This page is intended to be a repository for informational articles, books, references, plans and design guidelines focusing on downtown redevelopment and historic preservation. Any submissions will be greatly appreciated.
Lexington Design Guidelines and Plans
Lexington Design Guidelines and Plans:Downtown Lexington Masterplan: Envisioning the Future . . . (Draft) (January 2007)
[Also Available on the Lexington Downtown Development Authority website]
Courthouse Area Design Review Board - By-Laws (20 November 2001)
Design Guidelines for the Courthouse Area (17 May 2000)
Downtown Master Plan Presentation (14 December 2005)
Lexington, Kentucky College Town Study (December 2002)
Planning to Preserve: The 2004 State Historic Preservation Plan for the
Commonwealth of Kentucky (December 2003)
Planning Commission Expansion Area Master Plan (18 July 1996)
[Large File: May encounter lengthy download time]
Etcetera:
Rypkema, Donovan D.
1994 The Economics of Historic Preservation: A Community Leader's Guide. National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington.
This publication outlines a number of situations faced by municipalities as they attempt to reconcile economic decisions with historic preservation. In this exhaustive yet concise study, Rypkema provides a number of arguments in support of historic preservation that are backed up with statistical and economic data. Below are a list of these arguments that are more thoroughly discussed and supported in the book. In sum, decisions in favor of historic preservation are the most economically viable option.
- "Historic preservation creates more jobs than the same amount of new construction."
- "Historic preservation has significant and ongoing economic impact beyond the project itself."
- "Historic preservation is an effective big-city economic development strategy."
- "Historic preservation is an incremental economic development strategy, not a 'big fix'."
- "When encouraged through a comprehensive strategy, historic preservation activity can have the same impact on the community as larger projects."
- "Historic preservation can be part of a strategy to attract industrial and manufacturing firms."
- "Historic preservation is an ideal economic development strategy for attracting and retaining small business."
- "Older buildings provide excellent incubator space for businesses of all types."
- "Historic preservation will need to be part of the economic development strategy for those communities that wish to maintain a competitive edge."
- "Quality of life is becoming the critical ingredient in economic development, and historic preservation is an important part of the quality-of-life equation."
- "Incentives are often a necessary catalyst for historic preservation but consistently a cost-effective one."
- "Wholesale razing of buildings is demonstrably bad public policy."
- "Property values are not frozen when historic districts are created."
- "Tearing down a historic building for a surface parking lot almost never makes economic sense."
- "The life expectancy of rehabilitated historic buildings may well be longer than that of new structures."
- "Allowing downtown to decline results in underutilization of infrastructure already paid for with taxpayers' dollars."
- "Pedestrian orientation is crucial for vibrant, active public spaces. Historic buildings were designed and built with pedestrians in mind."
Rypkema, Donovan D.
2003 The Importance of Downtown in the 21st Century. (Longer View). Journal of the American Planning Association 69(1):9-16.
"Where are the buildings with meaning in your community--the buildings that were built to reflect symbolic values? The vast majority of them are downtown."
"The buldings that were built in a day when the building was the message ought to be kept because the message--our common set of values--is, or ought to be, as valid as ever. And we ought to demand that buildings built today reincorporate those values in their design, materials, scale, and detail."
"Individually we have a wide range of political, religious, sociological, and economic points of view--and that is as it should be. But there is also a commonality of beliefs--of values--that we widely share: mutual respect; the importance of striving for excellence; regard for tradition; providing quality; frugal use of finite resources; understanding and appreciating our place in history; working in harmony but retaining individuality; having aspirations beyond our own self-interest. These are all values we try to teach our children, encourage in our employees, expect from our employers, and demand from those who want to do business with us. If we want our downtown to remain our city center, in all meanings of the phrase, then we need to be demanding valuable buildings, buildings with values."
"Downtown's strength is not homogeneity with everywhere else; the strenght of downtown is its differentiation from anywhere else."
"Downtown will also need to have a diversity of meanings. Those diverse meanings should include aspiratin, civic pride, prosperity, confidence, responsibility, sustainability, and evolution."
"If we are to have an effective environmental policy, downtowns are important."
"If we are to have an effective transportation policy, downtowns are important."
"If we are to have meaningful historic preservation, downtowns are important."
"If we want Smart Growth, downtowns are not only important but irreplaceable."
"If a local official wants to claim the treasured mantle of fiscal responsibility, downtown revitalization is imperative."
"If we want to avoid Generica, downtown is essential to establish differentiation."
