The Raising Of "Chicago Bottoms" - Or So We Hope

I have been watching the area along Corral Street for several years, basically since they tore down the old City Hall and the Clark Street jail. With all the barren surface parking and treeless streetscape, there is little reason for many people to go there. I guess that much of the property on the south side of Corral is just waiting for the Central Christian Church to expand their religious campus.

This part of downtown used to be a hive of activity with the daily hum of city officials , court attendees and the bill payers going to the offices of the local telephone and gas companies on nearby corners. Pedestrian traffic was so heavy that there was a stoplight required at the intersection of Walnut (now MLK) and Barr. Thirty years later, this volume of activity is merely a memory to some of us.

Back when the Council was discussing the food truck issue, many of the “bricks and mortar” restaurants were pushing strongly for Corral St to be a primary location in which to place these trucks. It made no sense to me, as this is such a distant walk from anywhere people downtown currently frequent. What the street needs is something to draw activity to the area other than the regular movement of street people from Phoenix Park to the Lighthouse Ministries or the Catholic Action Center.

One good thing to happen in the area was the recent Louis Armstrong mural, with its bright, vibrant colors. It does strike me that he is looking back over his shoulder toward a section of town hich was called “Chicago Bottoms”. The housing is long gone now but the streets used to be lined with small shotgun shacks and a few rough and tumble bars. Spruce and Second Sts had some particularly deadly bars, about 80 years ago.

Neglect and the addition of downtown support businesses may have cleared the area but it sure wasn't gentrification and displacement by the trendy spots as we have seen elsewhere. Lexington's young professionals tend to shy away from here, but that is about to change.

Over the last five years or so, an LLC by the name of Lexington MLK (since changed to Urban 221 LLC) has bought up a little over 1.6 acres on N Martin Luther King, between Corral and Wickliffe, and looked to be repairing the old Columbia Gas Office. A Robert McMeekin designed structure from the early '30s, it is still in fairly good shape and solidly built. Alas, it appears that they could find no new use for the beautiful corner building.

Plans I saw today show a five story apartment building, with ground floor structured parking and providing 150 residential units. The building envelope sets right on the existing property and right-of-way lines to the extent that it will crowd the street a little more than probably necessary. Though its access is from Corral, I believe that it will front primarily on Martin Luther King but could certainly command the full corner beautifully.

I hear that these unit will be targeted toward the young urban professionals that we call the Millenials. Quite different from the single room occupancy units on the other end of Corral. One good point is the ground floor space available for amenities, but I understand that it may extend only to exercise rooms and a “dog spa”. Hardly something which can bring street front activity during the day when the residents are away working or sustain it into the evening.

All in all, I find the proposal encouraging for the area. Will Sayre School follow along with something on their parking lot? Or will the Central Christian Church fill out the other corner with an urban use which is compatible? I hate to lose a dignified building that we have, but there is much to gain and this area can use it. We have a chance to begin something nice on MLK (there is another LLC acquiring land up the block) so lets start out correctly.

“Is It Just Me Or…”

We all seem to have those “Is it just me or…” moments.  I had one just the other day during a lunchtime walkabout which I take most sunny days.

This was one in which I took a usual route, west on Vine and then either going out S. Broadway or on beyond the Lexington Center.  This day I strolled through Triangle Park over toward the historic W. Short St.  The park, for all of its renovation work, still has little for the noontime pedestrian to do.

The tour down Vine St continues to surprise me these two years since the streetscape was essentially finished.  The pedestrians are few and the service/delivery vehicles seem to park with abandon on the new, wide pavers which are clearly intended for people.  There are a few “smoker’s posts” near the office tower and they can make walking past a chore for the non-smoker but otherwise there is little happening here.

I made an infrequent stop in the Victorian Square Shoppes and wondered, almost aloud, how some of those places can stay in business.  They do and more power to them, as I say about the claims that we have too much vacant office space, just because I see no activity does not mean that there is none.  Victorian Square is alive, maybe not robust, but alive.

Exiting near the corner of Short and Broadway and looking back toward the Court House is about the time that it hit me.  My “Is it just me or… moment” nearly bowled me over, like the cyclist zipping down the sidewalk.  Short St is the vibrant, pedestrian street that we all would like downtown to be.

How many hours over the past decade, and several Urban County Government administrations, have been spent of discussions and negotiations concerning Vine St and what could be done to improve the freeway-like atmosphere which has attached itself there?  How many consultants submitted options on solutions over the years?  After all that, has there been much noticeable improvement?

