Meet your Metro Council candidates: District 4

Apr 14, 2016

This year, Broken Sidewalk asked each Metro Council candidate to respond to a survey of questions related to the topics we cover here on the site: urbanism, transportation, health, and the environment. Broken Sidewalk will make no endorsements this year for Metro Council candidates, but we hope these survey responses—published verbatim—are helpful to voters in making up their minds.

We will be publishing the results by district. First up is District 4. Our survey included two types of questions: 1. multiple choice answers about personal behaviors and views, and 2. longer responses on a range of topics. Each candidate was also given an optional open field to expand upon a topic of their choosing, if they so desired.

Louisville Metro Council District Four comprises Downtown Louisville along with key core neighborhoods of Russell, Butchertown, Nulu, Phoenix Hill, Smoketown, Shelby Park, Meriwether, and parts of Irish Hill, SoBro, California, and Portland. This is one important district.

Current District 4 incumbent, David Tandy, has decided not to run, so change is coming to the leadership of Louisville’s urban neighborhoods. The candidates for District 4 include, in alphabetical order, community advocate and former Tandy staffer Bryan Burns (D), JCPS employee Aletha Fields (D), Beecher Terrace Resident Council president Marshall Gazaway (D), and former Fund for the Arts president Barbara Sexton Smith (D).

Bryan Burns

Shelby Park

Have often do you walk to work or for basic errands?
Every day

Have often do you take transit to commute to work or for basic errands?
A few times a month

How often do you ride a bike to get to work or for errands?
A few times a month

How often do you drive in a personal motor vehicle?
A few times a month

How safe do you feel as a pedestrian walking on Louisville’s streets?
There’s some risk

Louisville’s transit system should expand service, infrastructure, and offerings.
Strongly Agree

The city should invest in complete street design that promotes safety for all road users.
Strongly Agree

Walkable and transit-oriented development should be promoted over auto-oriented development.
Strongly Agree

Louisville should repair and maintain its existing transportation network before widening or building new roads.
Strongly Agree

Historic architecture promotes the economic vitality of the Louisville region.
Strongly Agree

Describe your favorite walk OR your favorite place to hang out in your neighborhood.
From my home on Camp street, my absolute favorite place to walk is down Logan street, where I can either head to Smoketown USA in the day, or T. Eddie’s for karaoke at night.

What’s the biggest issue facing your district and how would you address it?
What I see as the biggest issue in District 4 is the lack of a solid foundation for our neighborhoods and families to thrive. Many of our neighborhoods suffer from a glut of vacant homes and our entire city suffers from individuals and families who live in substandard or absolutely no housing.

For our neighborhoods to flourish, we need to make sure our current and future generations have multiple and positive opportunities so that they can reach their fullest potential.

In three sentences, what does Metro Council do?
The Metro Council should be both a legislator, facilitator, and advocate for an equitable and healthy development of our city. Louisville is a diverse city and it’s important that we make sure the services that we provide and the decisions we make create a platform on which we all have a chance to grow and thrive.

The Metro Council is the steward of our environment, our geography, and our entire city; these responsibilities should be taken seriously.

Louisville is among the most dangerous cities in the country for pedestrian collisions and fatalities. What would you do to improve street safety for all road users in Louisville? Please cite specific examples.
We need to foster the slowing down of traffic, not create situations in which we encourage speeding. To this end, I would strongly push that we convert most one-way streets into two-ways. This has been shown to not only accomplish reduction in the speed of vehicles, but to actually help businesses grow!

Additionally, I think we should do what we can to get people out of single-occupancy automobiles by thoughtfully creating more bike-lanes (that make work-commutes easier) and putting more resources into pedestrian-based infrastructure (our sidewalks are crumbling!).

What does responsible development look like in Louisville and in your district? What would you do to promote responsible development in Louisville?
First, we need to stop financing sprawl, especially at the expense of our urban core. It doesn’t make any sense to suggest placing developments like the currently proposed soccer stadium on empty green-space when we already have a the old Cardinal Stadium being left to decay (this is only an example).

We need to encourage infill development and respect our history; I believe the greenest building is one that already exists.

Louisville is among the fastest warming cities in the country. Please describe your stance on fixing Louisville’s Urban Heat Island Effect. What specific steps need to be taken to solve this problem?
We need to stop creating parking lots and move in the opposite direction! Instead of encouraging driving we should make public transit and greener forms of transportation an easy choice to make!

This means expanding our public transit infrastructure (more TARC routes, easier to understand TARC routes, more bus shelters, and maybe even a serious reconsideration of light rail or trolley system).

Additionally, we should continue to partner with groups like Louisville Grows and restore and strengthen our city’s tree canopy.

How would you strike a balance between preservation, development, and economic development in Louisville?
What I would like to see is more of a “win-win” approach when it comes to development. For instance, when we grant a financial incentive to a new development like a hotel, we might pass an ordinance that requires that a percentage of TIF (Tax increment financing) district funds go towards the funding of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Through this, we can put vacant houses back into circulation and place people in homes that otherwise would live in substandard housing.

That way we can both restore our historic and vacant properties, both maintaining the character of our neighborhoods, but also creating places to live for our many residents who lack adequate housing.