"If the community is going to compete in economic globalization without being swallowed by cultural globalization, downtown revitalization has to be central to the strategy."
"If new businesses, innovative businesses, and creative businesses are going to be fostered and encouraged, a community will need a downtown where that can take place."
"If we are to have buildings with meaning, buildings with value, buildings with values, they will be downtown."
"If we are to have public places of public expression, we need a downtown."
"If a community is going to embrace diversity instead of hide from it, celebrate diversity instead of deny it, then that has to take place downtown-it ain't gonna happen anywhere else."
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Florida, Richard
2002 The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community and Everyday Life. Basic Books, New York.
In reference to Jane Jacobs: "The miracle of these places, she argued, was found in the hurly-burly life of the street. The street, where many different kinds of people came together, was both a source of civility and a font for creativity...What made Hudson Street work was its combination of physical and social environments...It has wide sidewalks and a tremendous variety of types of buildings--apartments, bars, shops, even small factories--which meant that there were always differnet kinds of people outside and on different schedules."
"Meanwhile, the Creative Class is drawn to more organic and indigenous street-level culture...The culture is 'street level' because it tends to cluster along certain streets lined with a multitude of small venues...The scene may spill out onto the sidewalks...It is not just a scene but many: a music scene, an art scene, a film scene, outdoor recreation scene, nightlife scene, and so on--all reinforcing one another."
"People in my interviews and focus groups often define 'authenticity' as the opposite of generic. They equate authentic with being 'real,' as in a place that has real buildings, real people, real history. An authentic place also offers unique and original experiences. Thus a place full of chain stores, chain restaurants, and nightclubs is not authentic: Not only do these venues look pretty much the same everywhere, they offer the same experience you could have anywhere."
"As I tell city and regional leaders around the country, the key to success today lies in developing a world class people climate. While it certainly remains important to have a solid business climate, having an effective people climate is even more essential. By this I mean a general strategy aimed at attracting people--especially, but not limited to, creative people. This entails remaining open to diversity and actively working to cultivate it, and investing in the lifestyle amenities taht people really want and use often, as opposed to financial incentives to attract companies, build professional sports stadiums or develop retail complexes."
Jacobs, Jane
1961 The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House, New York.
“Successful street neighborhoods . . . are not discrete units. They are physical, social and economic continuities--small scale to be sure, but small scale in the sense that the lengths of fibers making up a rope are small scale."
"Almost nobody travels willingly from sameness to sameness and repetition to repetition, even if the physical effort required is trivial."
"The benefits that cities offer to smallness are just as marked in retail trade, cultural facilities and entertainment. This is because city populations are large enough to support wide ranges of variety and choice in these things."
"The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets.”
“. . . effectiveness means that the mixtures of people on a street at one time of day must bear some reasonably proportionate relationship to people there at other times of day. . . It has often been observed that lively downtowns are apt to have dwellings fingering into them and close beside them, and night uses these residents enjoy and help support. This is an accurate observation so far as it goes, and on the strength of it many cities are expecting miracles from residential projects downtown . . . But in real life, where such combinations have vitality the residents are part of a very complex pool of downtown day, night and week-end uses in reasonable balance.”
“I have been dwelling upon downtowns. This is not because mixtures of primary uses are unneeded elsewhere in cities. On the contrary they are needed, and the success of mixtures downtown (or in the most intensive portions of cities, whatever they are called) is related to the mixture possible in other parts of cities.
I have been dwelling on downtowns for two reasons in particular. First, insufficient primary mixture is typically the principal fault in our downtowns, and often the only disastrous basic fault. Most big-city downtowns fulfill—or in the past did fulfill—all four of the necessary conditions for generating diversity. That is why they were able to become downtowns. Today, typically, they still do fulfill three of the conditions. But they have become (for reasons that will be discussed in Chapter Thirteen) too predominately devoted to work and contain too few people after working hours. This condition has been more or less formalized in planning jargon, which no longer speaks for “downtown” but instead of “CBD’s”—standing for Central Business Districts. A Central Business District that lives up to its name and is truly described by it is a dud. . . . Most have, in addition to their working people, a good many daytime shoppers during working hours and on Saturdays. But most are on their way toward this unbalance, and have fewer potential assets than lower Manhattan has for retrieving themselves.
