Booker founded the firm with Elbert Tucker in 1972. Tucker passed away in 1984. The new name reflects the current leadership of Robin Donhoff, Thomas Kargl, and Patrick Nall.
(Courtesy DKN)
Donhoff promised his clients the name change does not represent a structural evolution in the firm. “Our clients past and present will notice no other changes in our well respected and recognized architectural business and staff,” he said in a statement.
Among the firm’s projects is the residential Audubon Woods development. (Courtesy DKN)
The firm has designed many significant projects around Louisville, most notably the familiar LG&E Eon Tower at Main and Third streets. DKN is currently working on a large mixed-use project at Lexington Road and Grinstead Drive, the latest residential phase of RiverPark Place at the foot of Frankfort Avenue, and the Sterling Tap House on Bardstown Road. They worked on the interiors of familiar restaurants like Decca and Garage Bar. DKN also recently completed a parking garage for the Nucleus campus at Jefferson and Preston streets.
(Top image: DKN’s East Market Street headquarters. Photo by Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk.)
ReSurfaced is coming back to Liberty and Shelby streets for another round of pop-up events and experiences this summer. The experiment in creating place from thin air has adjusted course after last year’s iteration and is ready for a new season with an updated look.
“One of the things we learned is the space is two times as big as the first one [on Main Street],” explained Patrick Piuma, director of City Collaborative (CC), the parent nonprofit that oversees the project. “With a space that big you can have 50 or 60 people walking around and it feels empty. We’re working on strategies to make it more like a good spot to enjoy the summer or fall—condensing the space down to make it more intimate. But be flexible to open up for large events.”
UK landscape architecture students at the ReSurfaced soccer pitch. (Patrick Piuma)
The first iteration of Liberty Build centered around a communal beer garden space filled with wood chips, Piuma said. “We made it too flexible last year.” As a remedy, ReSurfaced plans smaller seating areas and a revised layout.
City Collaborative is working with landscape architects Patrick Henry and Louis Johnson (both CC board members) and land-arch students from the University of Kentucky on the details. Mark Renz and Pat Strehl from Luckett & Farley have also volunteered structural engineering technical assistance.
“We’re working right now on a greening plan,” Piuma said. “We want to create a space where families can walk in and feel like a pop-up community center.” Already, volunteers helped install several large trees, but Piuma hopes for more. “We’d like to get some donations for plant material.” Ideas include building a rainwater catchment area to store runoff, adding a “no-mow” demonstration garden, and breaking up asphalt on the lot.
Manhole covers are used as paving at ReSurfaced. (Patrick Piuma)
One design update that’s sure to add to the industrial chic of the space is manhole-cover paving in the beer garden. LG&E donated roughly 300 iron discs challenging designers to come up with a creative use. There’s been some learning along the way. “When it gets hot those things heat up,” Piuma said. Original plans to pave the entire area with the iron covers were scaled back. “We’re using them as a border treatment and at the entry garden.”
Brown Forman is sponsoring a shipping container bar and retail store on a wooden deck. (Patrick Piuma)
Another addition this year are two shipping containers sponsored by Brown-Forman’s Coopers’ Craft bourbon. The blue containers, matching the bottles’ labels, include a bar and retail space surrounded by a wooden deck.
For Piuma, the 2016 edition of Liberty Build was about getting the infrastructure in place. This year is all about the details. “We spent a lot of resources getting the soccer field and everything built,” he said. “Now we’re focusing on creating a unique experience.”
Large trees have been installed at ReSurfaced: The Liberty Build. (Patrick Piuma)
As demonstrated in previous years, programming at ReSurfaced goes a long way towards driving crowds. And Piuma expects this year to be no different. Not every event will focus on beer, but food is a different story. “There’s always going to be food there,” Piuma said. “I think we’re going to work more with food trucks to get augmented food.” The familiar taco challenge and fried chicken throwdown will also make a return.
