The Bluegrass and Beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kentucky is catching on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.’”

It was a Kentucky Derby as hard to predict as the weather, with a field of long-shots, two high-profile scratches and a sloppy track.

So it seemed only fitting that Calvin Borel would charge to victory on 50-1 longshot Mine that Bird just a day after winning the Oaks aboard Rachel Alexandra by more than 20 lengths. Both were the second-biggest winning margins ever in their 135-year-old races.

Borel, whose childlike glee after winning his first Derby aboard Street Sense in 2007 captured the world’s affection, was an emotional volcano, rocking back and forth on his horse on the way to the winner’s circle and high-fiving everyone in sight.

His bettors were rocking, too: A $2 wager to win on Mine that Bird paid a cool $103.

It was a joyous outcome for a Derby that seemed all day to be dimmed by gloom about the weather, the economy and a recent history of horse breakdown tragedies.

Thankfully, no horses broke down. And despite predictions of a Derby downpour, the overnight rains ended before Churchill Downs’ gates opened. There was no need for the ponchos and plastic many spectators brought to the track. Temperatures remained cool but comfortable under lead-gray skies. There wasn’t even enough afternoon sunshine to burn the ample cleavage in the grandstands.

The only unhappy people seemed to be the drink vendors. Mint juleps were selling better than beer, but even they weren’t selling that well. One vendor’s mid-morning pitch: “Mint juleps! Mint juleps! Breakfast of champions.”

Fans posed for photos in front of the new statue honoring Barbaro, the 2006 Derby winner who was euthanized after months of trying to recover from an injury in the Preakness.

Emotions were even more raw as an undercard race for fillies was renamed the Eight Belles, after the courageous filly who broke down and had to be destroyed at the end of last year’s race after running as hard as she could with the big boys. Before that race began, a bell tolled eight times.

Another cloud hanging over the Derby to some extent was the economic recession. The crowd of 153,563 was the seventh-largest, down from 157,700 last year. The previous day’s Oaks day attendance was 104,867, that event’s fourth-largest.

The betting-window lines were almost as long as those at the women’s restrooms, but it was hard to tell if people were betting as much as usual. Some vendors thought fans were cutting back on food and drink.

Nahru Lampkin of Detroit, who over the past 15 years has become something of a Derby celebrity by sitting in the infield playing bongo drums and rapping to passersby, said his tips were off about 20 percent.

He was working hard for every dollar pitched into his plastic bucket, rhyming about the pretty women walking by and offering advice to college students: “Stay in school, don’t be dumb or you could end up playing this drum.”

On the other end of the Derby’s social scale, gourmet smells filled the Jockey Suites, but the crowd seemed a little lighter than usual.  In the halls of rooms with brass door plates identifying them as the venues of banks, railroads and big horse farms, regulars said there was less corporate entertaining than in the recent past.

Still, the Derby attracted its share of the rich and famous. Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum of Dubai was here to see his two entries, Regal Ransom and Desert Party, fail to break his Derby jinx. And billionaire Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, was a guest in the Jockey Suites room of Louisville power couple Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, creators of the 21c Museum Hotel.

The red carpet walk included Motown music greats Aretha Franklin and Mary Wilson, several pro football players and Bobby Flay, the chef made famous by the Food Network.

And if that wasn’t enough celebrity food, two Bravo network Top Chef competitors demonstrated creative hot brown sandwich recipes in the Infield Club. And weight-loss titan Jenny Craig had a horse entered with the ironic name Chocolate Candy.

The Derby fashion parade was as colorful as ever. Some wore seersucker, linen and silk; others denim and khaki. A few showed up in super-hero leotards and tacky hats.

Pete Bush, a Louisville native who now lives in Baton Rouge, La., was decked out in his finest, hoping it wouldn’t rain and ruin his shiny white shoes. “I’d like to wear them more than once,” he said.

The grandstands and luxury suites were filled with shapely women in tight dresses and feathery hats almost big enough for their own Zip Code.

Cynthia Lundeen, who designs hats in Cleveland, Ohio, was in her element, posing for pictures in one of her own creations while her husband followed along in a tuxedo and a big hat of his own.