The second reason for emphasizing primary mixtures downtown is the direct effect on other parts of cities. Probably everyone is aware of certain general dependencies by a city on its heart. When a city heart stagnates or disintegrates, a city as a social neighborhood of the whole begins to suffer: People who ought to get together, by means of central activities that are failing, fail to get together. Ideas and money that ought to meet, and do so often only by happenstance in a place of central vitality, fail to meet. The networks of city public life develop gaps they cannot afford. Without a strong and inclusive central heart, a city tends to become a collection of interests isolated from one another. It falters at producing something greater, socially, culturally and economically, than the sum of its separated parts.”
“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation—although these make fine ingredients—but also a good lot of plain, ordinary low-value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings.”
“Monopoly planning can make financial successes of such inherently inefficient and stagnant one-age operations. But it cannot thereby create, in some magical fashion, an equivalent to city diversity. Nor can it substitute for the inherent efficiency, in cities, of mingled age and inherently varied overhead.”
“Planning for vitality must stimulate and catalyze the greatest possible range and quantity of diversity among uses and among people throughout each district of a big city; this is the underlying foundation of city economic strength, social vitality and magnetism. To do this, planners must diagnose, in specific places, specifically what is lacking to generate diversity, and then aim at helping to supply the lacks as best they can be supplied.”
Putnam, Robert D.
2001 Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, New York.
“. . . the recent declines in all forms of civic engagement are virtually identical everywhere—in cities, big and small, in suburbs, in small towns, and in the countryside. No part of America, from the smallest hamlet on up the scale has been immune from this epidemic. So more must surely be involved than simply urbanization.
Could disengagement perhaps be linked not to urbanization, but to suburbanization? Suburbs have been a feature of American life since the mid-nineteenth century, driven in large measure by revolutions in transportation. First the streetcar and later the automobile enabled millions of us to live on the leafy urban periphery while enjoying the economic, commercial, and cultural advantages of the city. After World War II wide- spread car ownership combined with a government-subsidized road- and homebuilding boom to produce accelerated movement to the suburbs, not different in kind from the earlier trends, but different in degree.
Suburbanization meant greater separation of workplace and residence and great segregation by race and class. Such segregation was hardly new to American cities, but increasingly in the postwar period it took on new character. In the classic American city neighborhoods tended to be homogeneous, but municipalities were hetero- geneous, often in a crazy-quilt pattern with Ukrainian blocks adjacent to Irish areas, Jewish neighborhoods next to black ones, and servants living near the upper-class homes they served. In a suburbanized America municipalities were increasingly homogeneous in ethnic and class terms.”
Speck, Jeff
2005 Making Better Places: Ten City Design Resolutions. Electronic document,
http://www.planetizen.com, accessed October 19, 2006.
America's cities are changing every day. Some are becoming better places to live, some worse. Cities improve or worsen as a result of many intersecting forces, but if any one person has the ability to lead this change -- or at least exert an influence -- it is the American mayor.
One of the best unheralded programs of the National Endowment for the Arts is the Mayors' Institute on City Design. For almost twenty years, this group has been putting mayors together with designers to rethink the shape of their cities. After eighteen months working with this program, a number of design truisms that I once understood mostly in theory have become painfully obvious in practice. That many of these items are common sense does not alter the fact that mayors every day make decisions large and small that violate them outright. So, for all the mayors today who want to make better places, and for the citizens who want to help, I offer the following ten City Design Resolutions for the New Year. Those who wish to call them commandments are welcome to do so.
1. Design Streets for People
What attracts people to cities? For most, it is the public realm, with the vibrant street life that phrase implies. A successful public realm is one that people can inhabit com fortably on foot. Unfortunately, most cities today still allow their streets to be designed by traffic engineers who ignore the real needs of pedestrians. For example, parallel parking, essential to protecting people on the sidewalk, is often eliminated to speed the traffic. Every aspect of the streetscape, including lane widths, curbs, sidewalks, trees, and lighting can be designed to the needs of either cars or people. Too many cities favor the former.
2. Overrule the Specialists
Engineers are not alone in their quest to shape the city around specialized needs. The modern world is full of experts who are paid to ignore criteria beyond their profession. But the specialist is the enemy of the city, which is by definition a general enterprise. The school and parks departments will push for fewer, larger facilities, since these are easier to maintain. The public works department will insist that new neighborhoods be designed principally around snow and trash removal. The department of transportation will build new roads to ease traffic generated by the very sprawl that they cause. Each of these approaches may be correct in a vacuum, but is wrong in a city. Cities need generalists like mayors to weigh the advice of specialists against the common good.
