Opportunity For A Local Neighborhood Option

Back around the first of the year I wrote about the need for more neighborhood options and decried the lack of walkable local shopping areas in our subdivisions. I also have a history of wailing against the suburban shopping layout when I comes to those missing options. That may be about to change.

Many people look at the Romany Road Shoppes as a prime example of a walkable shopping area which went out of favor somewhere in the late '40s. It has buildings which sit right up on the street and parking behind the stores. It may not have the required parking but it seldom is necessary to walk an excessive distance to do your shopping. In short, it serves the neighborhood to their satisfaction.

Today's developers are working on a whole different mindset. Shopping areas of that size and nature are considered too small to be successful and the traffic arrangement is not to the shoppers liking. These and other reason are always trotted out as to why such an area will fail, therefore not one such area has been attempted in over 50 years.

Think about it, no suburban shopper has been given the choice of such a layout for generations. Walking to a grocery is nearly unheard of in much of suburbia, simply because they never did.

The Millienial generation of today seems to have decided to avoid the suburbs of today and is seeking the most walkable areas of most cities. This generation is just beginning to enter the home buying phase of their lives, yet the still want the walkability when they do. They are driving less – we are driving less and the walkable shopping areas are not being built.

This coming month there is a plan before the Planning Commission for the long delayed Greendale Hills Shopping Area toward the back side of the Masterson Station development. It will be off the proposed Citaton Blvd/Greendale Rd intersection yet still walkable to a large number of residential units.

As proposed, it is laid out just like the typical model even though it lends itself to mimic the Romany Road style with only a few minor tweaks. The number of curb cuts/driveway access points could be reduced greatly with better inter-connectivity at the rear of the properties, yielding a better pedestrian experience for the shoppers.

It appears to me that the design is being driven by a generic CVS/Rite-Aid/Walgreens style building, with a drive through, on the sole prominent corner. The drive through is basically hidden toward the rear, while all other parking is displayed out front as if it was on sale. The rest of the proposed structures appear to be purely speculative. Even the apartment over retail - typical of new Urbanism – buildings are out of place along the rear property line.

This property still has a window of opportunity to make this a walkable destination, a local option worth making the trip by foot.

The B-1 zone, like literally all zones, has no recommendations for placement of buildings but the B-1 really sets the tone for a whole neighborhood. Thoughts like this were not included in the latest re-write of the B-1 zone, and perhaps that ship has sailed. Royal Caribbean thought that their Granduer of the Seas was prepared for many more cruises after it latest refurbishment last year, only to do it again.

The window is open for a better shopping area. Is there a breath of fresh air?

Does Jeff Ruby Think That He Is Being Left Behind?

Last week there was a Twitter report by Jeff Ruby, the steakhouse guy from Cincinnati, right out of the blue (?) which announced that he would open his Lexington location, in CentrePointe, in 2015. That was picked up and reported by the local press, much to the amusement to the myriad of people who have scoffed and derided the numerous stories of the long delayed project.

Many were the people worked to save the decaying, but popular, The Dame nightclub and the lesser used pool hall next door. Preservationist, more than a few of them amateurs, climbed on board aiming to save one of the oldest commercial structures downtown. And once it became clear that the building would not be saved, the jumped at anything that looked like it could delay the plan going forward. Finally, it was the global economy that did what so many locals could not – bring things to a standstill.

Although the “Great Recession” could delay an announced 40 story building, it could not delay the grass roots refurbishment of major parts of West Short St, Jefferson St or stretches of N. Limestone.  The failure to build a $250 million project with private money did not dampen the desire to use more than twice as much in public funds just a few blocks away.

Throw into this mix, the reluctance to allow food trucks and to revert to two-way streets and there you have Lexington's perception of the future.

I, on the other hand, do believe that the Ruby Steak House tweet is for real.

Several years ago an engineer friend showed me a Plat of Consolidation for the CentrePointe block. There are currently approximately 20 separate parcels under various ownership names which will have to be combined in order to allow the project to proceed. True, it may have been when the project was a large, single unit structure but it would not have been allowed to be built across lot lines.

He and I were hopeful that the filing and recording process could be accomplished quickly. After several design changes occurred (some at the hands of noted architects) the design reached the point that there are now multiple buildings, each needing a separate lot - such a plat has not been filed....yet.

Last Wednesday, the CHDRB meeting re-approved the permit for CentrePointe and the Taste of Thai building across the street and unless they revise the TIF boundary and purpose (which they may) there are fewer obstacles in their way.