“On Derby day, everyone is so happy,” Lundeen said. “If the whole world could be like Derby day, the world would be a better place.”

Click on each photo to enlarge:

Just a few years ago, two of America’s most downtrodden Main Streets were those in Los Angeles and Louisville. Their once-grand buildings had been abandoned or mangled. Vagrants wandered the streets.

Many people in those cities — like those in Lexington who cheered demolition of the old buildings on the block of our Main Street where CentrePointe is planned — thought the only hope was to bulldoze and start over.

Louisville and Los Angeles now have very different stories to tell about their Main Streets. At a symposium last week sponsored by the University of Kentucky College of Design, those stories were told by the architect/developers whose innovation and determination made them happen.

Tom Gilmore of Gilmore Associates is the force behind what is now known as the Old Bank District — three 100-year-old buildings in downtown Los Angeles that have been converted into 230 lofts surrounded by a neighborhood of restaurants, shops stores and cafés. He also saved a historic downtown cathedral the Catholic Church wanted to tear down. It has become a popular concert and event venue that is paying for the restoration.

Bill Weyland, managing director of CITY Properties Group, led the renaissance of Louisville’s West Main, where he built the Louisville Slugger museum and baseball bat factory and the Glassworks complex of art studios, offices and lofts. He also restored the abandoned Henry Clay Hotel building on South Third Street into a popular complex of lofts, shops, restaurants, theaters and event space. He has several other projects under way.

At the heart of both stories was the vision each man had for restoring beautiful old buildings for new uses, and the tenacity it took to convince bankers, city officials, Realtors and bureaucrats that it could be done profitably.

The developers had many great war stories, but my favorite came from Weyland.

He had bought an old building that he thought had potential for something, but he didn’t know what. Then he read that Hillerich & Bradsby was looking to modernize its Slugger factory in southern Indiana and build a tourist attraction. Weyland pitched his building, but Slugger executives wanted visibility from Interstate 64.

To get interstate visibility from a downtown site, Weyland’s company proposed creating a 120-foot tall baseball bat to lean against the building. Slugger executives loved the idea, but city bureaucrats were aghast.

A huge bat would violate Louisville’s restrictive sign ordinance, and the trademark Hillerich & Bradsby brand disqualified it from being considered public art. But Weyland wouldn’t give up. If city officials wanted to bring Louisville Slugger back to Louisville, they had to find a solution, he said.

Finally, a code enforcement officer asked Weyland if it would be possible to vent plumbing up through the bat. Weyland was puzzled. “The guy then pointed out that there is nothing in the Kentucky building code that restricts the shape of a plumbing vent,” he said. Problem solved, new Louisville landmark created.

The American Planning Association last year named West Main Street one of “America’s 10 Great Streets.”

What can Lexington learn from these examples, and many similar ones elsewhere? Weyland and Gilmore offered these thoughts:

Downtown historic preservation can’t be just about preserving the past or creating museums; it must be about adapting the best of the past to the economy of the present and future.

“It’s a touchy subject in the preservation community, because the first word in ‘adaptive reuse’ is ‘adaptive’,” Gilmore said. “You can’t just save old buildings; you have to find ways to get people into them.”

Old buildings are often worth reusing because they were built to last and are more structurally sound than they look. They have craftsmanship that can’t be replicated, and they convey a sense of a city’s history and culture. Still, some buildings must occasionally be sacrificed to save more significant structures around them.

Developers, bankers and city officials must be innovative, flexible and think long-term. Cities must abandon precise, restrictive rules in favor of more flexible processes that allow for dialogue and big-picture thinking.

“West Main Street’s transformation almost seems magical, but it was a 30-year war in which we had to overcome the status quo and the thinking of bankers who said, ‘There’s no way to redevelop something like that’,” Weyland said.

Downtowns must be designed for people and not automobiles. The key is creating a place where people want to walk and gather. Successful downtowns must work around the clock, allowing people to live, work and play in the same area.

“It’s about building communities,” Gilmore said. “And local mom and pop businesses are the lifeblood of cities. They make them unique.”

Downtown housing is most attractive to young people and empty-nesters; growing families usually prefer the affordable spaciousness of suburbs. “Cities are for people who are young and people who are young at heart. It’s not about age, it’s about attitude,” Weyland said.