These sorts of mutually beneficial options are things I would seek to push in Metro Council.

Optional open response. Discuss any issue in Louisville relating to land use, development, transportation, preservation, or health.
I would like to see us tackle both our heroin epidemic and homeless problem by embracing a “housing first” model of transitional housing. It’s a sad fact that many of our homeless population are struggling with drug problems; “housing first” allows these people to be put into homes where they can be targeted and treated for services. This model has been proven to be effective in both getting people clean, but most importantly it allows for an easier reentry into society as productive citizens.

Additionally, I would like to see our city create programming that trains citizens to hold memberships on our city’s boards and commissions a part of its nominating process. It has been a great point of contention that our city’s boards do not adequately reflect the composition of its population. Forming a program that prepares citizens throughout all of our neighborhoods to serve our city will go a long way towards solving this. This has been done in other cities and it works.

Aletha Fields

Did not respond.

Marshall Gazaway

Did not respond.

Barbara Sexton Smith

Have often do you walk to work or for basic errands?
Every day

Have often do you take transit to commute to work or for basic errands?
A few times a month

How often do you ride a bike to get to work or for errands?
A few times a month

How often do you drive in a personal motor vehicle?
A few times a month

How safe do you feel as a pedestrian walking on Louisville’s streets?
Very safe

Louisville’s transit system should expand service, infrastructure, and offerings.
Strongly Agree

The city should invest in complete street design that promotes safety for all road users.
Strongly Agree

Walkable and transit-oriented development should be promoted over auto-oriented development.
Agree

Louisville should repair and maintain its existing transportation network before widening or building new roads.
Undecided

Historic architecture promotes the economic vitality of the Louisville region.
Agree

Describe your favorite walk OR your favorite place to hang out in your neighborhood.
One of my favorite places is the bike path along River Walk and along Portland Canal. And I love to just hang out on the sidewalks where all the people are!

What’s the biggest issue facing your district and how would you address it?
There are many important and pressing issues facing our district. Accessibility to neighborhood jobs, transportation, and affordable and sustainable housing is on the top of that list. The heart of our city and the people who live there need leadership looking to the core problem of: how we are creating a sustainable live/work/play environment for the people who LIVE IN that inner core. Too often the conversation has been how do we draw folks downtown. It is time that conversation turned to how we lift and sustain the people who live here.

In three sentences, what does Metro Council do?
The Metro Council focuses on economic development, education and quality of life by creating ordinances, regulations, policies, and codes to assist in the development of jobs, housing, and services for the residents of this city. The Metro Council also stands as an advocate for the people to those services when standards are not being met. We work together so the interests of every citizen, every neighborhood, are represented when developing plans for a better tomorrow.

Louisville is among the most dangerous cities in the country for pedestrian collisions and fatalities. What would you do to improve street safety for all road users in Louisville? Please cite specific examples.
As someone who walks nearly everywhere I go this is an issue I am personally acquainted with. Greater attention must be paid both behind the wheel and on foot. Addressing this issue must begin with enforcement of our current city ordinances and traffic laws. Speeding, running lights, and jaywalking are all ticketable offenses. Tickets are not there to punish, they are there to remind you to be more mindful of your surroundings. Safer neighborhoods is one of my platforms.

What does responsible development look like in Louisville and in your district? What would you do to promote responsible development in Louisville?
We need local control and local development. From construction to plumbing to the businesses that occupy the spaces we must promote from within. Responsible development means looking to our neighborhoods and asking, will this create jobs for the people who live there? It also means: will this development create affordable housing for the people who live there. Working together with the community we can reclaim our neighborhoods and strengthen our city.

Louisville is among the fastest warming cities in the country. Please describe your stance on fixing Louisville’s Urban Heat Island Effect. What specific steps need to be taken to solve this problem?
Metro Government must seriously evaluate and measure how we are enforcing the air quality regulations we already have. We must enforce and collect fines on current violations. We must hold industry accountable for their actions and end the “look the other way” “Just this once” exceptions that exist within the structure. Fines exist to create balance and offset the cost of repairing harm done.

In addition to enforcement, we have a growing interest in District 4 for community gardening. Working with developers to modify roofs to create new and inviting green spaces will not only help the curb the urban heat island effect, it will promote nutrition, and build community gathering places. This is something we can all agree on!

Attention must continue to be paid to our tree planting programs. This must be a public – private partnership.

How would you strike a balance between preservation, development, and economic development in Louisville?
That balance comes from within. It is one thing to look to other cities and ask, “How can we learn from you?” It is quite another to lose sight of who we are in the process. Louisville is unique and part of economic development is selling that uniqueness as a reason to build here. When preservation can be made it adds to our identity as a city. And when preservation is not possible, we must do a better job of being transparent on those issues and inviting developers to become a part of what makes our community exceptional. We must embrace the interests of our citizens and be generous with the time and attention it takes for all voices to be heard.

Optional open response. Discuss any issue in Louisville relating to land use, development, transportation, preservation, or health.
As a District 4 candidate a focus on reclaiming abandon properties is vital to the livability and economic health of our urban core.

From a Metro Council level we can begin by improving the construction regulations, codes, ordinances and policies that result in unlivable vacant homes. We can fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We can hold financial institutions and landlords accountable for the condition of these homes. We can relieve property owners of the expense and liability associated with the home. We can ensure that any earnings from these abandoned homes are used to reclaim other properties in the area. We need LOCAL control, LOCAL development.