If last year was about testing ideas and putting infrastructure in place, this year is about making those ideas pop. “Now we’ve got a platform and we want to activate it,” Piuma said. “We want to try to bring in different partners and let them think about how they would like to use the space. Curating experiences is what we’re looking for. We’re looking for themes—bikes, design, sustainability.”
To that end, the team hopes to add signage and visibility that draw more people from crowded East Market Street south to ReSurfaced.
A drum circle event at the 2016 ReSurfaced draws a crowd. (Courtesy ReSurfaced)
“We picked this site partly because the sites we’ve had in the past have come ready with a historic facade or the river and views of downtown,” Piuma said. “We wanted a site that was more indicative of the vacant land around the community. It was a way bigger challenge than we thought it would be. We wanted to pick a really ugly site and make it into a place people wanted to come down to.”
ReSurfaced pledges to be open to the public on the first and third weekends of each month beginning in June. It will also take part in First Friday Gallery Hops with shows inside Forest Giant’s gallery shipping containers.
Besides adding signage on Market Street directing pedestrians to the pop-up, Piuma plans to paint some shipping containers and make the perimeter more appealing. “The hope is that we can take down as much construction fencing as possible and replace with a wooden fence,” Piuma said. “We want the outside appearance to look a little more finished and not so much a construction zone.”
The grand corner will be the main entrance to ReSurfaced 2017. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
ReSurfaced’s main entrance is also moving back to its originally designed location on the corner of Shelby and Liberty. Visitors will pass between double-decker shipping container megaliths marking the entry point. “The whole idea is that this was the front porch of the space,” Piuma said. “We want to invite the neighborhood in.”
There’s still plenty of work left at ReSurfaced: The Liberty Build. If you’d like to get involved, there are several Community Build Days coming up where you can help shape the city’s summer pop-up. The first is this Saturday, April 29 from 10:00a.m. till 2:00p.m. Additional Community Build dates have been set for Saturdays on May 13 and May 20. If you’d like to attend, wear work clothes and sturdy shoes—and drop Patrick a line so he can plan the work load.
So when’s the grand opening? It’s coming up fast. Piuma said ReSurfaced will throw open its gates to the public on Friday, June 2 and Saturday, June 3. ReSurfaced has the Liberty Build site until the end of the year, and Piuma said they plan to be open at least through October.
Old Louisville is a lot of amazing things. It’s America’s largest collection of Victorian homes. It’s the city’s densest neighborhood. The American Planning Association named it one of the nation’s 2016’s five “Great Neighborhoods.” Real estate site Redfin also named it one of the country’s top ten most bikeable urban areas.
But you can’t walk to the store to buy your groceries.
That’s a problem being tackled by a group of investors seeking to bring a new supermarket to the neighborhood. This month, the group of local and out-of-town interests purchased the vacant Winn Dixie site at 1148 South Fourth Street just north of Oak Street. The site was listed for sale last November for $1.75 million. The 2.35-acre parcel includes the former 43,000-square-foot Winn Dixie, its parking lot, and access roads.
The vacant Winn Dixie building. (Courtesy Google)
Local attorney and developer Joe Impellizzeri is working as developer for the ownership group. The Old Louisville resident has rehabbed several nearby buildings including the former Women’s Club on Fourth. Impellizzeri said the plan is to reuse the circa-1984 grocery to lure a new supermarket to the site. And he couldn’t express enough how significant—and challenging—such a move would be for the neighborhood.
“We’ve reached out to a lot of groceries. Groceries in town and not in town,” Impellizzeri said. “In fact, every grocery that’s in this city has been contacted. And even some that aren’t in the Louisville market.”
But so far the response has been cold.
The facade of the vacant structure. (Google Street View)
“One of the issues this project faces is how grocery stores select their sites,” he continued. Impellizzeri said today’s world of large-scale supermarkets began forming in the 1940s with consolidations of smaller grocery chains. One of the giants of the time was the A&P, which operated a store on this site for decades. Modern chains have grown so large, he noted, that they rely on national and regional real-estate brokers to guide them in their location decisions. And low-risk, suburban sites with higher broker commissions usually win the day.