The Ruby tweet came on Friday – two days after the re-authorization vote. Published comments from Dudley Webb seem to indicate that those TIF changes are forthcoming.

Are my hope up - again, maybe but I have long been hopeful about downtown, in spite of the recent economic climate.

Help See The Future?

What will Lexington look like when we get to the middle of the century?

Now, what did you just think of when that question flashed through your mind? Was you first thought of how downtown would look and did you wonder if there would be many new buildings? We will have to accommodate several thousand new residents, so did you imagine a wider expanse of suburban housing developments? Maybe you thought of a community where just about everything you could need was close and available, but I doubt it.

For those of you who thought strictly of downtown, I am not surprised because most people do. The traditional method of gauging modernity of a city is to look at its downtown. Progress is measured by the number of striking new and wonderful buildings. How many of them will we have in the next 20 years? Will it be more or less than in the past 20?

Actually, it has been over 25 years since a tower crane graced the skyline of downtown for the construction of a new high-rise. That my friends is a pretty stagnant rate of progress in anybody's book. What has been proposed has been fought, tooth and nail, by just about every faction. Now, with a few select areas gentrifying at an ever increasing rate and more people desiring to live downtown, will we make all of it livable?

Lexington is considered to be very lucky to have its most historic buildings in the the downtown area and the problem continues as to how to preserve them and allow new progress to proceed. We, and many other progressive cities, have arrived at our current status by both allowing and decrying the loss of our older building stock. How we achieve a continuing balance there will take a lot of hard work.

How we handle the way in which we travel to and from downtown will play a big part in Lexington's future. So far we have been able to bypass the temptation to follow other cities and their urban expressways that they are now removing.

Our surface parking situation pales proportionately in comparison to cities twice our size. Our closest neighbor, Louisville, leads the nation in average temperature rise between urban and rural land use environments. The difference between their urban heat island and their outskirts will average nearly 2 degrees throughout all seasons. Surely, we can continue to do better.

Still, downtown is not the only place that will have to make a change for the better. Eventually the close-in suburbs will undergo a familiar transformation from dullsville to walkable and inviting places.

I call it a familiar transformation because it has happened in Lexington previously. A number of well known retail clusters retain vestiges of their residential roots as single family houses.

Take the Woodland Triangle as an example. The initial Woodland subdivision plat of 1884 laid out strictly residential lots. By 1906, only the school, the fire station and two small shops (one at High and Woodland and one at High and Kentucky) interrupted the housing stock. It would be another 10 years or so until the commercial structures typical of the '20s made their appearance in the triangle and bring the goods and services the people needed. Again, retail follows residential.

Or, consider the beginnings of the Chevy Chase shopping area which developed well before the residential subdivision of the same name farther out Tates Creek Rd. The block bounded by Ashland, E. High and Euclid was full of the frame houses typical of the early 20^th century and some of them remain though greatly altered. Just slip behind the storefronts on the south side of Euclid and check out the backsides of those places.

How about the stretch of E Main from Walton to Ashland or Mentelle? At approximately the time when the school board built the Henry Clay High School (1928) several businesses were converting houses for retail/mixed use.

These three locations are barely half a mile from each other, in easily walkable neighborhoods and on the streetcar line. They are not by any means the only examples since the commercial cluster at Sixth and N. Limestone or Third and Jefferson appear to have happened around the same period. But will the bland expanses of Lansdowne, Kirklevington or Opengate have this opportunity of variety and vibrancy?

Current suburbs are an accumulation of the past 60 years of spread-out development standards brought about primarily by the institution of a zoning code. The “evils” of urbanism creeping into a neighborhood have replaced the “fears” of communism regulating the permissible options of a landowner. Our freedom from unnecessary intrusion has led us into a self-imposed isolation of sorts over a wider and wider area of our lives. Such a freedom has exacted a high price on society.

Some parts of downtown are still pockets of isolation but truly urban neighborhoods are beginning to chip away at that.

One condition that concerns me is the prevalence, since the early '50s, of arterial and other major streets defining a neighborhood boundary. These roads are the prime candidates for widening, thereby separating some folks from others rather than aiding in the coalescing of neighborhood vitality in a sense of community. Today's neighborhoods have no identifiable center and no community asset to which they can be solely connected. It is little wonder that we have transient owners with little willingness to put down roots.

Lexington is not just our downtown for which we need to plan a future. Lexington is a series of neighborhoods and they need to be connected and planned for too. So, I ask you:

• If you could make one change in your own community what would it be?
• What’s the best way for individuals to advocate for change in their communities?
• What do you see as the future of real estate and owning residential real estate going forward?
• How do you think technological advances will contribute toward changes in suburban infrastructure?