These are the easy answers.

The harder answers come in the execution of those ordinances. It always comes down to that on a governmental level. There are always issues that need attention. How do we effectively prioritize those items? How are those decisions made? This is where my experience and connections will help District 4. We are not going to fix this and many other issues with fancy words or sharp tongues. It will only be fixed with hard work and leveraging the resources of this community to their fullest extent.

This requires skillful negotiation strategies and an interest – based approach to problem-solving. Everyone must be heard.

Old Forester shows off the charred aesthetic of its Main Street distillery

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 14, 2016

0

The inside of a freshly charred oak barrel must be a dark and moody place. It’s within these grey, crackled walls, a clear spirit is imbued with a golden tone as it slowly ages to become fine bourbon. In a similar way, new renderings released this week of the $45 million Old Forester distillery and bourbon experience, to be built inside a series of old bourbon warehouses on Louisville’s Whiskey Row, show a space that emits its own sense of dark sophistication.

Scheduled to open in late 2017, the distillery at 117–119 West Main Street will produce 100,000 cases of Old Forester each year, making this facility not just a tourist attraction, but a bustling industrial endeavor. The distillery will cover some 55,000 square feet and will house a welcome area, fermentation room, cooperage, tasting room, and bottling line, depicted in the renderings here. Louisville-based architecture firm Bravura was tapped as the design firm when the project was announced in September 2014.

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The visitors center features dark and moody spaces with educational displays and cases showcasing the history of Old Forester. On one side, the space is punctuated by an atrium barreling operation, providing hints of the industrial operation inside the structure. A variety of woods and exposed brick bring a warm texture to the spaces.

A tasting room is shown wrapped in what looks like reclaimed wood with a modern ring light fixture suspended over a sleek table. This juxtaposition of old and new, rough and smooth aesthetics repeats itself throughout the space.

Inside the cooperage, barrels are pieces together from individual staves in a process that appears to take on the quality of performance art. Finishing the barrel-making process, visitors can press a large red button triggering an inferno that gives each barrel its distinctive char.

Inside the fermenting room, pinpoint lights spotlight the bubbling mixture housed in what appear as sleek stainless steel vats. The room is otherwise dark, further highlighting the focal point of the facility. On a side wall, renderings depict a limestone wall etched with a diagram of the fermentation process.

Once the young bourbon is ready for aging, barrel upon barrel are stacked in a Piranesian rick house (pictured at top) through which catwalks ramp and twist, giving a unique view into the bourbon making process.

A bottling plant brings a more streamlined industrial feel to the space, trading the dark woods and moody lighting for utilitarian low ceilings, traditional machinery, and a blue cast. Visitors walk past an assembly line operation where bottles of Old Forester are bottled, labeled, and boxed. The bourbon is finally ready for sipping.

According to Brown Forman, Old Forester is “the longest, continuously distilled bourbon produced before, during and after prohibition by the same family.” The Main Street distillery is expected to open in late 2017. Next door, 111 Whiskey Row, a mixed use development occupying three more old warehouses, continues construction. That project literally was charred last year following a dramatic fire.

Louisville’s 20-year, strategic transportation plan, Move Louisville, finally released

Transportation

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 14, 2016

1

After more than a year-and-a-half of delays, Metro Louisville has finally released the Move Louisville report detailing the city’s strategic transportation plan for the next two decades. The report was unveiled at a press conference today at 10:00a.m.

Among Move Louisville’s top goals are shifting away from building new road infrastructure to a “maintain it first” approach. The report says Louisville has traditionally trailed its peer cities by a substantial margin in allocating funds for infrastructure maintenance versus construction. Additionally, a large focus of the report is on increasing “premium transit” which includes projects like a proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line along Dixie Highway.

Reducing the overall amount of driving in the city—especially for short trips—is another priority. Today, 82 percent of people drive alone to work, placing Louisville ahead of its peer cities in terms of commuting by automobile. For instance, only 72 percent of Cincinnati motorists drive to work alone.

To cut Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), Move Louisville targets short trips of 3 miles or less that account for half of all car trips in the city. The particularly low-hanging fruit includes trips of one mile or less that make up 28 percent of all vehicle trips. The report hopes to replace these trips with walking, biking, or transit use, and by promoting more compact land uses in targeted corridors.

To achieve these goals, Move Louisville lays out $762 million in priority projects to be built within the next 20 years and highlights several policy initiatives and recommendations to support the projects and concepts.

Broken Sidewalk will publish a detailed analysis of the report later today looking more closely at Move Louisville’s implications and what it means for the city.

The Move Louisville plan is a joint effort of Louisville Metro Government, the Transit Authority of River City (TARC), and other stakeholders. Extensive public input was considered in crafting the report. Move Louisville was originally scheduled to be released in September 2014, but that deadline was repeatedly pushed back.

[All images courtesy Move Louisville.]

City gazing from the rooftop of the historic Brown Hotel

Development

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 14, 2016

2

Sixteen floors above Fourth Street, a row of terracotta urns perched atop the Brown Hotel forms its own miniature skyline set against the skyscrapers of Downtown Louisville. These historic details mark the edge of what will soon be a new rooftop banquet space at the hotel.