For instance, Impellizzeri pointed to Shelbyville Road in St. Matthews, replete with all sorts of grocery options. When a broker looks at that established corridor versus Old Louisville, they see low risk and high reward.
The grocery store parcel. (Courtesy Lojic; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
“I think that’s the reason why we haven’t seen a grocery store race to [this] site,” Impellizzeri said. He noted retail rents in Old Louisville are less than half that of St. Matthews, driving down a broker’s commission. “What broker wants to risk a national contract with a client by locating in an area that might not succeed and in the process make less money?”
But Impellizzeri is confident that there’s no risk for a grocer to set up shop on Fourth Street. “It’s not a question of market demand. We have a demand for a grocery store. Our neighborhood can support a grocery store,” he said. “We’ve got $52 million in sales in a 1.6-mile radius. What risk is there?” Among his goals is showing national brokers and grocers that, by the numbers, Old Louisville is a safe bet.
A map showing supermarket locations in Jefferson County leaves a hole over urban Louisville. (CBRE)
“There is not a better site for a grocery store to serve our city than at Fourth and Oak,” he continued. A map showing supermarket locations in the city depicts a clear doughnut around the urban parts of Louisville. That in spite of Old Louisville’s density and some of Louisville’s busiest bus lines passing along the parcel’s doorstep.
But besides being an excellent site for a grocery, it’s also one of Old Louisville’s only sites for this scale of retail, Impellizzeri noted. “We don’t have large-box sites in our neighborhood,” he said. “We have this one.”
(CBRE)
And for years, Impellizzeri said out-of-town owners kept the property idle. After Winn Dixie closed its store and withdrew from the Louisville market, the company continued to pay rent on the space. In turn, the owners kept up the building’s structure, but had no incentive to seek a new tenant. “You have this ghost store that’s a vacant property,” he said. “Our one large site was being held hostage by the prior owner.”
Impellizzeri sees a new operator at the site as a way to battle another challenge in the neighborhood: perception. “People believe what they want to believe,” he said. For years, the narrative has gone that Fourth and Oak is a center for crime and that there’s no demand for a supermarket. Impellizzeri says that kind of talk sinks in if you say it enough. “Sometimes you have to stop and look for the facts.”
A new sign advertising the site appeared on Oak Street this week. (Courtesy Tipster)
“That’s the reason this for lease sign has the radius sales on it,” Impellizzeri continued. A large sign was installed this week on Oak showing the buying potential of the area. It points to a website called the Landmark District. “I want everyone in Louisville to know their power.”
“The way we’re going to succeed in developing this property is to harness the power of the collective,” he said. “It’s not just a couple grocery tenants. It’s got to be everyone in the neighborhood and everyone in the city who would benefit from a grocery at this location.” And with the recent closing of the Second Street Kroger and FirstLink groceries to the north, there are plenty of beneficiaries.
“Think about how much it will benefit our neighborhood if we have a grocery,” Impellizzeri said. “Old Louisville has everything you need to be a walkable neighborhood. If we had a grocery store, we could have a useful walk from our homes and apartments. Putting a grocery at Fourth and Oak can make Old Louisville the neighborhood it has the potential to be.”
Two women glance across the vacant site’s empty parking lot. (Google Street View)
And that’s the next step—to get the neighborhood fired up about bringing a supermarket to Fourth and Oak. “Old Louisville is rich with people who care about the neighborhood and love it,” Impellizzeri said. “We’re very interested in meeting with all of them.” He added that his group wouldn’t be stopping at the neighborhood line, but asking for support from nearby neighborhoods as well.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Impellizzeri concluded. “I remain confident that a grocer who has the info about the sales available at this site will come.”
There was a nail-biter of a preservation problem in Phoenix Hill closing out 2016. A wrong-way driver hit another motorist, creating an uncontrolled crash at East Broadway and Shelby Street. By the news photos at the time last December, it sure looks like speed played a big part as well. “He was going so fast. I couldn’t even try to steer,” Linda Porter, a crash victim, told the Courier-Journal. The wrong-way driver faces no charges.