“Ultimately,” he said, “the success of our cities are about the experiences people have in them and the memories they create.”

Immaculee Ilibagiza. Photo by Tom Eblen

Immaculee Ilibagiza lost most of her family in the tribal genocide that gripped her native Rwanda in the 1994. She would have been killed had not she and seven other women hidden silently in the cramped bathroom of a pastor’s home for 91 days until the danger passed. When she emerged from that room, she weighed only 65 pounds.

She came out of the experience and became a United Nations employee, a human rights activist and author of the best-selling book, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. What allowed her to survive, and to thrive in the years since, she said, has been her faith in God and the ability to forgive.

“Forgiveness came to me as a gift,” from her horrible trauma, she said.

Ilibagiza said people can’t do anything about the past, but through love, faith and forgiveness can make a better future. “If there is no forgiveness in our heart, no business will go on,” she said.

She also learned to judge people as individuals, rather than groups. And she takes pleasure in the simplest things in life. “Hold on to hope,” she told an enthusiastic audience at one of the Idea Festival’s most well-attended sessions. “Don’t give up.”

Bjarke Ingels of Denmark, considered one of the world’s best young architects, gave a dazzling presentation at the Idea Festival.

In discussing project after project that his Copenhagen-based firm has done, he impressed the audience with not only his creativity and artistry, but with how he used architecture to solve each project’s “problems” and make it something special.

That isn’t easy, because many developers “are more interested in the bottom line than the skyline,” he said Friday.

“Functionalism liberated architecture from style” in the 20th century,” he said dryly. The result “was a lot of big boring boxes.”

Ingels works all over the world, and some of his most stunning projects are under way in China and the Middle East. But one of my favorites was the Mountain Dwellings apartment complex, which now dominates the view out Ingels’ own apartment window in Copenhagen.

The developer started out wanting to build two big boxes on the property: One for apartments, one for parking. Instead, Ingels’ and his co-workers created a stunning — and stunningly practical — solution to the developer’s needs that has become a design landmark. The interior parking garage is no less impressive than the living space.

The inspiration for some of Ingels’ ideas comes from the place-specific architecture of the past. There are reasons, he noted, that certain styles evolved in certain places hundreds and thousands of years before there were professional architects. Climate — and social climate — play important roles in a building’s design.  A glass tower might work fine for New York, but it makes no sense in an Arabian desert, he noted.

“We end up reinventing traditional forms and shapes, not as style, but as a new vernacular,” he said.

Ingels urged architects to become more pro-active in suggesting urban development, rather than waiting for politicians, developers and financiers to bring ideas forward.

Environmental sustainability is an important consideration in Ingels’ work. But, looking at it from the perspective of an Idea Festival, it was remarkable to see how he recycles and refines his ideas. An idea he pitched as a project in Sweden was rejected, but after much refinement, it turned out to be a perfect fit for a building for Shanghai.

It reinforced the notion that many Idea Festival many speakers stressed. They said ideas and creativity don’t come so much as flashes of genius, but from kernels of inspiration and a lot of hard work and persistence.

You can see more of Ingels’ work at his firm’s Web site.

Beligan artist and designer Arne Quinze is known for his large public art installations, many of which involve fluid masses of colorful wooden planks.

Quinze spoke at the Idea Festival on Friday, and he had a fascinating slide show of his work in cities around the world. Then, at the end, he had a surprise: A series of renderings and models of the old Ohio River railroad bridge turned into one of his art installations.

As it happens, Quinze met Louisville art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson in Europe last year. They invited him to Louisville to see their 21C Museum Hotel. When Quinze was here in March, he walked along Louisville’s emerging Waterfront Park.

“Within an hour of walking downtown, he saw the bridge and said, ‘I have an idea,’” said Alice Gray Stites, managing director of The Center for Contemporary Art at Louisville’s proposed Museum Plaza.

Quinze’s vision calls for turning what is to become a pedestrian bridge into one that would be a timeline of local history, with markers along the way. It would have music and lights powered by solar cells embedded in a mass of red and white wooden planks that would wind through the six arched steel spans atop the bridge. You can see some of Quinze’s renderings below.