These and other questions were put to June Williamson, author of Designing Suburban Features: New Model From Build A Better Burb, it may interest some of you to look into what she said.  Other thoughts on this can be found here,

As always, you can let me know how you feel.

An Innovation Coming?

A few weeks ago I heard a fairly new phrase during the What Now, Lexington un-conference put on by Progresslex. It was a session on local foods and some brainstorming about new funding and branding potions which might be available. The new label is a Food Innovation District.

First off, the skeptic in me does not want to hear “food “and “innovation” put together in a title since the revelation of gene splicing and genetic engineering. Mrs. Sweeper and I wish to keep our food intake to the most natural and local of ways possible. The taste of a tomato from the garden is so much fresher than one from the farm and way better than one which has been traveling for several weeks. I know how I feel and look after traveling for a few weeks.

Some of the recent innovations in GMO foods surely have not been tested as to their long-term effects on the human body, either from the steady build up or the interactions of seemingly separate and benign species experiments. These so called Frankenfoods have not been around long enough to understand if they “play nice” with your body and themselves.

Within the last two decades we have seen a “revolutionary new sweetener” come to market and be embraces warmly as well as used widely. It did its job of sweetening foods but was not absorbed into nor broken down by either the body or nature. Today there are huge concentrations of its base ingredient being located in the world's rivers and oceans. It can even be monitored as a component of the Gulf Stream off of the Atlantic seaboard.

Since the University of Kentucky has the goal of becoming a top 20 research university and they are a “land grant” institution, armed with all of the elements which would allow them to be true food innovators, does this bode well as a Food Innovation District?

The optimist in me (as well as one who loves to eat) hopes for the type of gastronomic wonders which Mrs. Sweeper and I have watched on such TV shows as Iron Chef (both the original and the Americanized versions), MasterChef, the Taste and many others. These are competitions where being creative can give you an edge.

I have talked about so many of the new dining venues which have sprung up lately and we have tried as many as we can. That same creative flair will give a restaurant an edge also. The Lexington area has quite a few quality chefs and will now have a former TV contestant as head chef at the soon to open TheJax.  Being a Harrodsburg native and working in downtown Lexington, will she help make the whole Central Kentucky area a Food Innovation District?

In reality, the concept comes out of the Michigan Good Foods Charter, a statewide policy platform. Their definition for it is: 

A geographic concentration of food oriented businesses, services and community activities which local governments support through planning and economic development initiatives in order to promote a positive business environment, spur regional food system development, and increase access to local food.

I think that Lexington could make a pretty good case for being a Food Innovation District, what with the research at the University and the land grant charge, our Kentucky Proud program of the state's Agriculture Department, our increasing numbers of farmers markets and local growers and local consumers. With planning and concerted effort it can work and we currently have folks who are striving for a few small, baby steps. Imagine what we could do with a little more focus.

For those of you who might like a little more information on the local food movement, I suggest that you check out the Lexington FoodHub site at your leisure. If you are a producer looking for a market or a consumer looking for a product, let them try to help out. If it is happening in local food, I think that you can find the information there.

Lets be innovative.

Whither A State Of Transportation?

Sometimes it is quite difficult to determine on what subject I want to write and at other times the subject just leaps at me. Lately I have been reading about the transportation situation facing us locally and nationally and how we will pay for it.

With all of the construction workers out of work will a resumption of the highway building and other major building projects help solve the unemployment problem? Will spending more money on highways prove sensible while Americans are driving less and the younger generation is buying fewer automobiles?

Back at the end of March, the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer Inga Saffron, posited that perhaps we American's are a bit too haphazard about how we allocate our transportation funds. We tend to push for lane and intersection improvements to some of our arterial streets in Lexington, huge Interstate interchanges in downtown Louisville, and massive new bridge projects in Cincinnati and Louisville. But, when it comes to any sort of mass transit style proposal the masses go all livid about the freedoms of movement and choice which will be infringed.

Highway funding is becoming increasingly tight, in part because Congress and States are unwilling to raise the gasoline tax on steadily rising fuel prices. The American Society of Civil Engineers believe that we are so far behind on infrastructure repairs that they recently gave an overall D+ to the conditions of our nation's bridges and roads. One must realize that it is in the best interest of the ASCE to chase new construction projects for their members. I personally feel that this grade is not from design and age, but from simple overuse of a “free”amenity.