When the dust settled, a good chunk of a historic three-story building at 743 East Broadway was resting on the street.
Authorities called the building, most easily recognized as home of the UPS Store, “structurally unsafe.” And in Louisville, that typically meansit’s a goner. A truck smashed off the corner pillar, removing support for bricks above. The effect looked like a sort of Corbel arch had been crudely carved into the facade.
We crossed our fingers and crept past the crash site every couple weeks to keep tabs on the structure. And what do you know? Scaffolding appeared, and then masons began adding new bricks. A new iron column props up the corner entry to the UPS Store. Now, the wall is complete, and the building saved. What a success story for preservation in Louisville!
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(Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
(Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
(Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
(Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)
The building’s current owner is listed as Forza Properties LLC, with Chris Cottongim and Stephen Tracy as officers. Cottongim and Tracy are both architects, running 5253 Design Group and Forza Architecture, respectively. And as it turns out, their offices are both on the upper floors of this building at 654 South Shelby Street. Congrats to both for such a remarkable rebuild of their building and offices on a prominent corner of Phoenix Hill.
We put in a call to for more information from Stephen Tracy, and will update this article when we hear back.
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The building in 1930 and 1928. (Courtesy UL Archives)
The building in 1936. (Courtesy UL Archives)
The building at right in 1929. (Courtesy UL Archives)
While watching over the corner, we also dug into the building’s past to see what had been in there before. And the business lineup is eclectic. The First National Bank anchored the corner with an enormous clock suspended over its entry. Next door, R & B Hardware Co. operated in another retail bay. First National later relocated to Fifth Street between Jefferson and Market, taking its clock along with it.
Other tenants over the years include offices of Dr. Lee J. Ernstberger and later the General Appliance Co. in the 1940s. At some point in the ’50s, a restaurant around on the Shelby Street side ran a segregated operation and a bar called Mace Goss sold “food and drink in a pleasant atmosphere” in 1935. Redd’s Auto Parts also had a long stay on the corner in the 1970s. The corner then became a Mail Boxes Etc. in the ’90s and finally a UPS Store.
Stephen Zink and David Kamer operating under East Broadway Inc. renovated the property and demolished a building to enlarge its parking lot almost two decades ago. Today, as we mentioned, the corner is owned by Forza Properties, and appears under good stewardship.
Do you know more about the building’s history? Please share with us in the comments below.
Shelby Park pedestrians would like to look both ways when crossing the street. Two-way conversions have trickled in over the years in nearby Old Louisville. Oak Street, First Street, and Brook Street all accommodate two-way travel. Other plans have been a one-way track to more discussion and endless study. Still, New Albany is pushing ahead with a two-way plan and Downtown seems closer than ever to change (more on those plans later).
Wednesday, Bicycling for Louisville (B4L) and the Shelby Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA) are hosting a public meeting to discuss the future of the neighborhood’s streets. Representatives from Metro Public Works and Advanced Planning will be on hand to answer questions, clarify the process, and explain the challenges of two-way street conversions.
Map showing three street couplets to be discussed at the meeting. (Courtesy Google; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
Three “street pairs”—parallel streets running opposite one-way directions—will be examined. Those include:
According to B4L, the event promises “frank discussions of intergovernmental coordination efforts.” Which, frankly, are long overdue. “The city’s received $4.3 million in federal funds for two-way conversions,” B4L wrote on the event Facebook page. “We hope you’ll join us in Shelby Park on Wednesday as we discuss the logistics for how and when that will be implemented.”
The event begins at 6:00p.m. Wednesday at The St. Catherine, 729 East St. Catherine Street, when wine and beer will be served. The discussion will begin at 6:30p.m. The event is free and open to the public. More information is available on the event’s Facebook page.
(Top Image: Preston Street looking south towards St. Catherine Street. Courtesy Google Street View.)
(Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to include information from Metro Louisville submitted after our press deadline. Addition highlighted in yellow below.)
