Well, that was fast. Just ten days ago, the electric jungle gym on Third Street was removing its first transformers. Today, the thing is halfway gone. There’s even a little brick building visible now we’d never noticed. We’re calling it the halfway house. The crews working to deconstruct the steel mess are from Chicago and are torch-cutting the steel into large pieces.
Once on the ground, a giant tin-snip cuts them into truck-size parts ready to be hauled away. There’s also a lot more concrete in this thing than we expected and piles of it are laying around the site. It’s estimated the entire site clearing process will take another 4 weeks, but the steel frame should be gone pretty quick at this pace. The rest of the time involves ripping up the asphalt and concrete around the site so it will soon appear that the electric jungle gym was only a bad dream.
Meanwhile, deconstruction of the electric towers five blocks west is set to speed up, too. A large red crane arrived on the backs of several semis and is waiting to be set up. This crane is huge. One commenter called the large tower at 8th Street the ‘lattice tower’, so we’re going to call it that too. It and the smaller tower just west at the foot of 10th Street should be gone soon as well.
Somehow this just seems to fit. London has Piccadilly Circus, New York has Times Square, now Louisville has Fourth & Liberty. (This isn’t actually going to happen, but what if…)
Rendering is mixed-use proposal (Courtesy Investment Property Advisors)
[ Editor’s Note: This is an update of a previous article that cited information incorrectly reported by the Courier-Journal. We gathered this new information ourselves directly from the neighborhood and developers, so hopefully this should clear up the lingering mis-information out there. ]
An entire 4.5 acre block is slated for redevelopment on the southern edge of Old Louisville adjacent to the University of Louisville. Investment Property Advisors of Valparaiso, Indiana has put together a mixed-use proposal including retail space, a mix of market rate apartments and student housing, a landscaped interior courtyard, and underground parking in an attempt to create a vibrant University Center catering to students and the community at large.
The target block is bounded by Cardinal Boulevard and Bloom Street between Third & Fourth Streets. Two historic brick houses and an apartment building on the site’s northeast corner will remain and be incorporated into the project. The Masterson’s dining room and catering service, dating to the 1950s as a diner, will be demolished under the proposal.
An original plan presented to the Old Louisville neighborhood last year called for 300 housing units with 700 beds, 50,000 square feet of commercial space, and 350 to 400 parking spaces on site, mostly underground. One of the historic buildings on site would have been demolished for surface level parking and buildings on the preliminary plan would have ranged from four to seven stories. Working with the neighborhood, the developers slightly reduced the scale of the project to around 250 units with 600 beds, limited commercial space to 28,000 square feet, and cut parking down to less than 150 spaces. Perimeter building heights were held at four stories with one five story structure in the middle of the block. The project components are still being determined and are subject to change before a final plan is announced, but the developers believe a vibrant mixed-use project is the right fit for the area so close to the University.
Block slated for mixed-use redevelopment. (Via Lojic)Block slated for mixed-use redevelopment. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
After a meeting with Old Louisville last year, the developers reworked their plan to address neighborhood concerns about size and integration into the neighborhood. As we mentioned earlier, individual components were scaled back (700 to 600 beds, 50,000 to 28,000 square feet of commercial space). Higher quality streetscape materials were also incorporated into the project including a brick alley and traditional paving materials on sidewalks. All three historic structures were also saved in the new proposal and will be used for multi-family housing and “clubhouse” amenities with a pool. The neighborhood was happy with the changes made to the proposal, but concerns about parking and traffic remained.
Block slated for mixed-use redevelopment. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)Block slated for mixed-use redevelopment. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Traffic and parking have long been a divisive point in the area surrounding U of L. Neighborhood leader Herb Fink and Councilman Unseld had at one point several years ago attempted to broker a parking garage deal between JCPS and U of L that would have placed a garage on the corner of Second Street and Cardinal Boulevard on Manual High School property. The plan faded with no financing available.
Some neighbors were concerned about retail competing with the traditional Old Louisville commercial center at Fourth and Oak Streets. We feel the areas are distinct enough and separate enough at a distance of about a mile that additional retail will only help the entire Old Louisville area. Oak Street has a good stock of historic storefronts, but high-quality new construction commercial space will draw tenants that wouldn’t normally choose to locate in a historic structure. With more business located in or near Old Louisville, all areas stand to gain, especially a compact and walkable district like Oak Street.
Rendering is mixed-use proposal. (Courtesy Investment Property Advisors)
As you can see from the project renderings (still just a proposal of what might actually end up getting built), the Masterson’s block will be fundamentally changed from the predominantly surface level parking space that exists today. It appears as though the buildings are clad predominantly in brick and some sort of infill panel with metal accents. Roof terraces have been incorporated into the project and several interior courtyards are part of the plan. One linear plaza and lawn stretching north from Cardinal Boulevard into the middle of the block looks like it has potential to create an interesting urban space.
The mixed-use project has been designed by local architects and planners Sabak, Wilson, and Lingo. The firm has considerable experience planning high-quality mixed-use and new urban neighborhoods. They have worked on both the Park DuValle new urban neighborhood and Norton Commons in eastern Jefferson County. We’re pleased that this project has incorporated many important urban qualities such as a nearly continuous urban edge around the block and an emphasis on streetscape design.