Around the same time, a writer for the Washington Post revealed that the famous Capital Beltway was slowly dying beneath the turning wheels of about a quarter-million cars a day. As they called it, “turning to mush”before their eyes. In what sounds like an excerpt from one of our Council work sessions, “... the older base layers under the asphalt, the surface is not able to absorb the pounding the way it used to...” was used to describe the continuing situation.

I don't believe that the Beltway or any of our primary arterial roadways will die, but they will need to be relieved of much of the stress to which we put them. U.S. drivers, and the commerce on which they rely, are riding on baby-boom-generation roadways, which like us boomers ourselves are no longer so steady and sound. Nearly a third of the nation’s major roads currently need significant repair or replacement, with a far higher percentage in the busiest urban areas, to meet the demand now placed on them.

Bad roads are partly a cause of sticker creep at the checkout aisle, just as the the cost of fixing them is about to cause sticker shock at the gas pump. Delays and bad roads add to the $25 billion in goods delivered nationwide every day which is naturally added to price tags at supermarkets and department stores.

Many state's officials see roads that need replacement and highways that need to be expanded. They cite statistics which show vehicle travel jumped by 39 percent from 1990 to 2008. Despite an acknowledged decline in vehicle miles traveled over the past 5 years, the forecast is to increase another 35 percent by 2030. 

Add to all of the above the comments I heard at the forum on climate change held last week at the University of Kentucky. 

In his presentation on looking for “Free-Enterprise Approaches to Energy Security and Climate Change.”, Bob Inglis, former U.S. representative from South Carolina, expressed his thoughts that sometime, in the near future, we will be traveling the highways in packs of high-speed, robot driven and individually powered vehicles.

According to one description that I have read, this would be a whole new world of cars are packed nose to tail traveling at speeds in excess of current limits. They will weave their way through unmarked junctions, with no traffic lights. Lane markings are non-existent, and stretches of road may switch from being one-way in one direction, to the opposite, with no warning. Perhaps most alarming of all, very few of the “occupants” have even passed a driving test. I see more similarities of riding high speed rail in this than shopping for the family car.

This sounds like Utopia if it occurs out on the open highway lie an Interstate, but do we want this in our urban areas and residential streets? Just when we have made good gains in taking back the streets (Complete Streets planning) from the free-wheeling autos, will we have to redouble our efforts again?

From my personal experience of Interstate driving, I am either passing the casual drivers and the revenue generating long-haul truckers or being passed by, largely singly occupied, long distance commuters, but the common theme is that, unless it is rush hour, we all have plenty of room. 

Efficiency and logic should dictate that these packs of robotic driven vehicles be composed of like vehicles. Trucks with trucks, SUVs with SUVs, single occupants with single occupants on down the line. Also considered should be the fuel and maintenance compatibilities of those allowed in each pack. Sounds like it may be simpler to take the train.

Such vehicles may be much more aware of their own positions and of those vehicles around them, but they also need to be aware of all other animate objects before they are allowed to roam our residential streets. I would worry less about the auto leaving the street than I would about the random child/toy or the stray pet/wild animal entering the roadway.

But, let us assume that all of these possibilities are accounted for and that there will be NO accidents (Yeah, I laughed at that also). If there are no accidents, then there is no one at fault and there is no need for insurance. Norm McDonald, Flo and that Allstate guy will have to join the gecko in the audition line for work. Darryl the “Heavy Hitter” and all of those other law firms will have to fight over the remaining legal claims.

Making further assumptions, I see all of the auto dealers trying to differentiate their models from the other mundane “hop in and let the robot have all of the fun” vehicles out there. There will be no “thrill of the open road” if all are running in packs and we are watching the scenery flying by. The “sports car handling” so familiar to the earliest baby boomers and lacking on most all SUVs and trucks will not be a selling feature unless you are buying antiques.

I worry that the free enterprise of this will inflate the ranks of the unemployed while not solving the infrastructure cost dilemma. Young people are driving less, automobiles are costing more (both initially and over their lifetimes) and the real-time level of wages is stagnant so who will be able to afford such extravagances? And will the roads be there upon which to use them?

Some Questions For Readers

While I am searching for more information, just a few questions for the usual readers.

Kroger wants to provide more selection in their Chevy Chase market, yet The Fresh Market and Trader Joe's can bring in great selection and variety without exceeding to 70,000square foot floor plan.  Why is that?  Go check out the competition for  yourself.

EKU has begun a "Farm to Campus" program to supply more local Kentucky Proud products, yet the University of Kentucky, the flagship, land grant institution, built to train our states farmers wishes to "outsource" their food service.  Does this make sense?