Set your Tardis for Sunday, June 14, 1903 at the corner of Seventh Street and Kentucky Street in the Limerick neighborhood. Step out and you’ll hear the cheers of six thousand baseball fans rooting for the Louisville Colonels. Eclipse Ball Park was located on that corner a century ago before it later moved again to Eastern Parkway. The home team wore white uniforms with maroon trimmings.
The stadium, enlarged by 3,000 seats in the off-season for a total just shy of 10,000, was rocking with crowds celebrating a big win over St. Paul. A line drive by Peter Childs sealed the win at 3 to 1 in the 8th inning and the crowd went wild.
A 1905 Sanborn map shows the grocery store building standing on the corner across from the baseball field. (Courtesy KYVL)
“The long rows of bleacherites (sic) bent up and down with flutterings of hats, and the swish of of canes and umbrellas,” the Courier-Journal reported the next morning. “The grandstand was a bedlam of shrieks, stamping feet, and waving hats… men and boys did handsprings and other athletic stunts in their exuberance of joy.”
Those were heady times for Limerick, a tiny wedge on the side of Old Louisville and SoBro between Breckinridge and Myrtle streets. And a cluster of buildings on the northeast corner of Kentucky and Seventh watched over it all. Franconia’s Grocery anchored the corner in those days. Many a baseball reveler may have stopped in to grab a cigarette from Franconia’s, which allegedly sold them cheap without a licence. But now the cluster of buildings—including the corner store, a house, and a back structure—is in jeopardy.
Looking south on Seventh Street toward Kentucky in 1935. Eclipse Park has been removed (left) and the corner building we’re discussing is pictured at right. (Courtesy UL Archives – Reference)
Early History
The corner building at 967 South Seventh Street operated as a grocery store from 1900 to around 1950. Louis Franconia operated his grocery for the first 25 years. He built and lived in a house next door around 1913, according to a staff report by Metro Louisville. He lived at the 965 South Seventh Street address until 1919 when records show it switching to rental, that report continues. Rental tenants, the staff report indicates, included a policeman, an employee of Mengel Co., and several employees of the nearby L&N railroad.
The corner was later known as Doyle’s Market until 1940 and C&D Grocery in 1950. That year, classified ads listed the “newly renovated” space as available with a new storefront facade and hardwood floors. By then, though, housing projects had replaced the stadium, and the building remained for lease.
The Kentucky Street side of the property in better days just a decade ago (top) and how it appears today (above). (Google Street View)
Behind the retail building and the house, another two-story frame building faces Kentucky Street. It replaced a low building, likely a carriage house, built with the grocery, but its history is a bit more mysterious. Based on architectural details, we’d estimate construction in the 1930s or ’40s, but the official date it unknown. Inspections show that much of the building has rotted and the foundation is noncontinuous, marking a building of poor quality.
The boarded up grocery store building today. (Google Street View)
Present Day
Skipping forward, by 2007 the corner was in good repair, housing the Gilead Faith & Deliverance Ministries, according to Google Street View. Sometime between 2011 and 2014, that ministry shuttered and with it came rapid deterioration. Vines covered the walls, modern siding began to peel off, and an errant driver hit the corner structure, forcing the removal of its gas line.
The corner looks bad today, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be saved. (Google Street View)
“It looks bad—it was hit by a car,” Dr. Daniel Vivian, Associate Professor of History at the University of Louisville, told Broken Sidewalk. He lives nearby in Old Louisville and has been watching the buildings change over the years. “My sense is that that it looks to be in worse condition than it actually is.” He pointed out that layers of newer siding often warp and peel, amplifying the sense of decay.
“It looks to me as a key property for revitalization,” he continued. “Especially with Simmons [College of Kentucky] taking off the way they are.” Spalding University is also prepared to begin construction on its large sports complex one block west. When complete, a corner cafe or pub would be a welcome addition for residents and sports fans alike. A mindful rehabilitation of the corner could bring cheering sports fans back to this corner after a century of quiet.
A mockup of Spalding’s new playing fields in relation to the corner buildings. (Image courtesy Google; Rendering courtesy Spalding; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)
All three buildings have been owned by Carl & LaShonda Fletcher of Sellersburg, Indiana, since 2000. The couple appears to now work with a new ministry on South Preston Street.