On Wednesday afternoon, Brown Hotel Vice President and General Manager Brad Walker gave Broken Sidewalk a tour of the future overlook. “From our door here to the wall here to the raised area here is what we’re developing now,” Walker said, indicating a 4,000 expanse of rooftop that will open in July. Another section of roof will be developed later.

Rendering of the new rooftop. (Courtesy Brown Hotel)

Joseph & Joseph Architects, located a few hundred feet up Fourth Street, are behind the roof deck design. The $750,000 project will add two-foot-square pavers floating above the existing roof on stilts. “We’ll clean these up, Walker said, motioning toward the terracotta balustrades and urns. “It’ll have a garden all around about three feet out from the wall.”

The final rooftop will begin to take shape in about four weeks. “We’re just kicking off construction,” Walker said. “We’re doing some steel supports down below. That’s going on now.”

Walker said there’s historical precedent for such an amenity. The Brown opened its first rooftop in 1928, five years after the hotel opened. Walker said the hotel cannot find any historical photos of the space, but an opening announcement dated May 28, 1928, detailed the menu. “You could get a dinner for $1.50 and cover was 50 cents on weeknights,” he said. “It closed down as best we can see in about ’71. That was the last shot at it. This space has sat here ever since ready for prime time.”

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The new roof will house banquet events such as breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and weddings. Walker said guests had increasingly been asking for such a space and the timing seemed right. “You can never have enough meeting space at a hotel,” he said.

Besides space for guests, the Brown is reserving a small garden for its own use. “We’ll have a little herb garden for our chef,” Walker said. “We’ll grow our own mint. We already have the best mint juleps and now they’re about to get even better with a little mint garden in the area.”

Louisville’s parking lots win national attention as country’s worst “parking crater”

Urbanism

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 12, 2016

13

On Friday, Louisville received was awarded the dishonorable distinction as the city with the nation’s worst “parking crater,” a term for a vast area of surface level parking lots that deaden city block after city block. Streetsblog readers voted Louisville the winner of the “Golden Crater” trophy for a collection of parking lots in the SoBro neighborhood just south of Downtown Louisville below Broadway.

Louisville's Golden Crater trophy. (Courtesy Streetsblog) — Louisville’s Golden Crater trophy. (Courtesy Streetsblog)

While the Parking Madness Golden Crater puts a high-profile label on a problem we all know Louisville continues to struggle with—surface-level parking lots—it can also help to focus attention to bring positive change to the area.

For too many years, we’ve been pointed to the problem with our parking lots, but we have done nothing substantive. And also for too long, we’ve ignored SoBro, the forgotten area between Downtown and Old Louisville that could provide a critical link to both neighborhoods and create a dense neighborhood that benefits both.

“I hope Louisville will take this opportunity to examine what kind of forces helped produce this crater—whether it was tax policies, or transportation policies, or some combination of factors,” Streetsblog’s Angie Schmitt, who oversaw the competition, told Broken Sidewalk. “But also realize that it’s possible to change.”

Schmitt pointed to Denver as a case study in how to turn a parking crater around. This photo of downtown Denver in the 1970s actually inspired the Parking Madness competition, Schmitt wrote in her 2013 article on how that city turned its rampant parking problem around. “Denver, in the 1990s, eliminated surface parking as a land use by right,” Schmitt said. “Now the area is unrecognizable and bustling.”

“That doesn’t mean changing policies in Louisville would necessarily have quite the same effect,” Schmitt cautioned. “But the community should stop to consider the impact places like this have on the tax base, on social equity, the environment and civic pride.”

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We certainly hope this distinction does just that—get the community talking and hopefully spur real change. SoBro and Downtown Louisville deserve it. While the western edge of SoBro won the competition, the larger neighborhood already has a lot of energy going for it that we could build off of for a larger transformation.

SoBro is home to the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, Memorial Auditorium, Spalding University, the Kentucky College of Art & Design, the newly renovated 800 Tower City Apartments, and a smattering of historic buildings. And just recently, architecture firm Luckett & Farley announced that it would invest in neighboring properties along Third Street. These are great assets, but it’s not yet enough.

One of the area’s greatest obstacles to redevelopment are the parking lots themselves. We’ve torn down so much of the historic fabric of the neighborhood that there’s little left to easily renovate. Rehabbing old buildings makes for easy incremental change to jumpstart neighborhood transformation. And while there’s still a lot of historic structures left in the area to do just that, we’re going to need to think creatively about building reuse to get the most for SoBro.

Where the slate has been wiped clean, there’s a need for major new investment in the neighborhood. And that requires the right vision and large, well-funded players to build back a neighborhood from scratch. In the meantime, we can take a cue from Tactical Urbanism and initiatives like Resurfaces to bring interim uses to the neighborhood.

This year marks the second appearance of Louisville in Streetsblog’s Parking Madness bracket. In 2013, Louisville beat San Diego in the first round before losing to Houston in the second. That year, the parking crater in question was a linear strip of parking lots stretching along Second Street from Liberty Street south to Broadway. One block in that crater is currently under construction as the sprawling Omni Hotel Louisville, but the rest of the parking lots remain.

