trip showed that Boulder, Colo., has become such an expensive place to live that many police officers, firefighters, teachers and service workers must live in neighboring towns. “We sure don’t want that to happen in Lexington,” she said.

Lexington leaders whose success often depends on collaborating with other Lexington leaders found the trip invaluable. Fire Chief Robert Hendricks was able to discuss several issues, such as home sprinklers, with a variety of interested parties.

“In order to get a meeting with some of these people in Lexington, it can normally take a month,” said Stu Silberman, the Fayette County Schools superintendent. “Here, you can get those people together in 15 minutes and get the meeting done quickly.”

Susan Rayer, director of career development at Transylvania University, lined up internships for four students. “And that was all done before dinner last night,” she said on the second day of the three-day trip.

“For me, this trip is worth its weight in gold. I’ve gotten so much done,” said Wanda Bertram, executive director of LexLinc, a non-profit that helps poor neighborhoods solve problems. “We didn’t have the money in the budget, but my board chair said, ‘You’re going on this trip.’”

Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual Leadership Visit next year will be to Madison, Wis.

Woodford Webb, Commerce Lexington’s chair-elect for 2009, said Madison has changed a lot since the chamber trip there 11 years ago.

Madison has may things Lexington would like to have. It has 160 biotech companies, a dynamic downtown, low business taxes, good environmental protection efforts and a highly educated population. The city ranks high on national lists of places to live and raise a family.

Not far below Austin’s celebrated “weirdness” is a quirky streak of entrepreneurship and a passion for locally owned businesses.

You can see a lot of it in south Austin, where old buildings are constantly being repurposed by entrepreneurs with their own creative vision of the American dream. For example, a restaurant in an old gas station that still looks a lot like a gas station.

Along one big street is a billboard with a picture of Thomas Edison that says, “On the 10,000th time, there was light.”

Some of the quirkiest businesses are along South Congress Avenue. It’s a broad street with a commanding view of the state capitol dome in the distance. On each side of this avenue on a hill, there’s a funky collection of businesses, many in storefronts from the 1950s.

Where else can you see an old Airstream trailer rehabbed as a cupcake stand? A Japanese fast food restaurant next to an ice cream stand down the street from a Western wear store, jewelry boutiques and a psychodelic costume shop called “Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds.” And then there’s the Magnolia Cafe, whose sign proudly proclaims: “Sorry we’re open.” On the first Thursday of each month, South Congress merchants stay open late and have special events for their customers. It’s not just a shopping district: It’s an experience.

Photos/Tom Eblen

You hear a lot of talk in Lexington about how encouraging more live music and entertainment venues downtown would be good for the economy, and that’s true.

It would improve Lexington’s quality of life and attract and retain the creative, young workers of the future and the companies that want to hire them.

But what the 275 Lexington leaders on the Commerce Lexington trip to Austin, Texas, are learning this week is that music and entertainment can develop into a significant industry itself, with the right planning and encouragement from local government, banks and other business interests.

And you don’t have to be a Nashville, Los Angeles or Austin to make it happen.

Austin’s music scene goes back to the 1930s, when Kenneth Threadgill hired local bands to play at his Gulf station at night and started selling more beer than gas. Things really took off when the cowboys and hippies collided in the late 1960s, with University of Texas students providing a ready-made audience.

Now, music employs 11,200 people in Austin, generates $11 million in taxes and has an annual economic impact of $616 million. And it’s only a piece of what Austin calls its creative industry sector, which also includes art, film production, digital music and visual media - otherwise known as creating video games.

“Fun is an important part of the economy,” said Jim Butler, a city employee whose job it is to nurture creative businesses. “We take it very seriously.”

Here’s a not-so-small but telling example:

Austin City Limits is one of the most successful and longest-running shows on public television. It showcases both top talent and up-and-comers for a worldwide audience. The show began in 1975, when Austin public television station KLRU convinced Willie Nelson to shoot a pilot to kick off a series of shows featuring Texas musicians.

“We started out just wanting to put a lens on what was happening in Austin at the time,” said Ed Bailey, the show’s vice president for brand development.

When Austin City Limits was still going three years later, producers decided to upgrade the set. They came up with the backdrop that shows Austin’s skyline, which three decades later has become the show’s trademark and has helped make Austin famous.

“It wasn’t part of a business plan to promote Austin,” Bailey said. “It happened because a few creative individuals got together and made a judgment call.”

Then, seven years ago, the show’s producers decided they could use their contacts in the music industry to create a festival as a fundraiser for KLRU. After all, some of the nation’s biggest entertainers had gotten their start on Austin City Limits and returned regularly.