There it was, Short Street, stretching from Broadway to Limestone in the noontime hour just bustling with sidewalk activity, street activity and the sounds of downtown life.  What I saw before me was accomplished with minimal government dollars and much investment by the private sector.  It was not perfect but it was quite vibrant.  It has been growing that way for a while now, gradually gaining, but this day it just popped.

Main Street still has its pedestrian activity and a number of café dining on the sidewalks but not like the volume on Short.  The one-way traffic and the width may alter the cozy nature somewhat but I am not sure that it makes that much of a difference.  Main St is quite a bit longer, so that may diffuse its activity, but it also has many more blank walls with which the public must deal.

The public spaces along Main St, both Phoenix Park and the Court House Plaza, see fairly consistent use though some may find the patrons a little less than to their liking.  Elsewhere the comings and goings are a bit more sporadic.

The activity on Short St is not all a bed of roses and some of the thorns do prick at me. 

With all of the restaurant and bar venues currently in place, not all of them are open for the lunch hour, there will naturally be a slew of delivery vehicles. I constantly wonder why the restaurants can take delivery before or after the peak pedestrian times but the bars cannot.  Why does it take three men and three or more vehicles, at least two of which are extended length trailers, which block the mid-block crosswalks near Cheapside.  The soft drink companies and the spirit companies can deliver with smaller trucks on these narrow streets, but beer route drivers are special?

I also dislike the encroachment that some café diners make into the remaining walkway.  Each restaurant is allowed a limited amount of sidewalk and will not police their paying customers who - sometimes – snatch more chairs than usual at a table and spill outside the allowed space.  Common sense should kick in at these times but maybe alcohol is involved.

Lastly, there are the cyclists, the dog owners and those with over-sized strollers which try to negotiate or occupy extremely tight spaces, usually to the detriment of good circulation.  If the committee working on the food truck locations can cite pedestrian obstructions as a concern, then they should be looked at for all of downtown sidewalks.  Cyclists are currently prohibited from downtown sidewalks by ordinance, but it is rarely enforced and just plain ignored by the court system.  Should we get all of our downtown streets as active as Short St has become there will be problems, so we might as well begin solving them now.

Well, that is a lot to think about.  Now, I ask you “Is it just me or…”

A Ways To Go On Food Trucks

I seem to have a lot of entries about dining and all of the new places going in downtown, but short of Centrepointe and 21c there is little else to speak of.  Any new offices lease their space and (sometimes) remodel, then just set up and go to town. No major announcements, no fanfare.  I guess the dining and entertainment news will have to suffice as development news.

One subject on the dining front is the movement toward food trucks and carts.  It does seem that we are again trailing the rest of the country in allowing food trucks, but we also appear to be looking at allowing them just in the downtown area.  Is this not a community wide service for which we have little or no rules?  Should not all of our ordinances apply across the whole of Fayette County?  Is downtown the only location that the food trucks wish to serve?

There are many websites which describe  the food truck situation in cities throughout America and a few of them have maps which display the locations of certain vendors, either on a semi-permanent or rotating basis.  The site for Austin, Texas is broken into several sections and shows only four food trucks in all of their downtown.  Far fewer that any other section mapped.  It also appears that their downtown covers much more territory, as one would expect for their population.

A larger population, a larger area, more density and greater diversity and only 4 food trucks to serve them.  Why are we trying to be so different?

I have heard some news reports that there is fear that food trucks could impinge upon parking spaces or loading zones for hours at a time.  I can see the concern, but I look at the timing and size of the local beer delivery vehicles as more of a problem.  Food deliveries do not seem to be a major factor for all of the restaurants and, I guess, they take place in the early morning. On my noontime walkabouts, it is the sheer number and size of the beer delivery trucks (and where they park) which I see as a deterrent to downtown traffic movement.  

One day I saw 4 or 5 extended length trailers on Short at Cheapside at one time, three were from the same distributing company.  Three truck, four or five men in one location blocking a full lane of traffic for an unknown time span.  Should we not be doing something about that?  I seriously think that the situation is worse by campus on most days.

Comments have also been made about the two announced hotels and their delivery docks or lack thereof, but our growing dining and entertainment district draws no such attention.  I believe that it should.

The proposed regulations have provisions for length of stay at any one location and the frequency with which any particular food truck may return to said locations and they all look to be centered on the downtown area.  Could that be because our suburban streets are not amenable to locating such street vendors on public property?  What should stop several of these vendors from setting up along side some of our larger parks this summer and appealing to the visitors of our evening sports or music events?  I can imagine the Big Band and Jazz series or afternoon/evening ball games with specialty foods for a quick dinner, can't you?

The discussion on food trucks looks to me to have a long way to go, but at least we have a start.