3. Mix the Uses
Another key to active street life is creating a 24-hour city, with neighborhoods so diverse in use that they are occupied around the clock. Eating, shopping, working, socializing-these activities are mutually reinforcing and flourish in each other's presence. Moreover, many businesses such as restaurants and health clubs rely on both daytime and evening traffic to cover their rent. When considering the future of any city district, the first step should be to ask what uses are missing. In many downtowns, the answer to that question is housing, and cities from Providence to San Diego can point to new housing as a big part of a recent turnaround. In Up from Zero, Paul Goldberger is dead-on in bemoaning the main error of the World Trade Center planning process, its failure to introduce any housing into those sixteen commercial acres.
4. Hide the Parking Lots
If they are to keep walking, pedestrians must feel safe, comfortable - and entertained. And nothing is more boring than a parking lot. Whether they are open-air or six-stories tall, parking lots must be banished along any street that hopes to attract walking. Happily, parking lots are easy to hide. It only takes a 20-foot-thick crust of housing or offices to block a huge lot from view, and new parking structures can easily be built atop ground-level shops. Smart cities across the country are putting these requirements into law. Is yours?
5. Small is Beautiful
People are small, and the most walkable cities acknowledge this fact with small blocks, small streets, small buildings, and small increments of investment. Portland owes much of its success to its tiny blocks that create an incredibly porous network of streets, each of which can be quite small as a result. Whether for the mega-block housing schemes of the sixties or the cul-de-sac craze of the eighties, most cities that have closed streets in the past now wish they hadn't. Building height is another place for smallness. Only in the densest cities, where land doesn't sit empty as parking lots, are tall buildings justified. Otherwise, allowing skyscrapers just causes a few lucky sites to become overbuilt while their neighbors all lay fallow under massive speculation. Limiting building heights is also a useful bargaining chip: only with a height limit in place can height bonuses then be offered as an incentive for other concessions. Finally, a healthy real-estate development community is one of chipmunks, not gorillas. Do not tie the fate of your city to a single corporate juggernaut with its silver-bullet megamall when you should instead be leading the way for the local investor who wants to renovate a rowhouse.
6. Save That Building
How many buildings do we need to tear down before we learn our lesson? Almost every city that deeply regrets the 1960s destruction of its 1900s structures is happily permitting the 2000s destruction of 1940s structures. Need the march of time only confirm our current ignorance? Historic preservation may be our best way to respect our ancestors, but it is justified on economic terms alone. Don Rypkema reminds us that in market economies, it is the differentiated product that commands a monetary premium. This is why cities like Savannah and Miami Beach can point to historic preservation as the key ingredient in recent booms. It isn't always easy to find a productive use for an empty old building, but tearing it down makes that outcome impossible. In these cases, remember the old adage: "don't do something; just stand there!"
7. Build Normal (Affordable) Housing
Affordable housing remains a crisis in most cities, but the solution is not to build more housing projects. Rather, to be successful, affordable housing must do two things: be integrated with market rate housing, and look like market-rate housing. The most effective affordability programs combine housing with preservation by building city-owned houses on "missing tooth" empty lots in struggling historic neighborhoods. These houses provide smaller-than-standard apartments, but they are stylistically compatible with their neighbors. Despite the best-intentioned efforts of three gener- ations of architecture students, affordable housing is exactly the wrong place to pioneer new design styles. Experiment on the rich; they can always move out.
8. Build Green / Grow Green
People have been talking about sustainable architecture for decades, but that movement has finally hit the tipping point with the advent of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED standards. There is no longer any excuse for not building green. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, and the standards allow a building to become certified as sustainable in terms of its resource use and interior health. It costs a little bit more to build green, but these costs are made up quickly in energy savings and worker productivity. Chicago and Seattle are two of many cities that now require all municipal buildings be LEED certified. Does yours? Oh, and while we're on the subject of green: Plant more trees! If mayors understood the correlation between tree cover and real estate value, our cities would look like forests.
9. Question your Codes
A "dingbat" is an apartment house on stilts floating above an exposed parking lot. The construction of one dingbat on a street of elegant rowhouses is enough to send property values plummeting. Why, then, do most city codes make no distinction between rowhouses and dingbats? Conventional zoning codes, made up of incomprehensible statistics like floor area ratios, ignore the differences between pleasant and unbearable urbanism. More often than not, they also make a city's traditional urban form-short front setbacks and mixed uses-illegal to emulate. For these reasons, a new generation of design ordinances is gaining favor among planners. Called form-based codes, these ordinances regulate what really matters: a building's height, disposition, location, and where it puts the parking. These codes actually have pictures in them-imagine! Cities including Arlington, Virginia, and Miami are creating form-based codes for key neighborhoods. Governor Schwarzenegger just signed a bill encouraging form-based codes in California. What does the Arnold know that your city doesn't?