“It’s a huge project, but I believe in it,” Quinze said. “We can do it and it would work.”

Stites said the Idea Festival presentation was the first time anyone in Louisville had seen Quinze’s proposal, so she doesn’t know what the reaction will be once it is shown to Mayor Jerry Abramson and officials developing public art projects for Waterfront Park. In addition to city approval, city funding also would be required to pull it off, Stites said.

Photo credit: copyright Arne Quinze

Photo credit: copyright Arne Quinze

Teller, the quiet half of the famous magic team Penn & Teller, started his speech at the Idea Festival by pulling a carpenter’s hammer from his coat pocket and placing it at the edge of the stage.

Teller said he planned to reveal some secrets of his magic, but he didn’t want videos of it showing up on YouTube. So he asked audience members to use the hammer to smash any video cameras they saw among them.

That introduction drew laughs. Many others were simply surprised to hear Teller, who is usually silent on stage, actually speak.

As it turned out, Teller was a terrific speaker, and he explained how he performs one of his most difficult illusions — making a red ball dance around in thin air. Let’s just say it has to do with thread, skill and lots and lots of practice.

Some magicians want to keep their secrets secret.  But Teller said his theory is this: “If you know how a trick is done, you’ll like it more, not less.”

During the explanation, he offered several insights into magic tricks and illusions and why they work, such as:

“Magic’s cause and effect are linked by poetry instead than physics.”

“Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.”

Teller may be one of the world’s most famous illusionists, but that doesn’t mean he no longer needs to practice.  In fact, he said he spends much of his time practicing tricks over and over to improve his skill and make them look effortless.

“The muses don’t drop by unless you keep regular office hours,” he said.

Sometimes, it’s best to ignore conventional wisdom and look to the past for guidance.

The past week’s financial uncertainty set the stage for Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the controversial book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable at the Idea Festival on Friday.  Taleb describes “black swans” as the hard-to-predict events or developments that have profound impact.

Randomness plays an increasing role in society, and many people suffer from “an illusion of control.”  He criticized economists for long-term forecasts, most of which turn out to be wrong. Success often involves avoiding mistakes, and paying attention to what has happened in the past rather than experts’ theories of what might happen in the future.

He said people need to figure out ways they can gain from uncertainty, but protect themselves from risk. And, he said, “We need to teach people to have the guts to say ‘I don’t know.’”

Amy Chua speaks at the Idea Festival. Photo by Tom Eblen

Yale Law School professor Amy Chua looks at lessons America can learn from the past in her book,  Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance — and Why They Fail.

Chua’s thesis, which she outlined at the Idea Festival, is that nations that have dominated the world during different periods of history prospered by using strategic religious tolerance, ethnic diversity and inclusion. They fell from power and sometimes collapsed when they became less tolerant, more ethnically exclusive or lost their social “glue.”

Success throughout history has relied on a hyperpower’s ability to attract and take advantage of the world’s best and brightest talent. Rome dominated the world by making people it conquered Roman citizens. The Mongol empire was smart enough to incorporate the skills of other ethnic groups it conquered, especially Chinese engineers. America has prospered largely because of religious tolerance, immigration, opportunity and ethnic diversity, she said.

So, what could this theory portend for America’s future?  Chua said America must protect religious freedom and diversity and, while controlling immigration, must make sure that the world’s best and brightest can continue to find opportunity here.

But Chua also worries that if recent U.S. immigrants don’t assimilate as previous generations have, the U.S. could lose much of its social glue. “We really do have to take seriously the issue of national cohesion,” she said.

As long as the United States remains a nation of immigrants, it will have an advantage over countries such as China that are far less diverse.

American culture may rule the planet. But the exclusivity of U.S. citizenship makes it harder for America to maintain clout worldwide as other nations become more wealthy and powerful. “Wearing a Yankees baseball cap and drinking Coca-Cola will not make a Palestinian feel like an American,” she said.

One future challenge will be figuring out how to give people in other countries “more of a stake in America’s success and leadership,” Chua said. “You can really learn a lot from Rome.”