Zoning still remains the dominant concern for the project. The Old Louisville Neighborhood Plan calls for three classifications of development scale: Neighborhood General (such as the bulk of Old Louisville consisting of one and two-family dwellings), Commercial Center (a dense mixed-use area centered at Fourth & Oak), and Transition Zone (a dense area bridging between the neighborhood and commercial center). The block is currently classified under Neighborhood General and would require changes to the Traditional Neighborhood Zoning District (TNZD) which presents difficult legal problems. The project won’t be able to advance until these issues are addressed.
Rendering is mixed-use proposal. (Courtesy Investment Property Advisors)
You can see below on the proposal site plans that the buildings facing the neighborhood are set back from the street to align with the urban edge of surrounding houses while the commercial areas mainly fronting Cardinal Boulevard provide widened sidewalks. The diagonal parking shown in the plans was only a study and has been eliminated; parallel parking as it appears today will be maintained. Below, you can also get an idea about how underground parking works on the site. Parking issues still must be worked out, but we believe there is room for negotiation between the neighborhood and developers on how to proceed and meetings between the groups are scheduled for the future. This could also be an opportune time to revive the idea of a parking garage (with retail along the sidewalk, of course) at Second and Cardinal.
When we originally read in the C-J that the project had been cut from 700 beds to 150 beds among other things, it was devastating news, and luckily false. The project still has an appropriate density to create a vibrant University Center stretching south along Third Street while not overwhelming Old Louisville. The developers hope to have the project under construction by late summer, but several hurdles still exist including resolving neighborhood parking concerns, finalizing a design, and assuring proper zoning. Investment Property Advisors feel they have found an ideal opportunity for neighborhood improvement and we believe this project will do wonders to change the perception of the area adjacent to the University as one of driving and parking lots to walking and shops.
Metro Parks and the Olmsted Conservancy held an information gathering session last night seeking input on Tyler Park and the Hogan Fountain area of Cherokee Park. A $50,000 master plan will be created to guide development and restoration of the parks. The plan will be carried out by a team of landscape architects, architects, and historic preservation landscape architects under the guidance of Heritage Landscapes of Vermont. The meeting attempted to discern what works, what doesn’t work, and what should be added to the parks.
Much of the discussion involved pedestrian issues such as creating a focal point at Hogan Fountain with less asphalt paving. The large “tee-pee” pavillion atop Bonnycastle Hill also occupied much of the discussion. No one would step up and say they didn’t like the shelter or that it should be removed, but the sense that it didn’t belong in an Olmsted landscape persisted. Many believed the shelter’s 50-year history in the park had earned it a place in the park. Metro Parks officials pointed out many landscape design principles that define an Olmsted park and discussed how large architectural features such as the tee-pee were generally discouraged. The building was designed by local architects Tafel & Schickli.
We believe there is ample room for improvement at both Tyler Park and Hogan Fountain, especially relating to place-making and pedestrian issues. Tyler Park, for one, could use more defined street parking and, of course, sidewalks. The tennis courts and play areas are scattered haphazardly throughout the site, so some organization would be in order, too. In a perfect world, we’d also like to see a picnic pavillion, perhaps terminating Tyler Parkway forming a grand entry into the park.
Cherokee Park’s Hogan Fountain area suffers from similar disorganization of uses and we would like to see the area immediately surrounding the fountain start to take on its own identity apart from a monument sitting in the middle of the Scenic Loop. More large trees around the “tee-pee” could also help, too. First and foremost at both locations, though, are sidewalks (especially along Cherokee Road and Castlewood Avenue). If you can’t safely walk to the park from the neighborhoods in the first place, then little else matters.
Only a plan is being generated now, and Metro Parks won’t start a project until all funds are in the bank, so this is a long term project, but improving Louisville’s Olmsted parks large and small can only be a good thing.
Presentation Academy Arts & Athletics Complex. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
Construction continues at the site of Presentation Academy’s new Arts & Athletics Complex on the corner of Fourth Street and Breckinridge Street in SoBro. Last time we checked in, concrete walls had just been tilted up. Since then, the building has officially topped out (okay, its not that tall, but it’s a ceremonial day in the life of any building) and a roof structure has been installed.
Two large towers of power on and near the Museum Plaza site are being prepped for removal. Their wires have been snipped and new “sleek” metal-pole-towers have been strung out just in time for Mardi Gras. Crews with cranes were working on the two towers all day today removing porcelain pinecones and such, similar to the work going on at the LG&E deconstruction site on Third Street.
We’ve known this day was coming, a day foretold by the disappearing dinosaurs, but we say these towers can’t be gone soon enough. We couldn’t find any timetable, but we expect them to be gone fairly quickly. Perhaps the deconstructors could go the dramatic route and topple the thing into the empty Museum Plaza lot, but we’re a little doubtful of that.
Louisville knows how to deal with tragedy. The Windstorm 2008 might have been just the overture for the wreckage of Ice Storm 2009, but local artists have been busy transforming downed trees into works of art in classic Keep Louisville Weird fashion. We spotted our first stump sculpture in the Highlands last year and recently came across another on the corner of Sixth Street and Zane Street in the Limerick neighborhood.
We were tipped off by a recent Old Louisville Journal that tells the story of artist Eugene Thomas and his sculpture entitled Reincarnation:
First Eugene reduced the stump height to approximately 6 feet (human scale). Then he removed the bark and began his sculpture with his chain saw. Then he used wood chisels and rasps to introduce details. Depressions were filled with wood filler and he is has now completed three coats of the 10 anticipated coats of sealer.
The sculpture can be viewed from all vantage points (having no front or back). It is of human scale and symbolically depicts transition from destruction to forward movement of progress and organization.