If folks are driving less (for the fifth year in a row) and auto pricing is rising (as well as the length of financing required to buy), does it make sense to fund newer, wider highways rather than transit?

Does anybody have better suggestions?

Continuing Thoughts

“I don't think the city really cares about food issues.”

Danny Mayer of North of Center

I, on the other hand, am sure that this city's residents do not feel that there are any real food issues to care about. As a whole, this city believes that food availability will be provided as it has through history, yet history is a poor prognosticator of future events.

Reading further in Danny's comments, it becomes crystal clear that he is wanting some action from out City government to compel food production for the poor or, at least, publicly purchased food to be distributed at little or no cost to the poor. I find this to be against even our Founding Fathers' concepts for our country.

I know that people in Lexington do not concern themselves with the possible long-term effects of global warming/climate change or the idea of Peak Oil. Private enterprise has always solved these problems and will do so again – but at what cost and to whom? It is what they think that our country was founded upon.

Private enterprise in America at the time of the Revolution was of the small, family owned variety and not the large multi-national corporations of today, especially when it came to food production. Government saw no need to force or limit food production until the large corporations got into the act. What was necessary was the freedom of farmers to farm and production was naturally limited by what they could sell. Frugal farmers would not expend the energy to produce more than a small portion above that distributed.

Today, our small, family owned farms are producing more than enough for themselves and a growing following of CSA members and loyal, farmers market enthusiasts. Many of them do it organically or with a minimum of chemical additives. Most of this food is priced accordingly and above corporately produced food. Most obvious of all is that these small farms cannot feed all of Lexington, regardless of ability to pay.

During the Second World War, small backyard and neighborhood “Victory” gardens were touted as a way to aide the war effort and stave off starvation. That time also saw the wide-spread use of family owned neighborhood grocers. It may well be that these two elements were the vital parts which enabled the country to get through that time. I worry what will happen if there is a next time, when these elements are missing.

I see some opportunities to create some of these neighborhood gardening locations (without impinging on public parkland) and locating some “pop-up” style markets within short reach of our residential areas. I think that more opportunities need to be thought of and allowed.

Now is the time to prepare. I do not think that we are prepared so I can only echo Danny. 

“I don't think the city (or the country) really cares about food issues.”

Urban Food Thoughts

Neal Pierce had an excellent piece of the subject of local food and the rise of cities this past Sunday.

We think of hunger – global hunger – as a third world problem yet of the millions who go to bed hungry each night, more and more of them are in cities. The bigger the city, the bigger the number of unfed.

As Pierce points out, over the next 40 years our planet will have to produce as much food as we have ever produced and I, for one, am worried about its quality. I am also reasonably sure that a majority of it will not be local food.

Cities, by their very nature, develop in the same locations and utilize the same type of land which is ideal to grow food crops. As cities grow they expand across the very land which they may need to feed themselves, devouring acre after acre in non-agricultural and resource consuming urban development.

There are those who stress that cities are where brilliant minds are more likely to intersect with others of like bent and innovations can spring forth. So, where are we going to find the innovations for feeding our ever growing urban areas? The University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research recently held a “Feeding Cities” conference looking for answers.

Historically, with all of our cities swallowing up so much fertile farm land and creating climate altering “heat islands” in the process, our family farms have been evolving into massive industrial operations which are highly susceptible to floods and droughts. Scientists say that the altering climate will see many more of these floods and droughts. Did this conference have any good answers?

One suggestion was that cities can try to toughen themselves by assembling disaster emergency funds, strengthening their infrastructure and building their resilience. WOW – whose idea was this? When we cannot even maintain our pension funds or our roads, bridges and sewers adequately we need to establish a massive rainy day fund (which will probably be blown on the first event)? Not my idea of a complete solution.

Other conferees stressed the preservation of land for agriculture, either within their borders or in surrounding regions, apparently similar to our Rural Service Area (RSA). Lexington has already done that but the majority of crops being grown in the RSA will not feed our local population, since we don’t eat horses. Some conferees saw this as a food buffer and a flood buffer – two public goods, but our experience may say otherwise. In a free market no one can tell the farm owners to actually grow food for people and not commodity crops or inedible animals.

It was mentioned that fending off powerful business or political forces to preserve agricultural lands may be a tremendously difficult task. From gated communities and golf courses to the starter homes evolving into suburban slums amid a food desert, Lexington needs to think about better access to local food production on what remaining land we have.

