Reasons Why Living Downtown Is Fun

Last week was an interesting week to say the least.

First off, there was the typical fall out over the Look IMAX theater presentation before the Board of Architectural Review. Without making a formal application on the property at the corner of W High St and S Broadway, the developers spoke only get some feedback as to the sentiments of the South Hill Historic District residents. I think that they found out fairly quickly that Lexington is not Dallas and, though we may be a RED state politically, we are nothing like Texas when it comes to preservation.

The problems of working with this location are many. Moving a large, historic home from its original site may save it from destruction but will alter our city's urban fabric in a way much greater than the removal of a few downtown buildings on the CentrePointe block. The earthwork of removing an outcrop of rock, just to allow a parking garage, means blasting in close proximity to numerous 150 year old buildings. That tends to make folks nervous.

A general consensus of people that I talked to felt that the development should go on the other side of Broadway – on the block that is identified as the Rupp Arena Arts and Entertainment District's prime site. Would it not be better to have private money begin the block's redevelopment than expand the $325 million that the taxpayers have yet found a way to pony up? Can the Look project folk not crack the administration's circle of planners to be part of a branded entertainment district?

To continue the topic of blasting out foundations, it was announced that we now have a daily scheduled detonation for the CentrePointe work. There will be traffic stoppage all around the block for 10 minutes while they blast, but beside that most folks will not even notice. For anyone concerned, I watched the foundation work for the Transit Garage, where they blasted twice a day, and felt barely anything.

I found an article titled 12 Strategies That Will Transform Your City’s Downtown, from urbanscale.com. Of the 12 strategies listed we are doing quite well.

We are seriously looking at changing our one-way streets to two-way and we have at least one regularly scheduled public event showcasing downtown merchants, music, and food. These two items were numbers 1 and 2.

“Make under-utilized public land available to private developers” came in at #4 and the Rupp project will do that, although it seems that for the past few years some have been looking to private land to create more under-utilized public space on the CentrePointe block. Number six calls for establishing a permanent public market. Not just spaces to allow for the weekly Farmers Market to set up on set days, but a full-time market house like we used to have with Jackson Hall.

Since our local universities are downtown, we can skip to #8 and talk about a streetcar line to an adjacent urban neighborhood. The trolleys seem to be doing an adequate job at present but the permanence of the streetcar is what is intended. Does it strike anybody odd that when we did have streetcars, commercial areas sprang up along them at regular intervals? They helped to create neighborhoods.

An awesome kids playground and the branded entertainment district look to be still some way off, but they are going to take some effort.

The last two strategies of establishing parking maximums for downtown projects and some type of bike or car sharing programs are so foreign to Lexington residents that I will not hold my breath. Any strategy that results in more transportation choices available within a downtown is a good thing and the trolleys may be proving that. Certainly any effort that also provides indirect marketing and branding services for downtown is a valuable one.

Then I hear talk of a proposed rezoning along Newtown Pike between Third and Fourth for a fairly dense development of market rate housing and retail. If all of the rumors are true then what I said about Blue Stallion choosing a very good location looks prophetic. The combination of Transylvania University and BCTC building along Fourth St., the change from one-way to two-way (sound familiar?) by the state DOT and some pioneering retail can begin to make this area really surge. Other than Fourth St was any public money used here?

Look also for rezoning to expand the drinking and dining choices in the Second and Jefferson St area ( I wonder if it will have a fowl theme too) and maybe the Apiary will take flight this summer. Yes, there is more stuff coming.

And lastly, we return to the “downtown cinema wars” where Kirkorian allowed the Look theater group to show their hand, to which he promptly trumped it with a signed agreement for the property where we all knew that it should go. No rezoning, no BOAR, existing parking facilities and the ability to begin this summer - game over.

What will happen in the next few weeks?

Downtown Jeopardy

I'll have “Random Dates in Lexington History” for $200, Alex.

And the answer is, September 10, 1950.

What was the day when we got most of our one-way streets?

Correct. That was the day when, at least, six of the downtown streets were converted to one-way and new parking limitations for autos and trucks set in place. Today, many of the parking rules and loading zones are vastly different, but all but a few of the changed one-way streets are still with us.

One-way streets are a hot topic these days and I doubt if it is due to the changes made back those 61 years ago. Downtown traffic has always been a sore point and especially since the introduction of the automobile. Even in the horse drawn buggy and wagons era there were traffic problems. The conversation today is about slowing down the traffic which moves through downtown rather than just getting to and from downtown.

Is it not odd that the morning rush hour traffic which flows well on the two-way radial spokes of Richmond, Winchester/Midland, Tates Creek or Leestown roads need the one-way uses of Main and Vine to get to where they are going? During off-peak times are all of the vehicles solely trying to get to the other side of town since many feel that downtown is not a destination?

The 40 year experiment with one-way traffic on Main & Vine, the pattern which many now believe that we cannot do without, may be a factor in the oft referred decline of downtown and its bland atmosphere of rapidly moving traffic and lack of pedestrians. The nice thing about experiments like this is that the can be reversed.

Take the example of East Short St from around the turn of the last century. The section from Limestone to Walnut (now Martin Luther King...) was made one-way. In the winter of 1926 a delegation of Short street property owners petitioned for a repeal of that change and it returned to a two-way street. Due to the narrowness of the roadway where it passed the county jail, parking was prohibited for its full length. Twenty-four years later, during the changes of 1950, Short St was made one-way from Georgetown St to Deweese.

What has surprised me most in doing research for this is the Limestone, then U.S. 27, was still two-way and the oddest change was for Mill and Upper Streets to assume part of that traffic as it passed through town. Upper St was a southbound one-way at that point but not a part of the national highway system and Mill St (or portions of it) was northbound one-way.

Under the 1950 change, Upper became northbound and Mill became southbound. U.S. 27 traffic was diverted from North Broadway at Third and apparently used Upper and Mill to connect with Bolivar, from which one used Upper St to proceed south to Limestone and Nicholasville Rd. This only last a few short years, since, as a pre-teen, I remember Limestone and Upper as the exist today.

From the map accompanying the newspaper article, the old version of Vine St was changed to one-way from Broadway to Kentucky Ave. though I have no recollection of that at all

The plan of 1950 shows the westbound changes to Second St for both of its East and West portions and Church street for its entire length, along with Corral from Deweese to Midland.

That leaves High and Maxwell Streets which became the one-way pair as we know them today. As I have always known them from my days attending Maxwell School. I don't think that I have ever heard anyone suggest that it be any different. I do believe that if it is reverted to two-way, then any parking on them anywhere would have to be eliminated.

What will this new, nearly half million dollar study determine for our downtown streets? Will two-way streets add the necessary vitality to the streetscape? Will this be another wasted attempt at “bringing downtown back” which so many suburbanites bemoan from the safety of their insulated subdivision communities.

Downtown will never “come back” and I thank God for that. We can make it better and not just from a traffic standpoint, and I thank a whole handful of folks for that. But making it better is not as simple as doing or undoing what may be “failed” experiments. It could be tweaking some things and wholesale makeovers on others, so we need to be thoughtful in how we proceed. Since they were looking at parking restrictions and loading zones/times as part of the traffic(auto and foot) problem, then maybe we should revisit them as well.