10. Don't Forget Beauty
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley reminds us that cities should be places that make the heart sing. For many of our citizens, especially those too poor or infirm to travel, the city is an entire world. For this reason, it is our responsibility to create and maintain cities that not only function properly, but also afford moments of beauty. Yet how many communities today routinely award to the lowest bidder their contracts for schools, parks, and government buildings, the only investments that belong to us all? In the interest of short-term parsimony, we cheat ourselves out of an honorable public realm and a noble legacy. This did not use to be the case, and it need not continue. Many of the nation's most beautiful buildings and parks were built during periods of unparalleled adversity. It should not take another depression to make civic structures lovely again.
Cities are the largest and most complex things that we humans make. Despite evidence to the contrary, the knowledge exists on how to make them well. To the mayors -- and citizens -- who want to create better places: please start here.
City planner Jeff Speck is director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversees the Mayors' Institute on City Design. He is the co-Author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.
Kay, Jane Holtz ". . . what people want is a car-lite landscape. What people don't want . . . are places that look like strip malls. They don't want concrete islands or wide streets. What they do want are older places, the shaded sidewalks, houses with detail, Main Streets with life and texture. They want the amenities of car-free architecture on teh small scale. This is what altering zoning to allow a new kind of land use can allow." ". . . vintage, pedestrian-friendly places not only earn the elusive quality of 'charm' but also make cars uncomfortable. For that is the other axiom of how to escape the auto age. Two things are mutually exclusive: sense of places and space for cars. The more parking space, teh less sense of place. Reverse it and you have a graceful, easier life. Whatever the problems built into our car culture, however difficult the process of change, reducing the number of cars enlarges the richness of the environment."
1997 Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over American and How We Can Take it Back. Crown Publishing, Inc., New York.
“In the end zonging's insistence on isolating uses--home here, office there, school or library one place, store another--have made life nearly impossible without an auto- mobile. It is time to change this. We must bring back the corner-store culture: the walkable block, the next-door neighbor, the nearby library and school."
Grawe, Sam
2006 Creating Context: Kansas City, Missouri. Dwell. October:164-173.
[Click Here to View Full Article]
10 May 2007 (WWeekly)
"Historic proportions "
By: J. Eric Thomason, Guest Contributor.
As Lexington marches into the 21st century full steam ahead, it truly is at a crossroads in not only its quest to revitalize downtown but to also become home to a top 20 research institution in the form of the University of Kentucky. In many ways these two seemingly disparate goals go hand in hand.
If asked to name downtown Lexington’s most vibrant area, anyone familiar with downtown will likely name the collection of entertainment venues, restaurants and bars located at the intersection of Limestone and Main Streets. Just as the downtown core is at a figurative crossroads, the intersection of these two important streets serve as Lexington’s literal crossroads; where east meets west, north meets south, and those from a variety of backgrounds gather in a multitude representing true diversity.
Downtown Lexington has the foundation for a vibrant downtown and it takes this vibrant downtown to attract not only prospective students but also high-profile faculty to UK. These people make up the group that Richard Florida, the father of this field of study, calls the Creative Class. In Florida’s words: “The Creative Class is drawn to more organic and indigenous street-level culture...The culture is ‘street level’ because it tends to cluster along certain streets lined with a multitude of small venues...The scene may spill out onto the sidewalks...It is not just a scene but many: a music scene, an art scene, a film scene, outdoor recreation scene, nightlife scene, and so on – all reinforcing one another.”
This scene exists in Lexington and isn’t on the fringe, but in the city center. Existing businesses such as Mia’s, the Dame, Buster’s, McCarthy’s, as well as a number of others rely on a symbiotic relationship that has not been engineered but is organic and alive. Furthermore, these businesses serve the needs of the Creative Class who choose not to envelope themselves in sameness, of which Lexington is not devoid, but instead flock to a downtown full of character. To borrow a term from the art world, members of the Creative Class have an innate horror vacui (fear of open spaces), thus drawing them away from places such as Hamburg and toward what is described above.
Why do these businesses, catering to and built on diversity, exist as they do and where they do? The buildings that house the businesses mentioned above, as well as many of the other popular spots downtown, are mainly historic and amongst the oldest in the city. These businesses exist here because they rely on the character as well as the adaptive and organic nature of historic buildings to serve their needs.