In the developing third world nations it is estimated that 40% of the food produced annually is lost due to improper storage or delivery systems. Yet, in America we waste nearly 650 pounds per person a year, more than any other country in the world. The losses by careless farming, inefficient food processing or from retail stores simply discarding foods that are past their sell-by dates probably trail our own personal inability to control what we buy and fail to eat. It hurts me to see what remains from many restaurant meals and I don’t see what is discarded from the kitchens themselves.

Did we always have this waste? Could we feed all of the estimated 9 billion people anticipated by 2050 with more local production and less transportation related product spoilage? There is a joy to greater self-sufficiency and local food production which Lexington is beginning to understand, yet we still fail to create real community gardens in our communities. I get the feeling that community gardens are thought to be only for the poorer sections of town. The HOA where I live will only allow a few tomato or pepper plants in pots and less obvious herbs.

Pierce concludes his article with this: 

“To date, city-produced foods account for a tiny share of urban food needs. But one is led to wonder: If city food demand is a top 21st-century concern, perhaps city ingenuity – and spirit – can also help to forge answers.”

For Lexington, those answers are not forthcoming. Nor do they seem to be in other larger communities, since Pierce is still looking for them. That would indicate that we have not achieved a critical mass of intersecting thinkers on this part of Lexington's problem – though there are a handful of pioneers.

That Lexington developed, in part, where crops are known to do well and parts of that development has proven to be a detriment to the whole, just may be a hint toward an answer.

Over the last decade or so, our city has purchased property which was adversely affected or, by its placement, caused that adverse affect on others. Said property has neither been re-purposed for suitable urban use nor been reverted to the other job for which the land is quite well suited – growing food crops.

Do some of these properties fall within an area which can be called a “food desert” or could become one should the nation's transportation costs skyrocket? Could producing healthier food closer to the mouths which need it help? Could production of such food be coordinated under the auspices of a “Local Foods Policy Advisory Group” go a long way in averting urban hunger? Maybe.

Perceptions Pervade Planning Public Parking

As I said in my last parking post, “...public perceptions will always trail the reality of most situations”.  It appears that the perceptions of Debbie Long, owner of Dudley’s on Short, did not live up to the reality as it relates to the parking situation in downtown Lexington.

“We found that my guests really adapted easily to our downtown parking,” Long said in the recent Business Lexington article. 

Parking should not be a complicated process, but to many of the suburban mindset downtown parking is never as easy as it is in the shopping malls like Fayette Mall or Hamburg.  There one can park within a few hundred feet of a store's front door, walk for a mile and a half until exhausting the store's selection, go back to the car and move it a half mile and do it all over again, until tired.

Long says it’s not the concept of paying for parking or the short walk to the restaurant that creates a problem for her patrons.  The hard part is the confusion which comes from the inconsistent marking of visitor parking and employee/event or even the resident parking.

I have long been of the persuasion that on-street parking should be for those using it less than an hour at a time.  That probably comes from the historical 1-hour limit on most parking meters.  Surface parking (hopefully tucked in a block interior and a simple entrance) should be for several hours of usage (typically less than 3) and structured parking for all day and residential patrons.  Hence, on-street = highly visible, surface = basically hidden and structured = part of the office/residential complex.

It does appear that progress is being made of arriving at a standard identification symbol for parking facilities and there is a working group of parking operators which meets regularly.  But settling on a logo and some other embellishments does not solve the problem quickly. Gary Means, LexPark Executive Director, admits “The new signage will be phased in as budgets allow” since the group is still discussing how the new signage will be funded.

The other side of the coin in any discussion of downtown parking is; How are we going to continue to accommodate our need for parking?  Planners and developers first look at what and how much parking will be needed, usually by looking at what was required in the past.  It is a standard practice that they have been taught.

Past experiences and trends do not always allow for the good prediction of future events. 

Take a look at the “predictions” of Lexington's 1930 Comprehensive Plan.  Public transportation consisted of a mix of streetcars and auto-buses running routes which covered pretty much all of the city limits.  The Plan called for systematically extending the streetcar lines into the establishing neighborhoods, but due to the Great Depression and some Congressional acts meant to counteract the poor economic times by 1938 the streetcars had all been removed.  I don't think anybody saw it coming.

Take a look at the “predictions” of Lexington's 1947 Comprehensive Plan.  Gearing up for and fighting World War II had brought us out of the Depression, the GI's were coming home and ,with the streetcars gone, everybody had a car these days.  The Plan called for a certain percentage increase in auto ownership by 1970, but we blew through that estimate by the early '50s.  The roads that we planned to build like the By-Pass, now New Circle Rd, were undersized and crowded by the time they opened.  I don't think anybody saw it coming.