Demolition Requested
It took many by surprise last Wednesday when the properties appeared on the agenda of the Limerick Architectural Review Commission (ARC) requesting demolition. Limerick, after all, is a landmark preservation district, and carries protections for the buildings that fall within its boundaries. It’s up to the ARC to decide the fate of buildings within the district bounds, but with the risk of setting too loose a demolition precedent for the rest of the neighborhood.
The application for demolition was made by Develop Louisville’s Vacant & Public Property Administration (VPPA) per Chapter 156.807 of the city’s Property Maintenance Code:
The Code Official shall order the owner of premises upon which is located any structure or part thereof, which in the Code Official’s judgement is so old, dilapidated or has become so out of repair as to be dangerous, unsafe, unsanitary or otherwise unfit for human habitation or occupancy, and to demolish and remove such structure or part thereof.
The corner, at right, bookends a series of intact historic houses on Seventh Street. (Courtesy Google)
Staff reports from Planning & Design noted that the applications are “techinically a case of demolition by neglect” due to the owner’s failure to provide adequate and timely maintenance to the property. “Cases of demolition by neglect are typically not approved by the ARC,” the report reads, “and demolition by neglect is not a factor considered when an applicant applies for economic hardship to demolish a structure.”
Staff concluded that the house and corner store contributed to the integrity of the Limerick district while the outbuilding did not. The report says “any rehabilitation would be more like reconstruction” due to the state of deterioration. The reports ultimately recommended denying demolition of the house and corner store. The outbuilding at 621 West Kentucky Street was recommended for demolition.
Public Meeting
The Limerick ARC meets this Wednesday, April 26 at 5:30p.m. in room 101 of the Metro Development Center, 444 South Fifth Street. The meeting is open to the public.
(Courtesy Metro Louisville)
Change of Plans
The next day, VPPA requested a deferral for the two buildings the staff report recommended keeping. Those cases will be heard at a later, undefined date. But the ARC will decide on the outbuilding at this week’s meeting.
The Fletchers are going through foreclosure on the properties to clear around $100,000 in violations and fines, which could take one to three years, according to city documents. The vacant land would later be sold or auctioned at the Jefferson Circuit Court Commissioner’s Sale.
Carrie Fry, Demolition Coordinator at VPPA, is currently out of town and could not provide further information on the case. Another request for information from VPPA went unanswered as of press time.
UPDATE! We heard back from VPPA’s Laura Grabowski and she gave us a few more details. She said the VPPA is re-evaluating whether it will seek demolition on the house and corner store in light of the Planning & Design staff reports, and will have more information when they go back to the Limerick ARC.
In this case, there may be room for a buyer to purchase the house and corner store at auction. But, of course, deterioration doesn’t stop for foreclosure hearings. “These properties will most likely be sold at Commissioner’s sale,” Grabowski wrote in an email. “Information on properties offered at Commissioner’s sales can be found at their website. If anyone is interested in Landbank-owned vacant properties, they are offered for sale through an RFP process approximately 6 times as year. Information on those sales can be found at VPPA’s website.
Left to right: The corner in 2007, in 2011, and today. (Google Street View)
An Uncertain Future
The most significant buildings—the store and house facing Seventh Street—achieved a sort of stay of demolition for the moment. But their day on the chopping block will return. The Limerick ARC will be faced with important decisions on the future of the historic neighborhood.
“If it’s an empty lot, it’s liable to stay that way for a long time,” Vivian said of the corner. The block on Seventh stretches south quite intact for several hundred feet. Opening up a hole here could lead to a permanent scar on the preservation district.
We don’t want to inaugurate a new “Limerick” for the occasion of demolishing three more buildings in a preservation district. But if we had to it might read like this:
There once was a wrecking ball in Louisville, Who never met a building it couldn’t kill. So with fury and might, In the middle of night, Bricks tumble and this place becomes run-of-the-mill.