In order for Lexington’s downtown revitalization to proceed, it must first make use of the remaining historic buildings downtown and use these to foster small businesses that not only contribute to the success of other small businesses but also to the overall success of the city, the success of the University of Kentucky and an improved quality of life for those who not only work downtown, but also make downtown home, and spend their entertainment dollars and pleasure hours in the downtown core.
Lexington’s civic leadership is fully aware of this need to maintain and preserve the important ties to Lexington’s past and use this as a cornerstone for future revitalization and redevelopment efforts. Over the past 10 years, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on studies that have the eventual goal of making downtown Lexington a better place.
The College Town Study, completed in 2002 and funded by the University of Kentucky and the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, provides several recommendations for forming a better link between the city of Lexington and the often-cloistered University of Kentucky. To quote the study: “Important to the successful development of the study area is the retention of older and historic buildings, development of housing and retail space that not only increases density, but responds to the surrounding architectural character.” Also, the recently released draft issue of the Downtown Lexington Masterplan calls for respect of the existing historic fabric and “compatible uses that complement the community’s attributes and needs.”
Where do we fit into this picture? Namely, it is up to us to spend our dollars locally (i.e. downtown), and by doing so not only support existing businesses but also encourage new businesses to fill previously unexploited niches. Also, despite popular perceptions, our locally elected officials are receptive to public opinion, and if public opinion is in favor of historic preservation, they will work to change existing design guidelines and zoning ordinances to promote not only quality infill development but infill development that meshes well with historic structures and continues to foster the established businesses that already exist downtown.
Finally, and most importantly, the property owners and developers who have their sights set on downtown must realize the value of historic properties and do what they can to overlook short-term profit in favor of an increased long-term return and an improved quality of life for all those involved. Economic studies show that historic buildings have a higher long-term return with a significantly decreased initial investment.
To close, I think it is best to quote the foremost expert on economics and historic preservation who happens to be familiar with not only Lexington’s situation but that of cities throughout the United States and the world that are facing the same dilemma. In the words of Donovan D. Rypkema, principal of PlaceEconomics: “Preservation has become a means of downtown revitalization, neighborhood stabilization, affordable housing, luxury housing, heritage tourism, education and economic development.”
I’m excited about the future of Lexington and feel that we truly are on the cusp of greatness. W
J. Eric Thomason is a board member of Preserve Lexington, a local non-profit group formed to prevent the destruction of downtown Lexington’s historic and cultural fabric. For more information on the group, visit their Web site at www.preservelexington.org.
4 May 2007 (Business Lexington)
"The future of Lexington is more dependent on preservation than you might think "
By: Jackie Horlbeck, Guest commentary.
Mayor Jim Newberry’s proposed budget last month was “a breath of fresh air,” as Urban County Councilwoman Linda Gorton stated. Indeed, the proposed budget has all the makings of the birth of a new and improved city, with an emphasis on parks, planning and urban redevelopment. Yet one important part of the equation for making Lexington one of the best places to live, work and visit was missing from the budget and the vision that budget inspires: historic preservation. The historic preservation division of the city received a $52,000 increase in the proposed budget from last year, while the planning department received a $600,000 increase. While planning remains an integral part of the scheme for the continuing revitalization of the city, it appears historic preservation is still on the fringes of Lexington’s future plans. But it shouldn’t be allocated to a minor role in the city’s plans, and here’s why.
Think of a city people love to visit and would love to live in, if given the chance. Common names that come to mind include Savannah, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Asheville, N.C., and Charleston, S.C. Want to add Lexington to this list? Lexington can be one of the greatest small cities in the country as long as we maintain and improve our existing historic buildings, construct high-quality infill and promote local businesses — three criteria that should be a part of the city’s future plans. Economic expert Donovan Rypkema recently presented his research on the important role of preservation in the livelihood of cities to members of Lexington’s civic and business communities. One of Rypkema’s more potent statements during the talk was one that also summarized his research. To paraphrase, Rypkema said he had never seen a successful city revitalization (whether it was a large or small city) that did not include historic preservation. Successful cities are ones that utilize their historic buildings as assets, not as afterthoughts. A city with an inventory of historic buildings already has all the ingredients in place for such contemporary planning schemes as smart growth and new urbanism. Historic downtowns have all the qualities that urban planners continually strive for: they are pedestrian friendly, walkable and have mixed commercial and residential uses. Most importantly, they are teeming with all those intangibles that promote a high quality of life: aesthetics, environment, a sense of place, a sense of identity, authenticity and community. These are items that planners and developers find hard to replicate in new construction, and more often than not, they fall well short of success in their attempts.
