Wedged behind the marquee of the Ohio Theater on Fourth Street, an enormous crane was spotted this morning hauling materials up and down the 15 floors that separate the roof of the Brown Hotel from the sidewalk. That’s quite a reach.
A vacant lot in the Russell neighborhood has been transformed into a fruit-filled community orchard. This past Friday, July 15, community leaders and officials gathered at the corner of 30th Street and Cedar Street to celebrate the opening of the new public space.
Called Produce Park, the space is a collaborative effort of the nonprofit Louisville Grows and Metro Louisville’s Office of Vacant & Public Property Administration (VPPA). Landscape architecture firm Gresham Smith & Partners worked as technical assistant on the design team, which included students from the University of Kentucky’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Patrick Henry Landscape Architects. The park was created with $30,000 in funds from Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s Innovation & Delivery Team provided by a grant from the Bloomberg Fund.
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Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Mural by Margaret Morley and community members on the side of storage container. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Mural by Margaret Morley and community members on the side of storage container. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Mayor Fischer at Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
Within the park, peaches, cherries, apples, plums, and flowers will be available for residents to pick and enjoy. Louisville Grows, which will manage the site, expects the park to become an educational center for the community in addition to a place to gather food.
Louisville Grows Executive Director Valerie Magnuson at Produce Park. (Jinn Bug / Courtesy Louisville Grows)
A mural painted onto a storage shed for Louisville grows explains the purpose of the park: “This is your orchard. This fruit is your fruit. This space is your space. Pick ripe fruit. Leave some for your neighbors.”
The park site. (Courtesy Google)
The idea grew out of the award-winning RSquared 40212 program looking at opportunities to “reuse and revitalize” parts of Russell, Portland, and Shawnee within the 40212 zip code.
Produce Park is located at 441 South 30th Street, directly across the street from the planned West Louisville FoodPort. The park is expected to run for three years.
If aliens came to Earth, who would they assume is in control — people or cars? Cars, of course. That’s the premise of this 50-year-old animation dug up by Alex Ihnen at NextSTL.
It’s worth noting, says Ihnen, that the piece was made by Canadians:
It tells the story of aliens viewing earth and concluding that the automobile is the dominant species on the planet. It’s a biting commentary, and the culture that produced it is the same that prevented highways from decimating Vancouver, and other Canadian cities to the extent of their American counterparts. It’s hard to imagine an American equivalent, though even locally around the same time we were well [aware] of the negative impacts of the automobile [Mass Transit as a Regional Priority – St. Louis 1965].
Ihnen also posts this summary from the National Film Board of Canada:
This animated short proposes what many earthlings have long feared — that the automobile has inherited the planet. When life on Earth is portrayed as one long, unending conga-line of cars, a crew of extra-terrestrial visitors understandably assume they are the dominant race. While humans, on the other hand, are merely parasites. An Oscar® nominee, this film serves as an entertaining case study.
Make sure to watch til the end — the best satire is in the final minute.
[This article has been cross-posted from our partner, Streetsblog.]
Officials in Jeffersonville broke ground on a three-story, 93-room Marriott TownePlace Suites across from the Big Four Bridge last week.
The hotel is located on the corner of Mulberry Street and Maple Street on the 1.3-acre site of the former Rose Hill Elementary School. The developer, ARC, and hotel partner, Dora Hotel Company, expect the 56,000-square-foot project to be complete by the beginning of April 2017, according to the News & Tribune.
When we last wrote about the project in March, developers had planned a small retail section on the corner, but those plans have been removed in the final design. Developers opted instead for more guest common space and an indoor pool rather than retail, despite being directly across the street from the wildly popular Big Four Station park.
(Courtesy ARC / Dora Hospitality)
The design of the L-shaped structure has changed slightly as well, with a greater color differentiation of a series of false facades meant to evoke the scale of urban buildings found in downtown Jeffersonville. Developers took input from neighbors on what those facades should look like. Ultimately, other developments attempting this faux-facade aesthetic have failed to create a believable final product. Especially when retail, a common element to such urban buildings, is missing.
Sidewalks also remain an issue at the site. Ninety-degree parking adds a few additional spaces, but forces pedestrians to walk in a zig-zag fashion around the parked cars.
Project site. (Courtesy Google)
The project is being touted as a public-private partnership and has been funded in part by tax breaks. It seems with such a prominent site, however, that Jeffersonville could have requested a slightly more amenity-rich project.
Plans for the property date back three years when ARC purchased the old school building, then converted into affordable housing on a weekly basis for men. Initial plans called for residences, but plans changed when Jeffersonville sought to develop a park next door into townhouses.