It seems that we are always planning for the existing situations or for those of the recent past since that is what we can justify through statistics.  Experience should show that we have very little to look back on and say that we got it right.  Who planned for the use of personal computers, either in the workplace or at home, or predicted the explosion of the use of smart phones so that our community would be ready for them when it happened?

Downtown retailers and developers do listen intently to their existing and potential clients in terms of what the parking needs are expected to be, but how many of them or their predecessors were unprepared for the surprises cited above?  Many cities are looking at TOD (Transportation Oriented Development) but it doesn't come up in any news reports or announcements about our downtown.  Not even the much ballyhooed Rupp Arena redesign or the Town Branch project.  Will Lexington be skipping that part of following the trends in other “world class” cities?

There are some other trends to which we should be paying attention.

Since 2008, the number of miles driven nationally has fallen markedly.  This was first attributed to the onset of the recent economic recession and the housing crisis.  That statistic continues to decline even after we have entered the “recovery” phase and we return to what was normalcy.  People, and young people in particular, are just driving less miles and not always in their own vehicle.  Car-sharing is a recent urban phenomenon to which the suburbanite mind does not relate.

Suburbanites can really grok the idea of a flashy car and the open road.  This must be what sells cars because it is in almost all of the new car ads on TV.  Even the ones showing downtown driving have the subject auto as the only car on the street.  If this were reality, then there is no parking problem.  Crowded roads and urban gridlock is not meshing well with the alleged purposes of buying a new car.

The main reason that suburbanites need an auto in the first place is to get to a job.  Jobs in which wages have generally not kept up with the family needs.  New roads and cheap oil have allowed past home buyers to drive until they qualified for a mortgage.  Now that need for a car is more pronounced than ever but the new roads, the cheap oil and the quality mortgages are fading from most household's view.

More and more of today's new automobile commercials are promoting extras like navigation systems and Wi-Fi hot spots with live streaming of video or Bluetooth communications instead of 4-wheel drive and snappy handling.  These are all aimed at the youth market and that market is remarkably shunning the auto either by choice or economic necessity.

The just released 2013 Car Affordability Study, from Interest.com measures how much the households in our top metro areas should pay for a car that they can afford.  The formula is simple, a down payment of at least 20%; auto financing lasting no longer than four years; and principal, interest and insurance not exceeding 10% of a household’s gross income.  Mike Sante, managing editor of Interest.com, in a statement said "Car costs are one of the most controllable parts of a household's budget." 

The top 25 metro areas were compared by median household income and this formula and then ranked.  How do you think that Lexington fared?  I, for one, was surprised.

Lexington's median income is $48,306, which places us right between the last two communities on the study's list.  It nestles us right between Miami and Tampa.  Of course the “affordable” range of auto in Tampa was $14,516,  that is 52.48% less than the median price of a 2013 vehicle.  The typical two car household of the Lexington suburbs can now safely afford about half of a new car.  That, my friends, is without considering any commuting costs or maintenance.  Our recent college graduates, with their high student loan debt, cannot afford to drive until they qualify to live in the suburbs.

Wages, as a percentage of GDP, have been declining since 1970.  Lexington's population since merger has nearly doubled and what looked to be a large suburban growth was a great migration from the inner city.  Indications are that this migration will reverse itself as it has in other cities.

We also need to hold on to our values when we choose a direction and avoid the traps of other cities. 

In Philadelphia, the administration has spent years talking up the value of lively, walkable streets.  Their Convention Center was purposely built without parking to discourage hordes of motorists from jamming the streets around the building, and to encourage visitors to use transit. Their 1991 Center City Plan prohibits parking next door on the adjacent Arch Street, specifically in the belief that Philadelphia's downtown activity should not be broken up by garages.

In 2010, a developer argued that parking was in short supply in the area and proposed that he build a parking garage, the problem was that his site wasn't zoned for a garage.  Fearing the loss job opportunities, the permitting process was eased, an excellent design team brought in to design and build it.  As of now, and many of you may draw parallels to our CentrePointe project, the Arch Street garage has brought no development, no new shops or restaurants, and no good design.

Inga Saffron, the Philadelphia Inquirer Architecture Critic, put it well, “… design will not save us from what's wrong with garages. The real problem with these utilitarian structures - and we're talking about the free-standing, aboveground kind, located in downtown settings - is that they distort how the city functions.

