More condos have just been unleashed on the Highlands market, and with past condo-conversion success stories in the neighborhood, Highland Development Group hopes their most recent project can defy the current real-estate odds. The four-story building (three levels of residences above parking) on Spring Drive between Village Drive and Lauderdale Road dates to 1918 and was designed by local firm Joseph & Joseph. In the last year, however, the building has been transformed into 12 luxury condos on one of the Highlands’ most renowned streets.
Transportation Issues
The lights in Jefferson Square downtown are quite nice this time of year. It’s probably been this way for quite a few years, but we noticed several corporate logos projected onto buildings along with the snowflakes and candy canes. So we decided to shine the Broken Sidewalk into all the holiday festivities (in a digital kind of way).
Don’t worry, the Kentucky Center isn’t getting fresh (well, kinda), it just wants you to know its name. The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts turned 25 this year and one of the upgrades to the facility is a new sign on Main Street above its main entrance.
Every now and again, something changes in town and you ask yourself, “Why hasn’t this happened sooner?” This is one of those cases, albeit a minor one. The sign continues with the signage found on the inside of the Kentucky Center and, we think, looks really, really nice. We may be getting a little too deep, but amid the dramatic arcs and curves and shifting planes of the building, the letters seem to be dancing delicately on the edge of a glass tightrope. Well done, Kentucky Center.
One bit of bad news, however. The restaurant space in the building most recently occupied by Jarfi’s (which moved to Bardstown Road) doesn’t look like it will see a new tenant any time soon. While the Kentucky Center would still like to see a restaurant open there, the space is now being converted into an area that can be rented out for events with catering. Over the last couple months, some sort of demolition work has been going on inside and filled dumpsters taken away. We really like that sign, though.
One of our favorite urban design techniques is the terminated vista. It’s that rare occurrence where a road’s view ends on a focal point, often a church or a monument. It’s difficult to achieve in a grid where streets tend not to dead-end, and near impossible in the suburbs. There’s a newly terminated vista in downtown, though.
If you travel north on Ninth Street / Roy Wilkins Avenue, you will see that a bend in the road allows the new ZirMed Gateway Towers to stand tall at the focal point of the tree-lined street. Now that the towers have topped off, we can see the full effect of the building keeping watch over the street.
The perspective allows for a heightened architectural effect and helps to close off the “infinite view” of a really long, straight, linear street with no end. For a view looking from inside the tower back down Ninth Street, you may want to check out these photos from the 8th floor.
Today and yesterday at the National City Tower (soon to be the PNC II?), crews massacred the many bradford pear trees one by one in the NCT Plaza on the corner of Market Street and Fifth Street. One tree was damaged earlier in the windstorm and was removed, but we thought it was only a matter of time before a scrawny replacement found its way back to the plaza. Nope. Now, every last mature tree is gone.
After we stopped by to take a look at the bloodbath in progress this morning, we were told that a slew of new, tiny trees has been planted in place of the old trees. These new trees are saplings and won’t provide summer shade in the plaza for five or ten years. The plaza is simple, but we enjoyed its dense foliage and was generally well-populated during business hours in the warm months. The mature trees formed a sort of continuous ceiling over the plaza that’s hard to find in Louisville.
A certain renovation project going on at the corner of Seventh Street and Market Street seems to be having some trouble with its name. A tipster sends us this photo this morning of the scrambled Republic Plaza signage that should soon be installed high atop the building’s new crown.
By the looks of it, these letters are 3–4 feet tall, so this could be a little more difficult than rearranging magnetic letters on a fridge. Speaking of rearranging letters, what do you see in the letters? The best we could do was Lazer Pulp Cab I. We’re sure you can do better. Tell us your descrambled message in the comments.
One of the many problems with transportation design is the obvious lack of regard for getting around without a car. We mean, come on. Who in their right mind builds a sidewalk like that? Is there a hidden camera waiting to capture inattentive pedestrians running into the pole?