If you go to the Web site for Idea Kentucky, a big gathering Wednesday in Louisville, there’s a link that takes you to the conference’s ground rules.

Click on the link, and this is what you see:

Statements not allowed during discussions

■ That’s a crazy idea.

■ That will cost too much.

■ That won’t work in Kentucky

Those rules set a perfect tone for the six-hour conference at the Muhammad Ali Center. And they work equally well for the bigger event taking place in downtown Louisville from Thursday through Saturday: The 2008 Idea Festival.

This is the sixth Idea Festival, a now-annual gathering that was started in Lexington in 2000 by Kris Kimel of the Kentucky Science & Technology Corp. The festival moved to Louisville in 2006 because it needed bigger venues and corporate sponsors.

I’ll be attending both events and blogging throughout the day, each day, at The Bluegrass & Beyond on www.kentucky.com.

There should be a lot of interesting things to write about, because the Idea Festival each year brings some of the world’s smartest and most creative people to Kentucky to explain their big ideas and expand the minds of those in the audience.

I love it that the festival links Kentucky with brainpower, creativity and innovation. Kentucky isn’t often on the cutting edge, but considering our state’s problems and opportunities, now would be a good time to get sharper.

A quarter of Kentuckians smoke. A third are obese. At the current rate of per capita income growth, it would take Kentucky 150 years to reach the national average. And when it comes to educational performance, we’re just ahead of the bottom third of states.

Those are some of the issues that will be discussed at Idea Kentucky. Speakers include Gov. Steve Beshear, Kimel and Michael Childress of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. But much of the conference will be about audience participation and group discussion. Maybe some new ideas will emerge.

It should be a good warm-up for the Idea Festival, whose speakers range from off the charts to off the wall. Unlike Idea Kentucky’s agenda, which seems focused on practical ideas for problem-solving, the Idea Festival simply tries to expand your mind. What happens after that is up to you.

Speakers include scientific types, such as neurosurgeon Katrina Firlik, author of the book Another Day in the Frontal Lobe; Richard Gott, a Princeton University astrophysicist who’s originally from Louisville; and Richard Kogan, a distinguished New York psychiatrist and award-winning concert pianist.

There are business types, such as pioneering marketers Bridget Brennan and John Gauntt. Artistic types such as filmmaker Soozie Eastman, chef Howard Dubrovsky and dance artistic director Jacques Heim. And top international architects such as Emiliano Gandolfi of Italy and Bjarke Ingels of Denmark.

The University of Kentucky’s College of Design will award the first $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize to someone whose breakthrough design solutions have improved our lives and our world.

And then there are speakers from all walks of life and disciplines: Rwanda genocide survivor and peace activist Immaculée Ilibagiza; ninjutsu martial-arts master Peter King; crossword puzzle master Will Shortz; and Vova Galchenko of Russia, who is perhaps the world’s best juggler.

And many more. See the festival’s Web site for more details. And read my blog for reports several times each day.

Can’t get to Louisville? There also should be some good ideas bouncing around Bluegrass Tomorrow’s “Inno Vision 2018″ breakfast Thursday at the Marriott Griffin Gate. Speakers include Beshear, Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry and Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.

The morning-long conference will discuss a comparative analysis of innovation in 22 metropolitan regions around the country similar to Central Kentucky. For more information, call (859) 277-9614 or go to Bluegrass Tomorrow’s Web site.

One of the old arguments against building a water pipeline from Louisville to Lexington now appears to be all wet. You know, the argument that went something like this: “We don’t want that nasty Ohio River water. You can’t even eat fish out of that river!”

The American Water Works Association, meeting this week in Atlanta, has declared that Louisville has the nation’s best-tasting water. The selection was made by a panel of judges that included a newspaper dining critic, a wine educator, a chemistry professor and the chair of the association’s “Taste and Color Committee.” Second place went to the Mal Paso Filtration Plant in Puerto Rico and third place went to Blythe, Ga.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson celebrated today by passing out free bottles of tap water to people at Waterfront Park, and he credited the win to the fine work done by the folks at the Louisville Water Co.

So here’s the question: Does Louisville’s water taste better because the water company is publicly owned? Or did the years of fighting over condemnation of Kentucky American Water Co. in Lexington just leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth?