Last October, the Lexington Herald-Leader featured an article on Madison, Wis., a city of comparable size and demographics to Lexington, and a city that could provide a good model for Lexington to strive towards. The Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Web site features a page devoted to all of the rankings that have been bestowed on the city, and the list is astounding. Madison has been ranked as the number one walking city, one of the top 25 places to live, the fourth brainiest city, the number one small-sized city for creativity, the third greatest college town and the second best place to live and work, to name just a few. And guess what? Madison has a thriving assemblage of historic buildings that are bustling with restaurants, boutiques and coffee shops, all supported in large part by the local university students. Madison has successfully become a haven for the creative class, which has emerged as one of the most important economic classes in shaping our current cities. Cities like Madison that have attracted the creative class share common elements. Among these elements listed by Richard Florida, the chief sociologist who has researched the creative class, are: outdoor recreation, authenticity, uniqueness, diversity, historic neighborhoods, rehabilitated historic buildings and a “vibrant and varied” nightlife.
We need not look outside our state line to see what a city is doing to attract the creative class and to revitalize their city, all with a resounding emphasis on historic preservation. Paducah’s artist relocation program has been a tremendous success story, advocating the balance of economics and preservation, along with the creative class. Started in 2000, Paducah’s artist relocation program now has more than 70 participants who have bought and rehabilitated historic homes in Lowertown, a neighborhood that was in decline before the program began. Artists from all over the country have chosen to live in Paducah, to become homeowners and gallery owners, and to ultimately revive and resuscitate a dying neighborhood, all with the help of a local bank providing low-interest loans to participants.
Jackie Horlbeck is a board member of Preserve Lexington — online at www.preservelexington.org.
12 April 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Lexington City Hall: renovate or rebuild?"
By: Michelle Ku, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
http://www.kentucky.com/211/story/40345.html
10 April 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Architects key to vibrant downtown"
By: Harold Tate, Executive Director of the Lexington Downtown Development Authority.
http://www.kentucky.com/589/story/38396.html
28 March 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Council hears task force pitch for 'The Vine'"
By: Michelle Ku, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
http://www.kentucky.com/211/story/28027.html
17 March 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"'Fabulous' neighborhoods, but downtown needs work: Preservation expert passes through historic Lexington "
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
http://www.kentucky.com/605/story/19406.html
3 March 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"'Distillery District' in works downtown: Developer wants to honor city's past, bring new life to Manchester St. corridor"
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
26 February 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Rules, oversight, tax credits part of historic preservation."
By: David Pollack, Interim Executive Director of the Kentucky Heritage Council.
23 February 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Gratz Park Inn will be getting even plusher: New lead manager wants it known at 'the place to stay in Lexington'"
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
18 February 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"Co-owner of Mad Hatter was a fixture of downtown Lexington:
HE WAS BORN INTO RETAIL -- ABOVE PARENTS' SHOP"
By: Cassondra Kirby, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
5 February 2007 (Lexington Herald-Leader )
"New plan would put pizazz in downtown. Envisioned: 2-way streets, more people."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
29 December 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Preservationist David Morgan moving to D.C.: Had helped start Main Street program in Kentucky."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
14 December 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"South Hill project announced: Blue Grass Cigar Co. building to house 4 upscale loft condos, offices."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
29 November 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Something for everyone: vision includes homes, stores, offices."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
17 November 2006 (Business Lexington )
"Hyatt to change hands and receive makeover."
By: Tom Martin, Business Lexington Editor in Chief.
The Rhode Island-based Procaccianti Group, one of the top ten privately held hotel owner-operators in the United States, has made a non- refundable deposit on the property and anticipates closing on November 30, 2007. The deal will make the Hyatt its 46th property in 17 states.
“The Lexington hospitality market is a lot of ‘haves and have nots.’ So there’s a bit of a dichotomy,” said Procaccianti Group Chief Investment Officer Rob Leven in Atlanta. “We think this hotel has — because of its physical condition and some of its ownership difficulties over the last ten years -- fallen into the have-not category. Based on its location with the connection to the (Lexington) Center, it should be in the ‘have’ category. We plan to put it back there.”
Hyatt spokesman Jim Abrahamson confirmed the deal, but declined further comment.