Schmitt said that support from Broken Sidewalk readers helped push Louisville over the top in the polls. “In a way that’s good: there’s a community of people that care about this place, even though it’s really not that lovable right now,” she said. “I hope the competition will spark a local conversation about this. Ultimately we’re rooting for Louisville.”

Disclosure: Broken Sidewalk is part of the Streetsblog Network and a founding member of Streetsblog Southeast.

For poor Americans, data show where you live plays a major role in how long you live

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 12, 2016

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While many studies have shown that rich people live longer than poor people, a study with county-level data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says life expectancy among poor people varies based on variety on geographic differences.

“Life expectancy for individuals in the lowest income quartile [the bottom fourth] were significantly correlated with health behaviors such as smoking, but were not significantly correlated with access to medical care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions,” researchers stated. “Life expectancy for low-income individuals was positively correlated with the local area fraction of immigrants, fraction of college graduates and government expenditures.”

The study found that “shorter life expectancies for the poor, measured at age 40, were most closely correlated with places that had lower exercise rates and higher rates of smoking and obesity,” Christopher Ingraham and Emily Badger report for The Washington Post. “For men, the gap between the top and bottom 1 percent nationwide is nearly 15 years. For women, it’s 10 years. And these disparities have widened since 2000. People in the top 5 percent have gained about three years of life expectancy. People at the bottom have gained almost nothing.”

The study, “based on the tax and Social Security records of everyone in America between 1999 and 2014 with a valid Social Security number and earnings, gives the most precise look yet at a pattern that has long troubled health experts: In America, the richer you are, the longer you live. But what’s especially striking is that the poor live even shorter lives in some places than others,” Ingraham and Badger write. “They have longer life expectancies in affluent, cities with highly educated populations, such as San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Among the 100 largest commuting zones ranked by the researchers, six of the top eight for low-income life expectancies are in California, a state with a strong safety net and a history of regulating where you light your cigarette or what comes from your car’s tailpipe.”

“Geography also matters much more for the poor than the rich,” Ingraham and Badger write. “The health behaviors of the wealthy are similar wherever they live. For the poor, their likelihood of risky behaviors such as smoking depends a great deal on geography, on whether they live in a place where smoking is common or where, as in San Francisco, cigarettes have been shunted out of view.”

Read more about the study at The Washington Post.

[Editor’s Note: This article was cross-posted from the Rural Blog. Top image courtesy Washington Post / Wonkblog.]

Russell hopes to grow a hundred new businesses with kitchen incubator Chef Space

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 11, 2016

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14-chef-space-louisville-russell-opening — (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)

Jay’s Cafeteria was once a food hub for the Russell neighborhood, where sit-down restaurants remain a scarcity even today. But in less than a year, the structure that once housed Frank Foster’s popular restaurant has been transformed into kitchen incubator Chef Space that officials hope can generate a food renaissance in Russell and beyond.

“It’s really cool to see this place that was a center stone for the community that now is transformed into a place that’s going to create a hundred Frank Fosters or a hundred Jay’s or whatever the new concept is,” Mayor Greg Fischer said at an official ribbon cutting and open house today. As a nod to Jay’s, an old glowing chef sign is featured in Chef Space’s lobby.

Left to right: The old Jay's Cafeteria, construction on Chef Space, and the completed incubator. (Courtesy Community Ventures / Chef Space) — Left to right: The old Jay’s Cafeteria, construction on Chef Space, and the completed incubator. (Courtesy Community Ventures / Chef Space)

But while the community gathered to officially celebrate Chef Space, food entrepreneurs have been hard at work within its kitchens since last November. And that’s no small feat considering ground was broken on the project in June 2015.

The layout of Chef Space. (Courtesy Chef Space)

Chef Space was developed by Lexington-based Community Ventures and covers 13,356 square feet of space at 1812 West Muhammad Ali Boulevard where entrepreneurs can learn about the business of food while growing their own companies in a professional, fully-equipped kitchen environment. According to Chef Space, there are 135 kitchen incubators across the country, but this location is the first and only in Louisville. The space can accommodate up to 50 entrepreneurs.

Already, Chef Space is home to 20 small businesses including Caldwell’s Quirky Cookery, DelactaBites, Dippin Sisters, Em’s Delights, Elixer Kombucha, Farm to Baby Louisville, Gmeals, Grasshoppers, Louisville Collegiate School’s Sage Catering, Lucretia’s Kitchen, V-Grits, Kentucky Cultured, Marination Catering, Seductively Sweet Confections, The Missing Link, That’s My Jam, and Younique Soul. There’s still space available, and more information can be found here.

A rainy open house at Chef Space. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)

“When you come into a neighborhood, you see two things,” Kevin Smith, CEO of Community Ventures, said at the open house today. “You see houses and you see businesses. There are a lot of vacant lots in this neighborhood, but there are a lot of good people. There weren’t very many businesses, and sometimes it’s hard to have a vital neighborhood when you are lacking homeowners and you’re lacking businesses. And that’s what this is the beginning of. In order to grow a community, you have to have entrepreneurs.”