What started out as a beautiful day for the 134th running of the Kentucky Oaks soon turned into the flood for the fillies.

The heavens opened four hours before post time Friday, and the track was beyond sloppy when Proud Spell, with Gabriel Saez up, sprinted to victory in the traditional scene-setter for the Kentucky Derby.

Not that anyone really seemed to mind the rain.

Earlier in the afternoon, Beth Taylor stood with friends near her seat not far from the finish line. She held down her hat to keep it from becoming airborne as the wind picked up and the skies grew darker.

“One of the military guys just showed me the Doppler radar, and it’s just awful,” she said.

Taylor, a Louisville native who lives most of the time in Shanghai, China, has been to 25 Derbys and about 20 Oaks.

Oaks Day has always been special for her - “The girls always have to come out for the girls” - and she has seen a lot of changes over the years.

“It used to be that the Oaks was the local day,” Taylor said. “But now all the out-of-towners have discovered it.”

Indeed, they have. Churchill Downs’ official attendance Friday was 100,046. While the Derby has long been the best-attended horse race in America, the Oaks regularly comes in second.

When the Churchill Downs gates opened Friday morning, the sun was shining. Spectators poured in, many of the women dressed to the nines. There were plenty of big hats, high heels, tight dresses and cleavage looking for a sunburn. By the end of the day, the hottest fashion accessory was poncho plastic.

If the Kentucky Derby risks being taken over by high rollers and celebrities, the Oaks is a little less crowded, a little less expensive, a little less crazy - but just as much fun.

“It’s awesome,” said Wanda Gilliam of Greensboro, N.C., who was attending her first Oaks-Derby weekend. “I haven’t won a thing yet, but that’s OK. This is just such an awesome scene. It’s overwhelming.”

Holly Brown, a Lexington attorney, agreed. She was here with friends, one of whom had managed to get them choice seats on the rail near the finish line. It was Brown’s Derby weekend in style. “We’ve been to the infield, but that doesn’t count,” she said.

Friends Amy Burkart, Victoria York and Kelli York came to the Oaks and Derby last year from their homes in California and Arizona, and had such a good time they had to come back.

“There’s something for everyone,” Burkart said. “For the men, it’s the racing; for the women, it’s the fashion. It’s just so much fun, especially after you’ve had a few of these mint juleps.”

Chris Cassidy and Jack Morgenstern, friends from Chillicothe, Ill., have been coming to both races on their way to a fishing trip in Tennessee every year since 1995. When the storms hit, they just put on ponchos, took shelter under the grandstand and continued studying their Daily Racing Forms.

“Look around,” Morgenstern said as people packed tighter and tighter to avoid the rain blowing under the grandstand and widening puddles. “See all the smiling faces despite the rain? It’s all good.”

The Oaks’ growing popularity also is good for the hundreds of locals who see Churchill Downs’ big weekend as a good payday - even if they never cash a ticket. Debbie Jones of Louisville has been selling wager tickets for several years, working both Oaks and Derby days for $375, plus tips.

It was a hot, tiring job, but nothing like the gig Joey Rayan of Lexington had.

Rayan spent Oaks Day walking around in a big plastic mint julep suit, promoting the Early Times version of the Downs’ signature drink while a sidekick passed out mint-colored Mardi Gras beads.

“I love it,” he said. “All the women want to come up and hug and kiss the suit.”

Photos, top to bottom:

Holly Brown, left, a Lexington lawyer, chats with friends Kristie Alfred, front, and Margaret Scherrer, both of Louisville.

Cherie Edwards of Louisville, left, and Angela Bumphus of Atlanta wore just the right fashions for Kentucky Oaks day — fancy dresses, fancy hats and ponchos.

Chris Cassidy, left, and Jack Morgenstern, two friends from Chillicothe, Ill., didn’t let the rain distract them from studying their Daily Racing Forms.

Vicki Maya of Louisville takes a photo of, left to right, Rosa Maya and Ruth Gonzalez of Louisville and Patty Duenas of Miami. Inside the mint julep suit is Joey Rayan of Lexington. Photos/Tom Eblen