Saffron goes on, “When you insert a garage on a dense, pedestrian-friendly block, you can't help but dilute the mix by widening the distance between people and their destinations. Meanwhile, new parking encourages people to drive instead of taking transit, which only further increases the demand for more parking. Putting garages underground, below mixed-use buildings, is expensive, but at least it minimizes the harm.”

What does any of this mean in our preparing to plan for our downtown's future?  We are approaching that point in the life of the 2007 Plan where, in past plans, the reality completely obliterates some of the major assumptions of earlier proposals.  Are we about to lose a concept of urban life that we have counted on or is it already gone and we believe it dormant?  Is there something that we should be, or have been, planning for that will appear an oversight? 

We can, as most other cities have, continue to plan for how we think that life will remain in our fair city, or we can plan for how we would like for Lexington to be.  We often promote Lexington as “unique” and it definitely is, actually despite the repeated attempts to transplant ideas from other communities.  Progressive cities will ask “What can we do that no other city has?” while we ask “Why can't we have that in our city?”  Are we willing to join the progressive cities and ask the correct question?

I can understand our downtown developers using the conventional wisdom of looking to the city government to build their structured parking, but government is not building the parking lots of the suburban retail stores.  Cities used to believe that they HAD to do this to aide in downtown revitalization.  Our city is in the process of divesting itself of all its parking garages and getting out of the parking business.  To that I say a big “hooray”.  Now the questions arise, “Should the Parking Authority, the agency now in control of the downtown garages, consider building expensive spaces for a society which may be trending away from requiring them?  Should the Parking Authority take the gamble that a developer will not?

I guess, in the end, it all comes down to perceptions, mostly based on past experiences.  The public believes that available downtown parking is hard to find or inconveniently placed.  The retailers believe that parking should be provided for them.  Developers and landlords believe that they need assistance to serve their clients. So, now I ask you; Do these perceptions trail the reality and will these perceptions change with reality?

p.s. For further thoughts on parking planning go here

True Urban Mixed Use.

I have not decided yet whether this emerging trend from the DC area is merely interesting or somewhat disturbing. Churches in that region have had to come to grips with their financial situations and some of the more cash-strapped are looking to become mixed-use developments in order to remain in existence.

The First Baptist Church of Silver Spring, Md. is asking to replace their current facility with apartments, shopping and a new church building. To be truthful, it is in a neighborhood which has a good transit presence, great walkability, a proposed Metro line stop and is transitioning toward higher density. What the area does not need is a wide expanse of parking and the setbacks off of the streets which presently exist.

Whether due to declining attendance or growing ambitions, other area churches are pursuing similar tactics. A church in downtown DC has been given permission to demolish their old Brutalist style building to erect an office building and church. In Arlington, Va., a church sold the air rights so as to construct several floor of apartments above.

This scenario brings to mind the recent removal of the Faith Covenant (formerly the Woodland Ave Baptist and originally the Immanuel Baptist) Church building for the High Point Condominiums. Though built on a much smaller scale the idea is much the same. The small church, which was losing its congregation and financially unable to adequately maintain the structure, opted to sell and re-establish elsewhere.

The theme which ties most of these instances together appears to be the involvement of the historic preservationists and their claims that these building are “significant”, either historically or architecturally, and should be saved. I guess that it could be argued that ecclesiastical buildings may be “community” or civic properties in a visual sense and therefore merit saving. I tend to weigh the value of what may replace the existing, visually and not economically, for my opinions.

What makes this interesting is that it is happening in quite a few localities, many of which are rapidly intensifying in density or transitioning to more urban uses. This intensifying is something which the Planning staff has urged for many years, through several comprehensive plans and when combined with the reluctance to expand the Urban Service Area mean that we could be facing similar issues.

We have some history of removing a few of our older churches over the years. The University took the Porter Memorial location on S Limestone and Baptist Healthcare (Central Baptist Hospital) took both the Centenary Methodist and the Central Baptist structures for more intense uses. Still others remain on highly traveled arteries at the edges of neighborhoods where “real mixed use” could be used as a catalyst for a transformational moment.

Given the general feeling toward downtown preservation, I think that our oldest church facilities will not consider such options at this time but there are a few which could see economic sense in such an endeavor. That is where the disturbing aspect of this trend may emerge.

I do not pretend to understand the congregational or financial health of our inner ring churches, but I do see when they add property (usually for parking). There is always the possibility of being land rich and congregant poor which can only be exacerbated during times of economic downturn. In times when folks cannot travel to services it may be advantageous build something where they don't have to drive.

A true mixed use.