“This was a bad area in the city of Jeff. This was sleeping rooms for men,” Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore said at the groundbreaking. “The next step was the Clark County jail. Here is how partnering with the city and developers pays off. We’ve improved the quality of life.”
[Top image courtesy City of Jeffersonville / Facebook.]
Among the perennial concerns of Louisville urban dwellers is a lack of grocery stores in and around Downtown. But a group of citizens is hoping to change that with the Louisville Food Cooperative, and you’re invited to weigh in at an upcoming meeting taking place Tuesday, August 2 at 1619 Flux, 1619 West Market Street. The meeting is scheduled from 6:00 to 8:00p.m.
“A small steering committee has been meeting for a year conducting research and creating a structure to invite more community input for a community-owned grocery store to be located in one of Louisville’s downtown neighborhoods,” a Coop representative wrote to Broken Sidewalk in an email.
The goal of the meeting is to educate the larger community about cooperative economics and provide updates on progress to open a food coop in Louisville.
“The Louisville Food Cooperative will be a unique grocery store open to the public year around, with a priority placed on supplying local and regional organic products at comparable prices,” the group wrote. “While no specific location has yet been solidified, the steering committee has identified several locations in the city’s downtown core that will serve shoppers who currently have limited access to quality food products.”
The project site. (Map by Google; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
Turnier acquired the site, an empty gravel lot, years ago with plans of building a retail and wholesale grocery store. “We thought at the time going in there with a retail component to what we do would be the answer to the sparsely populated residential environment,” Turnier said of the grocery store proposal. “We thought at the time it would be what really worked where a Kroger couldn’t. Nulu took off without us.”
In the ensuing years, Turnier and his team focused on their core business, but kept hold of the land. “We looked around and we realized we really have a centerpiece of land here,” he said. “What’s the right thing for that corner? The idea became a hotel. It’s a hotel, but a little bit one-off.”
Development challenges
East Market Street facade. (Courtesy Ron Turnier)
Still, years after the project was announced, that lot at Market and Shelby is still a blank canvas. “I’m in the food service business, I don’t build many hotels,” Turnier said. He noted that there have been challenges to finding the right team, getting Tax Increment Financing (TIF) through the regulatory process, and timing to coincide with a major streetscape effort that will remake Market Street. Now, all the pieces are coming together.
Inside the AC Hotel’s lobby lounge. (Courtesy Ron Turnier)
Nulu’s AC Hotel is slated 148 hotel rooms in the building’s main mass. A parking garage with 210 spaces is planned to the north along Shelby. A 4,000-square-foot restaurant is planned inside the hotel on the corner and a lobby bar with mezzanine is planned inside. Plans for a rooftop bar have been eliminated.
Two historic structures also occupy the hotel site and will be reused, Turnier said. A temple-like structure fronting Market Street will be converted to restaurant space. The back carriage house is currently occupied by Ghyslain Chocolatier. “Gyslain will move during construction,” Turnier said. “We hope to get him back. It would be so complimentary. We want people out of the hotel and experiencing the town.”
Design
Facade detail. (Courtesy Ron Turnier)
Turnier said he was happy to work with the AC Hotel by Marriott brand to create a boutique hotel for Nulu. “Right when we began searching for what to do, Marriott bought a Spanish chain of trendy hotels,” Turnier said. “It was their perfect answer to a kind of Aloft in terms of price point.” AC Hotels feature modern design with European influences and local flare, according to Marriott.
Louisville’s AC Hotel certainly shows a higher level of refinement in its facade articulation than the typical hotel brands crowding downtown markets. From renderings, the structure shows an earthy palette of brick and copper-toned metal panels with lighter pieces adding texture.
Hotel entrance. (Courtesy Ron Turnier)
A blocky mass on the structure’s west side notes the main entrance to the hotel beneath a port cochere. Large windows fronting Market Street show off the double-height lobby lounge and restaurant space. Turnier said a focus of the design was orienting the building to the street.
There are still a few hurdles left for the project, including passing through the Nulu Review Overlay District (NROD), but Turnier remains as optimistic as ever.
“We hope to close this early fall and break ground this year,” Turnier said. “We think the project could go off in 13 months.”
Louisville Metro Public Works is proposing reconfiguring West Broadway between 22nd Street and Louis Coleman, Jr. Drive with a central turning lane in an effort to improve safety through the corridor. And now they want to hear from you at two public meetings (details below).
The street is already scheduled to be repaved between 22nd and Shawnee Park in early August, according to the city, and this project would involve a restriping for the reconfigured lanes. The area west of Louis Coleman, Jr. Drive narrows and would simply be repaved.