His firm is also behind the Cedar Street Development a block north of Chef Space where 27 single-family homes on vacant lots. “This is going to allow us to begin to bring home ownership back into the area,” he said, adding that three of those homes are already under contract and are expected to break ground in May. “You will see more dirt turning and more buildings going up very soon.”

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And Chef Space already appears to be spinning off new restaurants. “We have our first two entrepreneurs that are now beginning to look for space outside of here,” Smith said. “We want them to locate in the neighborhood. If we’re not able to find business space for them, we may have to build it.”

Fischer praised the support structure that such an incubator space creates for those growing their own businesses. “Sometimes it’s not all a bed of roses,” he said. “Sometimes you need someone behind you saying you can get through this, you can do this. That’s what an incubator like this does.”

“Ultimately, a project like this is not about a building—it’s about people,” Congressman John Yarmuth said at the event. “And there’s some incredible stories that are happening right now in this building.” He pointed to Emie Dunagan who had a cupcake tasting set up among the various businesses offering samples of their fare at the open house. Yarmuth said Dunagan has been learning about business at the incubator since November and has her products at local Heine Brothers stores—and she just turned 18 yesterday. “It’s the opportunity that’s found at Chef Space that brings these people together,” he said.

Four developers discuss details behind Louisville’s apartment boom

Development

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 11, 2016

5

Clockwise from top left: Phoenix Hill Apartments by Edwards Companies; Main & Clay by Bristol; Axis Apartments by Cityscape; and Amp Apartments by Milhaus.

Louisville’s in the midst of an apartment boom, with thousands of new units going up or planned in Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. But what’s behind all of this construction? On Friday, the Louisville chapter of the Urban Land Institute convened a panel of four developers behind some of the most exciting projects to understand the dynamics shaping multi-family development in Louisville today.

The panel included Bristol Development Group Principal and CEO Charles Carlisle who is developing the Main & Clay Apartments in Butchertown; Edwards Companies Vice President Jonathan Wood, the developer behind the Mercy Apartments in the Original Highlands and the Phoenix Hill Apartments along Baxter Avenue; Milhaus Development President Jeremy Stephenson, who is behind the recently completed Amp Apartments on Frankfort Avenue in Clifton; and Cityscape Associate Brian Evans, who is leading the under construction Axis Apartments on Lexington Road in Irish Hill.

Development challenges

Moderator Jack Newton, a project manager at the Louisville Downtown Partnership, went right to the point with his first question: What obstacles are you facing in developing apartments in Louisville and other markets?

Jonathan Wood was quick with his response: “For me in Louisville, it’s navigating the one-way streets and finding my way around town. They seem to always be pointing in the wrong direction.” The crowd agreed with laughter.

Many on the panel agreed that they faced significant neighborhood opposition and NIMBY-ism at the outset of their projects, but were able to win their respective neighborhoods over by listening and adapting their proposals. “The challenges we’re facing here in Louisville are not germane to Louisville,” Wood said, citing well organized neighborhood groups, NIMBY-ism, and navigating the nuances of historic districts.

Still, developers need to meet the bottom line, Milhaus’s Stephenson said. “We’re trying to create real estate projects that have a financial component to them,” he said, “and we’d be lying if we said it didn’t have a strong importance to what we do.”

Finding the money

Charles Carlisle pointed to a major problem in Louisville that has made urban infill difficult for many developers: the equity holders won’t buy in.

“The other challenge we had, oddly, in Louisville, is when we started at Norton Commons, we went to our normal list of institutional capital partners about investing there in a project,” he said, noting that the economics of that residential building were in the same ballpark as neighboring suburban developments. “We could not get a single institution to invest in that project. We had to turn around and go raise capital from high net worth individuals.”

We’ve heard this from other developers who are interested in breaking the suburban model of development with mixed-use projects. Those with the financing often view the latter as more complicated and risky than business as usual. And while Carlisle said the situation in Louisville has improved slightly in the past four years, there’s still a problem. “I think it still has a ways to go before you get a healthy number of institutions willing to invest here,” he said. “That will certainly help support the market.”

While some developers have previously told us that banks have been reluctant to fund mixed-use projects with a high variety of uses, Carlisle said his experience with banks at Main & Clay, which is predominantly single use with only a tiny sliver of retail, has not been a challenge. Instead, equity funding, which fills the 25–40 percent funding gap once bank financing is secured has been difficult.

Finding the right neighborhood

Given that the panel was comprised solely of out-of-town development companies (although one panelist, Evans, was a Louisville native), it’s understandable that a challenge for the developers was finding the right neighborhood that would continue to grow around their apartment projects.

“Trying to identify the neighborhood locations that will turn and bring capital investment into those areas are really important for us,” Stephenson said. “It’s a matter of trying to identify where development patterns are moving.” He added that because Louisville has a lack of supply of new urban apartments, it’s trickier to find the right place to invest. His company ended up along the bustling Frankfort Avenue corridor with their first local project. “Partly it’s trying to test the market in these neighborhoods to see how well some of the multifamily will absorb into the market, which is the risk we take,” Stephenson said.

While Stephenson’s Amp Apartments located in an already built-up area, the other three developers are treading a lesser traveled path. Evans said the Axis Apartments, located on a sleepy curve of Lexington Road punctuated only by Headliners for existing nightlife, are hoping to spur new activity by bringing hundreds of new residents to the area. Wood’s dual projects are building up a forgotten corner of the Highlands, pushing the activity of the corridor north. Carlisle is working on the edge of Nulu where a retail and restaurant strip has been growing for years, but has struggled to expand off a couple key blocks of East Market.