The three-day festival now attracts 130 bands on eight stages and 75,000 fans a day to Austin’s Zilker Park each September. Over the past six years, the festival has generated $100 million in economic impact for Austin.

It was a success story that got several Lexington people thinking: Why not us?

After all, Kentucky has produced some of the nation’s most successful musicians, and there’s a whole genre of music called bluegrass. Lexington already has successful niche festivals, such as Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park and Ichthus near Wilmore.

Lexington has its own home-grown live music success story: Michael Johnathan’s “Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour,” which is beamed each week from the Kentucky Theatre to 491 radio stations worldwide, XM Satellite Radio, a number of public TV stations and streams live online. It will record its 500th show on Sept. 15.

More than a little brand equity there. Great contacts in the music industry.

So, could Lexington boost its economy and image - not to mention the show’s - with a festival?

Austin’s experiences also sparked ideas for Lexington on a smaller scale.

Lexington has some great large venues for shows - Rupp Arena, the Opera House, UK’s Singletary Center for the Arts. But what the city lacks is smaller venues like the Dame, which is looking for a new home since being displaced from Main Street by the proposed CentrePointe development. Those are the venues where musicians get their starts and a local music scene takes root and grows.

The most popular activity for the Lexington visitors Wednesday night was a “pub crawl” to four of the bars in downtown Austin. Many people later wandered over to some live performances at other clubs, such as Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, where Kentuckian Loretta Lynn will be singing June 13.

Wednesday night’s acts were less famous, but still popular.

“There were probably 1,000 people at that one show on a Wednesday night,” Lexington architect Clive Pohl said. “And we passed dozens of clubs on the way there and they were all packed.”

Craig Robertson, a young attorney, dreams of an outdoor concert venue in downtown Lexington, perhaps in the Cox Street parking lot beside Rupp Arena, and lots of small, downtown music clubs. “Where can you go now in Lexington to see the people who aren’t big headliners?” he said.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray appointed a downtown entertainment task force in October 2007 that will soon issue a report and some recommendations. And a few more recommendations are likely to be added when this group returns from Austin.

Council member Linda Gorton said little things Austin is doing to encourage clubs and entertainment venues could easily be done in Lexington - relaxing some ordinances, for example, or providing loading zones on streets for entertainers to use at night.

“We could remove some small obstacles and make it happen,” Gorton said.

Here we are in the city named for Stephen F. Austin, the “father of Texas” and Transylvania University alumnus (class of 1810).

Commerce Lexington chartered two large jets for the 275 people making its 69th annual Leadership Visit. When those jets touched down at Austin’s new airport, we were taken to Austin Music Hall to hear from local leaders about this city’s successes and failures and how they might apply to Central Kentucky.

The music hall itself is a symbol of one of those successes. A former warehouse and chili factory, it was reopened seven months ago after essentially being rebuilt as a privately developed concert venue.

It’s not a fancy building — concrete floors, exposed beams and air ducts — and that is by design. Owner Tim O’Connor said the “dressed down” decor offers ultimate flexibility for whatever the function and whomever is appearing on stage — whether it’s Bill Gates, Barrack Obama or B.B. King. All have “performed” there.

It’s also an environmentally friendly building, with such things as automatic light switches and computer-controlled climate systems. The water-chilled air conditioning system uses no freon, and it worked quite well today as the afternoon temperature hit 100 degrees.

“The most important thing a developer can do is know the community and the needs of people in that community,” O’Connor said.

Austin’s transformation began in 1983 when it was chosen as the site for Microelectronics & Computer Technology Corp., a research consortium financed by a dozen technology companies. The consortium and the companies spun off from it made Austin a high-tech center.

But all that technology focus hasn’t made the city nerdy. Just the opposite. Austin has developed a live music scene and funky culture that attracts creative young people. Austin now has the youngest net in-migration of any city in America.

Growth has always been a constant in Austin. The metro area’s population has doubled every 20 years for the past 115 years. There are currently about 775,000 residents in the city and 1.6 million in the metro area.

Former Mayor Lee Cook said the keys to Austin’s success have been its willingness to take risks and focus on quality of life. Austin invested in water and sewer improvements, even during economic downturns, and made environmental protection a priority. Leaders have worked to improve schools and integrate the University of Texas and other local universities into the local economy.

But Austin still struggles with transportation and sprawl. Highway traffic is bad, although the city’s first limited light rail system will open later this year.