There’s still time for these house and store. The Limerick ARC will eventually decide their fates. But each day these buildings go with more neglect, the more danger they’re in.
What would you like to see happen at the corner? Should the outbuilding be rebuilt to define a backyard courtyard space for a cafe? Is Limerick finally ready to cast off a sleepy shroud and stand tall next to its grand neighbor Old Louisville? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
There’s never been a better time to switch to TARC. Beginning June 1, all 227 TARC buses will be equipped with free WiFi hotspots so riders can surf the web rather than dodge other drivers. (We know you’ll all be catching up on Broken Sidewalk stories!)
“WiFi on every TARC bus opens up new possibilities for passengers to work, study or be entertained while getting from place to place,” Mayor Greg Fischer said in a statement.
And riders with smartphones have been increasing. According to a TARC survey, 80 percent of its users have internet capable phones. That’s up 20 percent from 2014.
To access the free internet, look for the “RideTARC” network on your phone’s WiFi section. There’s a good chance the bus you’re on is WiFi enabled already. But don’t forget, it’s not systemwide until the beginning of June.
Will the chance to ditch the worries of driving for free internet help you make the switch to TARC?
TARC sure hopes so. “TARC is far from perfect, but it will only get better if we use it,” J.C. Stites, a TARC Board Member, wrote in a letter to the Courier-Journal recently. “The next time you go downtown, consider clicking the transit button in Google Maps for real-time bus routes and schedules. For just $2 you can sit back, enjoy free-wifi and support a better future for Louisville.”
Enabling internet on the bus has been in the works since 2013. Already, 156 buses are already WiFi enabled, so it’s only a matter of retrofitting the remaining fleet. A contract with Verizon reduced costs to $40 per bus for unlimited data per month, speeding up the process.
The free smartphone Transit App (which will also work with the LouVelo bike share system) can also use the WiFi to track buses in real time. Transit shows nearby bus lines, helps plan routes, and can set reminders so you don’t miss the bus. According to Jake Sion, COO for the Montreal app’s developer, Louisvillians have already downloaded Transit 18,000 times in the past 18 months. The company estimates 1,500 riders are using the app every day.
(Top image: Barry Barker, TARC’s executive director, at the podium as Mayor Greg Fischer watches on. Courtesy TARC.)
It’s finally happening! Louisville’s long-awaited bike share program now has a name, sponsors, and a launch date. Mayor Greg Fischer, Bike Louisville’s Rolf Eisinger, and other officials announced the phase one launch this month. Louisville’s system will be called, quite appropriately, LouVelo, a portmanteau of the city’s name and the French word for bike. (It’s pronounced like Lou-Jello, but with a ‘V’.) A countdown clock on the LouVelo website indicates the system will launch on the morning of May 15.
LouVelo’s phase one rollout in May 2017. (Courtesy Metro Louisville)
The initial rollout will include 305 bikes distributed around 28 stations. Members can check out bikes from Downtown to the University of Louisville, and east to Nulu and Butchertown. This fall, another 15 stations should come online, including many at UL’s Belknap Campus. Later phases call for extending the map farther west into the Russell and Portland neighborhoods and east into the Highlands.
“The wonderful thing about a program like this is we can keep expanding it,” Fischer said at the announcement. “The larger it gets the more virtuous the cycle becomes and people can get to more and more different places.” He hinted that long-term, LouVelo could increase in size significantly. “We’re off to a good start with 300 [bikes],” he said. “There’s no reason why it can’t be 500 or a thousand, and then two thousand.”
The concept of bike share is simple and well tested across the country. Users can check out bikes at one station and return them at another to ease short trips or bridge gaps in the transit network. A worker in Downtown could ride to Nulu for lunch or a person taking a bus to Broadway could ride to a job on Main Street. Tourists can get around without their cars or businesspeople could pedal to a meeting across Downtown. The system also works well for local residents who can ride without worrying about their personal bikes. Bike share is not for day-long leisure riding, but a part of Louisville’s transportation system.