“I think one of the things that will help all of us is to get a critical mass of urban residential in some location,” Carlisle said, noting the challenge of Louisville’s spread-out urban geography. “If you’ve been to Nashville, there’s a place called the Gulch where a critical mass has formed. The Gulch has reached a critical mass of residential and brought other new development with it. If you can get that critical mass going, I think you’ll see that same phenomenon here.”

Is the rent high enough?

Several of the panelists noted that Louisville rents for new urban apartments are below markets in other competing cities like Nashville or Indianapolis, making it more difficult to deliver a modern product. “Rent is probably the biggest [challenge] we see in this market,” Evans said. “To be able to do these class A, highly amenitized projects.” Stephenson noted that his company is continuing its push to revise Kentucky’s building code to make building multi-family projects easier.

Is the rent too high?

The highest rents of any apartment development announced so far are at Main & Clay, but Carlisle isn’t worried about filling the projects 270 units.

“Our rent forecast at Main & Clay is well above anything else in the market,” Carlisle said. “What gives us confidence that we can get that at Main & Clay—and that some of these other developments can do that as well—is we’ve seen a pattern starting in 2008 and 2009 in Nashville.” Carlisle’s company is among the pioneers who developed the now burgeoning Gulch district in that city.

“There were no new urban rental projects, and we started something that was 30 cents, 35 cents a square foot above anything that was in the market at that point in time,” Carlisle said. “Two of those came out of the ground almost back to back and rented at record rates and started off a wave of development there.” He said that pattern has been repeated in Birmingham, Ala., Huntsville, Ala., Jacksonville, Fl., and Orlando.

“These are projects that haven’t existed before,” he said. “So the way I like to look at it, I only have to believe there are 270 people that will pay that kind of rent. I don’t need 4,000 of them. We think that’s something that will be sustainable. We believe there’s room in the market for more of that.”

“We’re in what I think of as the euphoric stage of development where we don’t have to prove yet that the rents are there,” Carlisle said. “We’re just building the project and we can pretend that they’re where we want them to be. In about 18 months, we’re going to have to prove they really are there.”

Do we still need development incentives?

When asked about how dependent development remains on government subsidy and how to wean off of that artificial support, the panel agreed that urban development still needs assistance.

“Today development in [Louisville’s] urban core doesn’t work without incentives,” Carlisle said. “Nashville was in that position 10 years ago, and then six or seven years ago removed all incentives.” He said it’s important for cities to “intelligently use incentives” to support an initial wave of development that creates momentum that keeps development happening naturally. “There’s likely to come a time when those incentives can go away. That’s not today.”

Stephenson added that for incentives to go away, a city really needs to flourish with job growth opportunity, especially in its urban core. He noted that Nashville “caught fire” because it fostered a flourishing jobs market, which enabled it to eliminate incentives. “There has to be confidence that real job growth happens,” he said, noting that in Louisville uncertainty over Humana is a challenge to that confidence.

Pampered residents and pampered pets

Newton’s final question asked the developers what trends they’re following with their projects, and the clear front-runner are amenities. “There is an amenity battle going on among developers,” Carlisle said. “We are starting to spend small fortunes on amenity areas.”

Amenities proposed at various apartment buildings in Louisville include fitness centers, pools, rooftop space, lounge space, rooftop yoga studios, fire pits, party rooms, pet spas, and even private dog runs.

“Amenities are the biggest thing right now, whether it be a maker’s room, bike amenities, a resort style pool,” Evans said. “Those things I think you’ll see stick around and probably grow. Especially as we get into urban projects, the living space gets smaller and social spaces get more elaborate.”

Many agreed that this push for these amenities is about knowing the audience for urban apartment units, namely millennials and empty nesters. Wood noted that he was inspired by an architect who studied how to keep people in retail stores longer by design. But in the end, these amenities help fill up the units. “It gets people to sign leases,” Wood said. “It’s no different than anything else.”

Stephenson said his experience in Indianapolis, where apartment buildings have been one-upping each other’s amenities for years, the trend has moved toward smaller, boutique experiences with private art galleries and bespoke design.

But with the increase of urban living, part of the point is experiencing the city around the building itself, and several of the developers agreed that the city itself is an amenity. But others noted that until a vibrant city is in full swing, these amenities are necessary to keep the interest of tenants. “With Amp, there is a great neighborhood there,” Stephenson said. “Some of these other locations, the neighborhood is kind of there, [so] you need to build these amenities.”

Stephenson added that his company is beginning to consider the retail line-up in its mixed-use projects ahead of time to ensure that the retail serves its residents as much as the surrounding community. “One of the things we’re particularly doing of late is to identify retailers we want to add into our project and go get them earlier,” he said. “Do we want IU Health as a wellness center in our space? Yes, so we go get them and put that in there so we have a wellness center in our property. We’ll take a little more risk there because it’s an amenity to us and we don’t have to provide some large amenity space because we’re allowing someone else to take some of the risk on that.”