“Growth is the opportunity, and it is the challenge,” said current Mayor Will Wynn, who has a name any politician would envy.

Wynn came into office in 2003 from the commercial real estate industry, and he had a strong background in environmental protection and historic preservation. He stressed the need for quality, high-density, mixed-use urbane development that makes wise use of land and adds vitality to the city.

In just the past few years, the number of people living in downtown Austin has grown from 500 to 5,800. And another 7,000 or so will be joining them once 4,000 downtown housing units now under construction are finished.

A former mayor who now represents Austin in the state Senate, Kirk Watson, said cities like Austin and Lexington could be positioned well to succeed in the new economy.

Strong economies were once about being an empire, then a superpower, Watson said. Now, with digital technology, they’re about being a successful region. Wealth was once about having land, then industrial capacity. Now, it’s about having intellectual capacity and creative people.

So, Watson said, the places that will be winners in the 21st Century global economy will be those cities and surrounding regions that can attract the brightest people and the companies that want to hire them. “Places that never before could be economic powers can be now,” he said.

He cited these factors for Austin’s success: Improving education, attracting high-tech companies, preserving the local environment and investing in the arts and culture as a way to improve the quality of life and attract smart, dynamic people.

Watson noted that the city’s most popular bumper sticker says, “Keep Austin Weird.”

He noted that innovative companies such as Dell Computer and Whole Foods were started in Austin by people with “weird” ideas. “To attract and cultivate that creative mindset, you have to allow those weird ideas … that often become visionary 10 years later,” he said.

Most of the 275 people going to Austin, Texas, for Commerce Lexington’s 69th annual Leadership Visit have gathered in a big hall at Blue Grass Airport, waiting to board two chartered jets.

Ed Brand, a retired Fayette County middle school principal who now works at the airport, herded the folks through security and into a room for breakfast and lots of talking.

“We learn a lot from the cities we visit,” said P.G. Peoples, president of the Urban League. “But we also learn a lot from each other.”:

Have to go. My plane is boarding….

Legend has it that when many Kentuckians went west in search of a better life more than a century ago, they wrote “GTT” on their cabin doors - Gone to Texas.

About 275 of Lexington’s movers and shakers left similar messages on their voice mail Wednesday.

They’ve gone to Austin, Texas, for Commerce Lexington’s 69th annual Leadership Visit. Unlike their ancestors, though, they’ll return Friday night with lots of ideas for making life better in Kentucky.

Commerce Lexington’s annual trip is one of the nation’s oldest and largest of its kind. Past trips have been to such cities as Nashville; Providence, R.I.; Raleigh, N.C.; Boulder, Colo.; and Portland, Ore. And they have produced a variety of ideas for Lexington, ranging from the Fayette Education Foundation to city recycling programs.

This year’s attendees include Mayor Jim Newberry and all 15 members of the Urban County Council, as well as community leaders in business, education and the arts.

These trips are an invaluable chance for the people who run Lexington to see what is working and not working in other cities, to pick up new ideas, to discuss them and to network with each other, said Commerce Lexington President Robert Quick.

“It’s easy for us to look at any community we go to … and just think they’ve always had their act together,” he said. “A lot of these areas started 25, 30, 50 years ago, and the key is that they built the right infrastructure for change.”

Quick said that no matter where the trip goes, there’s always an interesting realization: “We have a lot more going for us than we give ourselves credit for, but we can’t see it because we’re so involved in our day-to-day lives.”

This year’s group of 275 is the largest ever. The three-day trip was sold out late last year, and 38 people on the waiting list had to stay home. Quick said special emphasis was put on including young professionals; there are 57 leaders on the trip younger than 30.

Austin was chosen for this year’s trip because since the early 1980s it has transformed itself into a diverse, energetic city that attracts high-tech businesses and young professionals. Austin’s live-music scene is a model for ambitious efforts to improve our city’s entertainment infrastructure - one of the keys to making Lexington an exciting place for both residents and visitors. Plus, Austin has had some success in regional planning and cooperation, a big issue in the Bluegrass.

The Lexington delegation will hear from Austin Mayor Will Wynn and other local officials. Group meetings will be at the Austin Music Hall, a state-of-the-art performance venue that was recently doubled in size.

Attendees will get to sample Austin night life Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, groups can tour Austin’s city hall, airport and revitalization efforts downtown and in an historic African-American neighborhood.

“We learn a lot from other communities’ successes, and from their failures,” Quick said.

“Seeds get planted, even though it may take us years to follow through. By having everyone at the table - the policy-makers and the people at the street level - you have a group that can come back and get things done.”