Total makeover in the works
“There will be massive physical changes,” Leven said of his company’s plans for the renovation of the 365-room hotel. Preparations are expected to commence almost immediately after the closing with full-scale renovation underway by May of ‘07. “There isn’t going to be too much that won’t be touched ... It’ll be a complete and total redo of all the guest rooms, corridors; it’ll be a complete redo of all of the meeting space. There will be some changes and work done to the lobby and bar area - those are being designed as we speak. There is also a whole bunch of mechanical and physical plant issues that need to be addressed a complete updating of the elevator machinery, which is long overdue (and is now underway). There will be a replacement of all of the fan coil heating and air conditioning units in the guestrooms. The list goes on and on.”
The hotel will continue operating while the work is underway, he said. “We always do these things in phases, and we’ve gotten fairly good at doing this stuff around the business of the hotel. That’s not to say that there won’t be disruption. It’s never ideal, but the finished product is worth it to future guests.”
Leven said plans call for Procaccianti to operate the hotel as a franchisee under a license agreement, an arrangement that signals a new direction for Hyatt. “Hyatt has traditionally not been a franchiser of their brand. They really just in the last six months have decided to selectively identify a handful of owners and management companies who they are going to be rolling-out this full-service franchising program with. We are part of this small, select group of approved owners and operators for Hyatt.”
Most current employees are expected to remain. Leven said there is also a core group of long-term Hyatt employees who want to remain with that company who “will be moving on” within the chain. The company is actively working to recruit a new general manager.
The Procaccianti Group has owned or developed properties in 16 states valued at more than $4 billion. Those properties include 45 hotels representing a range of brands, which include Westin, Marriott, Hilton, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental and Radisson as well as Holiday Inn, Double Tree, Comfort Inn, Sheraton, Wyndham and Renaissance. The company’s expertise, said Leven, has included working hand-in-glove with entities similar to the Lexington Center Corporation. “We have a pretty good track record of coming in and revitalizing the relationship between a headquarter hotel and a convention center. We have positive relationships in the places where we have done it so we expect the exact same thing to happen in Lexington.”
With completion expected by spring of 2008, the Hyatt will be in position to offer sparkling new facilities for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in 2010. “With the type of person we’re going to bring in, we would like to have as many first-class hotel room, or renovated hotel rooms as possible,” said World Games 2010 Foundation CEO Jack Kelly. “It will be an advantage to us to have more first- class hotel rooms because we know we have a high level of demand for that level of quality.”
Perhaps as a positive omen, Procaccianti’s Rob Leven was highly complementary of the reception he and his company have encountered in Lexington. “I will say that all of the people we’ve spoken to — at the city, at the Convention and Visitors •Bureau, the folks over ‘at the Convention Center — they couldn’t be more accommodating and excited to work with us and do everything they can to help us achieve what we need to achieve. Sometimes we don’t walk into such open arms, so I think this should be a very, very positive experience for everybody.”
For Downtown Development Authority president and CEO Harold Tate, it already is. “This is a great step in the continuing positive efforts toward the redevelopment of downtown. With the completed renovation of the Lexington Center, the rehabilitation of the Hyatt, the completion of 500s on Main and all the other activities downtown, our downtown will become the ‘Gem’ of the Bluegrass.”
17 November 2006 (Business Lexington )
"Urbane Infill"
By: Tom Martin, Business Lexington Editor in Chief.
29 October 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"How Does Lexington Stack Up Against Madison "
By: Jamie Gumbrecht, Herald Leader Culture Writer.
November 2006 (Chevy Chaser Magazine)
Reprint of: "Downtown dilemma: can preservation persevere in the face of new developments."
By: Robbie Clark, W Weekly Editor.
19 October 2006 (W Weekly)
"Downtown dilemma: can preservation persevere in the face of new developments."
By: Robbie Clark, W Weekly Editor.
[AdobePDF Reader Required to View: Click Here to Download]
12 October 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Grocers Might Return to Downtown: Developer Says One Food Store Has Signed Letter of Intent."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
27 September 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Visualize Two-Way Traffic: Study Looks at Impact of Changing Eight Downtown Streets."
By: Beverly Fortune, Herald Leader Staff Writer.
18 September 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Encourage Infill Development Downtown."
By: Harold Tate, Director of the Lexington Downtown Development Authority.
13 August 2006 (Lexington Herald-Leader)
"Lexington Should Grow Up, Not Out: Let's Discuss Ways to Overcome Obstacles to Developing Infill."
Editorial.
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Preserve Lexington is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that relies on tax-deductible contributions for support and to continue its mission of preserving downtown Lexington's cultural fabric. For information or to make a contribution, please contact us at info@preservelexington.org.
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