[Correction: A previous version of this article stated that banks were reluctant to provide financing for urban mixed-use projects, when it should have read that equity financing was reluctant. The article has been updated. (4/20/2016)]

Tuesday: Join Louisville landscape architects to learn about the significance of parks

By Branden Klayko -

Apr 11, 2016

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It’s easy to see how parks have shaped the built environment and growth of Louisville. Our cherished Olmsted Parks system created a green armature for the city early in its history. Before that, Cave Hill Cemetery offered a mid-19th century retreat from the bustle of the city long before the Highlands ever existed. More recently, parks have helped usher in a new era of urban regeneration with the stimulating effects of Waterfront Park along the Ohio River.

Louisville’s parks are certainly among the best in a nation that redefined what parks meant to cities and their people. To celebrate the long heritage of parks in the United States, PBS is airing a new feature on ten of the country’s most cherished landscapes called “Ten Parks That Changed America.” Those include:

The Squares of Savannah, Georgia
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Central Park, New York City, New York
Chicago’s Neighborhood Parks, Chicago, Illinois
The Riverwalk, San Antonio, Texas
Overton Park, Memphis, Tennessee
Freeway Park, Seattle, Washington
Gas Works Park, Seattle, Washington
The High Line, New York City, New York

The production, created by Chicago’s WTTW, will air tomorrow, Tuesday, April 12. Here in Louisville, the Kentucky chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (KYASLA), Kentucky Educational Television (KET), and the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy are hosting a free viewing party at the Iroquois Park Amphitheater. The event opens at 6:00p.m. at 1080 Amphitheater Road with the documentary running from 6:30 through 9:30p.m. You can RSVP here.

Ahead of the event, we spoke with KYASLA President Amin Omidy about the new documentary and about the significance of Louisville’s park system:

Broken Sidewalk: The list of 10 parks included in the documentary is an impressive walk through the history of landscape architecture in this country. Are there any particular milestones that stand out? What can we learn from the list of selected parks?

Amin Omidy: From Central Park to the High Line, the important thread through history is that we need democratic spaces that help bring people of different backgrounds together through nature. Parks are sometimes a forgotten piece of our critical infrastructure discussion. Parks serve a valuable necessity to the public and encourage healthy living experiences. Parks create an opportunity to access nature based landscapes in an urban environment, allowing people to experience the best of both worlds.

None of the ten are located in Louisville, despite the fact that Louisville is a strong leader in landscape architecture and parks, from Cave Hill to the Olmsted System, to the redevelopment of the Waterfront. How does Louisville fit in?

While Louisville was not mentioned as one of the ten parks, it’s not for lack of quality locally, but more a reflection of the tremendous wealth of good parks throughout the country. Fortunately, Louisville is blessed with a wonderful parks and open space heritage and much in great debt to the vision of Frederick Law Olmsted to develop a network of parks that stitch together the city through green space.

The strength of the 10 parks listed is not the list itself, but recognizing that parks can be designed in many ways, serve a multitude of capacities, which, with the proper care, will endure as vital amenities for people of multiple generations to come.

Savannah, Georgia, is a significant inclusion on the list because it demonstrates the power or parks in an urban landscape. How can parks in Louisville be used to improve urban design and planning?

Savannah is well known for its squares because it marks an important distinction in urban planning that focuses development around green space as an organizing principal. These green spaces create the foundation of strong urban fabric with a centralized civic focal point. The parks being created today do not afford the same luxury of cities that planned their growth and development around connective green spaces.

Are there any parks—in Louisville or elsewhere—that you would have liked to see included? Tell us about one of them.

The Louisville Loop is going to be a fantastic system to highlight in the near future. There are not many cities in the United States with a system of parks and bicycle infrastructure that the Loop will provide when completed. The Loop will create connections throughout the Louisville community linking existing and new parks, neighborhoods, and enhanced recreational opportunities.

The sheer scale of the Parklands should also be considered in the national conversation. The many collaborative partnerships that came together to execute this world class park are truly remarkable.

Beyond the big parks and big moves, I think we forget about the power of the neighborhood park. Not everyone can get to a big park on a regular basis, so it’s important to have a gradient of scales to create accessible green spaces that are easy to reach for all of our communities, which is why you see the Chicago Neighborhood Parks listed at number five on the list.

What should we learn from this documentary? What can parks teach us about health, living in cities and in nature, etc?

One of the takeaways for me is that well designed and maintained parks are priceless assets for cities. They age well and are part of the answer to some of our most difficult questions concerning social justice, ecological stewardship, public health, and the overall quality of life. For centuries parks have exposed people to nature and served as grounds for recreation and entertainment.

Kaid Benfield, director of the Sustainable Communities and Smart Growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has warned: “One of the most daunting aspects of our rapid development of new land is its permanence: every acre of natural or open space paved over for sprawl—every acre claimed by a new subdivision or shopping center on the fringe of a Chicago, Phoenix, or Atlanta—represents an acre lost forever. Barring heroic measures, farmland and other open space cannot be reclaimed.”

As cities continue to grow outward and upward, we have to continually question the highest and best use of land so that we make decisions today that result in a livable built environment, and a strong parks system is central to that conversation. The 10 parks featured on the list are prime examples of just how important open space is to the urban fabric.