Extent of the turning lane. (Map by Google; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
“The main goal is to make this area safer for everyone who uses West Broadway from Shawnee Park to 22nd Street whether a pedestrian, bicyclist or motorist,” Councilwoman Cheri Bryant Hamilton (D-5) said in a statement.
According to Hamilton, the intersections of 26th, 27th, 28th, and Louis Coleman, Jr. Drive are especially problematic in the area. The reconfiguration would eliminate one lane of parallel parking throughout its bounds.
Here’s the info on the two scheduled West Broadway Open Houses:
Tuesday, July 19 — Oak & Acorn Intergenerational Center, 631 South 28th Street, from 5:30 to 6:30p.m.
Wednesday, July 27 — Shawnee Library, 3912 West Broadway, from 5:30 to 6:30p.m.
If you’d like more information but cannot attend a meeting, please contact Dirk Gowin, Louisville Metro Public Works, at 502-574-5925 or Dirk.Gowin@louisvilleky.gov.
In the past couple months, a number of important awards have been handed out across Louisville and Kentucky. Here’s our roundup of some of the biggest in the worlds of urbanism, design, preservation, and neighborhood achievement. Congratulations to all the winners!
The Grady Clay Award
First up is the Grady Clay Award, given out by the Center for Neighborhoods to “a citizen whose public life and work emphasize local and regional planning and design; and who has operated at a national level while maintaining nourishing roots within their home community.” It’s the center’s highest honor. The award is, of course, named after Louisville’s famed urbanist Grady Clay who spent decades observing Louisville as urban affairs correspondent at the Courier-Journal, editor of Landscape Architecture magazine, and as a contributor to WFPL.
This year’s Grady Clay Award winner is David Karem, president of the Waterfront Development Corporation (WDC), pictured at top. The WDC noted that Karem was selected for the award in part because of “the once pie-in-the-sky dream of revitalizing the industrial Louisville waterfront” into Waterfront Park.
Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture
Firm principals George Hargreaves, Mary Margaret Jones and Gavin McMillan. (Courtesy Cooper Hewitt)
Speaking of Waterfront Park, the landscape architects behind the project, Hargreaves Associates, were awarded the prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture this past May. The firm will be feted alongside prominent winners in architecture, communication, and interior design, among others, during National Design Week, this October 15–23 in New York City.
An awards gala at the Cooper Hewitt National Design museum is planned October 20. First Lady Michelle Obama is this year’s Honorary Patron for the National Design Awards, now in its 17th year.
Besides Louisville’s park, the San Francisco– and New York–based firm has also worked on the 274-acre parklands for London’s 2012 Olympics and Crissy Field in San Francisco, among many other high-profile projects. Hargreaves has been a leading practitioner for more than three decades.
Jack Trawick Neighborhood Association of the Year
Jack Trawick presents the award to Shelby Park’s Chip Rogalinski and Portland’s Larry Stoess as Tim Stephens watched on. (Courtesy Center for Neighborhoods)
Back in Louisville, the Center for Neighborhoods also handed out its first award for the Neighborhood Association of the Year. The award recognizes “a neighborhood association or homeowner association that has used innovation and visionary thinking to positively impact the future of its community and its organization.” The award is named for the center’s retired director, Jack Trawick.
This year’s co-winners are the Shelby Park Neighborhood Association and Portland Now. The center noted that Shelby Park was chosen in part due to its “work over the years to improve vacant and abandoned housing, creating public art, planting hundreds of trees and working with a number of organizations including New Directions Housing Corporation, MSD on the Logan Street CSO Basin,” and many others.
“Lots of work remaining, but the acknowledgement tells us all that we are on the right path,” Rogalinski wrote in an email to his neighbors. “Thank you all for contributing to the improvements and assistance in the Shelby Park neighborhood.”
Other awards from the Center for Neighborhoods included the Neighborhood Leadership Award, presented to Lisa Santos of the Irish Hill Neighborhood Association; the Collaborative Community Partner Award, given to the West Jefferson County Community Task Force and accepted by Interim Director Arnita Gadsen; and the Local Government/Public Official Award, bestowed upon Mayor Bill Dieruf of the City of Jeffersontown.
Willis Memorial Foundation Historic Preservation Award
Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown. (Courtesy 21c Museum Hotel)
In May during National Preservation Month, the Ida Lee Willis Memorial Award was given to an individual “who has demonstrated outstanding dedication to the cause of historic preservation in the Commonwealth.”
This year’s winners are 21c Museum Hotel founders Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown. The team has renovated historic buildings in Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati, and many other places to house their award-winning modern art museums and hotels.