(Courtesy Metro Louisville)
You’ll be able to buy annual, monthly, or daily passes to check out bikes. Thirty-minute single rides are also available for $3.50. Founding Memberships are on sale now for a year’s worth of 60-minute rides for $99. All rates will announced at the launch. More information is available on the LouVelo website.
An example of a LouVelo bike. (Courtesy Metro Louisville)
LouVelo bikes are a little different than your typical bike. First of all, they’re sturdy. These bikes are built to last and include GPS tracking to avoid theft or loss. Included are lights, a bell, fenders and chain guards, and a basket. Once you get riding, though, you’ll catch on quick. LouVelo bikes are like bikes used in other cities including New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Stations are easy to use and include a solar-powered kiosk where you can buy day passes or check out bikes. Smartphone apps will also be available showing station locations and capacity so you know if there’s a spot to dock your bike. The CycleFinder and Transit apps will track ride information, help plan routes, and allow online payment.
Stations should begin appearing soon. Be sure to snap a photo and send it our way if you see crews toting around a bike station!
Mayor Greg Fischer speaks at the LouVelo announcement. (Courtesy Metro Louisville)
Funds for the bike share program came from a $1.1 million federal Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality (CMAQ) grant and $273,000 from Metro Louisville. Sponsorships, user fees, and $50,000 annually from the city will keep the system up and running. Bike Louisville partnered with CycleHop to maintain the system and PBSC to provide the bikes.
Sponsors include Genscape, Norton Sports Health, The Eye Care Institute, Atria Senior Living, UPS, the Brown Hotel, Kentucky One Health, and the Main & Clay apartments.
A big congratulations goes to the city’s team that has worked for years to establish a bike share system here. Despite several setbacks and delays along the way, a launch on the horizon makes the wait feel worth it.
Typography is all around us, hiding in plain sight. The color and precise fonts used for street signs has been studied and tweaked for decades, the whimsical lettering of murals brings an artistic flair to the streetscape, and old signs on even older buildings remind us that the city is a continuum across generations. Some aren’t as pleasant, like jeering advertising or a bad piece of graffiti. But combined, they help show the distinct identity of a place.
This Thursday, April 27, the Louisville chapter of the AIGA presents a talk by designer and author Nikki Villagomez called “How Culture Affects Typography.” She will be discussing type in Louisville and from her travels, contrasting differences between place and identity using her own photographs and other photos taken by Louisville designers.
(Courtesy AIGA Louisville)
Villagomez wrote a book on the subject of her talk, titled Culture+Typography: How Culture Affects Typography, where she tackles the varied world of ghost signs, manhole covers, graffiti, hand lettering, and all sorts of signs. (We’ve got a copy in the Broken Sidewalk library.) It’s packed with photos from across the country alongside anecdotes and thoughts from Villagomez. It’s a visual delight for anyone interested in the small details that add so much richness to the urban experience.
Each city, Villagomez points out, celebrates a different aspect of itself. Miami locals love its Art Deco and neon signs while Clevelanders have more machined aluminum lettering, and San Antonians love their city’s old business signage replete with references to the Alamo. She says travelling helps you see a place fresh and new—it awakens the senses—while walking familiar streets might dull our sensitivity to small details over time. “If you can get to a place where you are in that state of awareness in your day to day life, in the city that you live in, you will be more mindful of your surroundings.
(Courtesy AIGA Louisville)
The event at the Tim Faulkner Gallery in Portland begins at 7:00p.m. (with an hour of social networking preceding). It’s $5 for students and $10 for professionals. You can get more information on the event’s Facebook page here or purchase tickets here.
You may see Villagomez out walking early on Friday after her presentation. “It is my routine the morning after each talk to wake up stupid early and walk around whatever city I am in,” she wrote in her book. “I explore what each city has to offer and experience the culture first hand. I carry a point-and-shoot camera and my iPhone to document my findings… I just capture what catches my eye.”
Louisville architecture firm Tucker Booker Donhoff + Partners (TBD+) has changed its name. Following the retirement of partner Bob Booker, the firm will now be known as Donhoff Kargl Nall Architects (DKN).