The Willis Memorial Foundation Historic Preservation Awards are named for Ida Lee Willis, the first executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Commission (now the Kentucky Heritage Council). Willis, the widow of former Governor Simeon Willis, was appointed director in 1966. The awards are presented by the Willis Foundation n partnership with the Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Preservation Project Awards
The Ouerbacker House, seen here before renovations, has been thrown a life preserver. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Additionally, the Ida Lee Willis Memorial Foundation and the Kentucky Heritage Council recognized one Louisville project (of three award winners across the state) for a Preservation Project Award. The project award recognizes “outstanding examples of rehabilitation or preservation of historic buildings, or other types of projects that have had a significant impact on Kentucky’s built environment or historic or prehistoric places.”
The Louisville winner was the renovation of the Ouerbacker Mansion in the Russell neighborhood by Oracle Design.
Joan Riehm Memorial Environmental Leadership Award
Councilman Tom Owen with his 7th annual Joan Riehm Memorial Environmental Leadership Award. (Courtesy Bill Hollander)
The 7th annual Joan Riehm Memorial Environmental Leadership Award is a distinction for “public service employees, volunteers or students who have gone to great lengths to make Louisville a clean, green and healthier place to live, work and play.”
This year’s award was presented by Mayor Greg Fischer to 13-year Metro Councilman and 8-year Alderman Tom Owen. Owen will finish his term as Metro Councilman this fall and continue on as a professor at the University of Louisville. He has served as a history instructor, archivist, and community relations associate at the university since 1968, according to the city.
“Councilman Owen, like Joan Riehm, is a model public servant,” Mayor Fischer said in a statement. “For decades, he has not only advocated for but also led by example on issues like biking, recycling, reuse, historic preservation, and more.”
The award is named for Joan Riehm, the first female deputy mayor of the city of Louisville in 1985. Riehm also helped add the city to the Partnership for the Green City, a joint effort of Metro Louisville, U of L, Jefferson County Public Schools, and the Jefferson Community & Technical College, to improve sustainability in the community.
A proposal to reconfigure parking at Third Street’s iconic Crescent Centre Apartments would further erode the pedestrian environment in the area.
The situation on the ground at the Crescent Centre already isn’t ideal for pedestrians. Four curb cuts leading to a pair of wraparound driveways and four parking spaces on each side of the street already put motorists and walkers in conflict. And an analysis of Google maps and streetview shows the existing parking is not widely utilized. Further, the street parking that these driveways take away from Third Street appears to be greater than the number of spaces currently provided on site.
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(Courtesy Google)
(Courtesy Google)
(Courtesy Google)
(Courtesy Google)
A new proposal to up the total surface parking lot from eight to 12 parking spaces puts pedestrians at risk. The sidewalk would abruptly end into the parking lots’ 18-foot-wide curb cuts around a blind corner, forcing pedestrians into a conflict zone. A minimal pedestrian refuge on each side of Third, already cluttered with trash cans and light poles, is narrowed to make way for new wraparound driveways. The landscaped courtyards are also shrunk to make way for more asphalt.
Rendering of proposed parking lot. (Trilogy Real Estate / Via Metro Louisville)
According to Louisville’s land development code, curb cuts are not permitted in this application. “Curb cuts shall only be permitted for parking garages, off-street parking lots accommodating 10 or more vehicles, and loading areas where alley access is not available,” the code’s Chapter 5, Part 9, D2 reads.
While Fourth and Main streets are (supposed to be) protected from any surface-level parking lots, no protections are made for Third. The code continues in Chapter 5, Part 5, B1aii, “Surface parking shall be located completely behind all principal structures and shall be accessed at the rear of the property via an alley.”
Parking facilities indicated around the Crescent Centre. (Map by Google; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
Parking is certainly not a problem in Downtown, and especially around the Crescent Centre. Besides ample street parking, there’s more parking lots in the area than there are actual buildings. The Crescent Centre is a sort of green oasis set within this desert of parking lots and garages. To lose green space and pedestrian environment to store cars is not a step in the right direction.
Plans were filed July 11 on behalf of Chicago-based Trilogy Real Estate (Case Numbers 16DevPlan1150 and 16DDRO1012), owners of the complex at 631 South Third Street and 632 South Third.
Trilogy purchased the 209-unit Crescent Centre in December 2015 for $22 million, according to ReBusiness Online, or about $105,263 per unit. The complex, built in 1989, also includes around 23,000 square feet of retail space. It was previously owned by Coral Gables, Florida–based Brothers Property Corporation. The sale was brokered by Marcus & Millichap’s Aaron Willis and Aaron Johnson.
