The bigger picture behind Wednesday’s Downtown Development Review Overlay meeting

Jan 5, 2016

The first meeting of the year for the Downtown Development Review Overlay (DDRO) committee takes place this Wednesday, January 6 (details below). There’s only one item on the agenda: the demolition of a non-historic auto-shop on First Street to make way for a parking lot.

We wrote about the plan last October, but the DDRO is just now taking up the case.

Located on a block already pocked by surface parking lots and dominated by an onramp to Interstate 65, the plan would add 46 new parking spots on the .4 acre site at 430 South First Street. A single-story, 3,439-square-foot former Midas automobile repair shop built in 1975 occupies less than half the parcel today.

The parking lot would serve the adjacent First Urology at 444 South First Street, which already has a parking lot for approximately 38 cars. There are already around 25 parking spots on the auto repair shop site with plenty more in street parking in the area.

According to documents filed with the city, the parking lot would sit behind a seven-foot-tall masonry wall covered in EIFS or stucco built along First Street and along the north lot line. A locked gate would allow vehicular access. As worded in city documents, the wall would be placed directly along the property line with landscaping only on the inside. (No site plan was immediately available.) An existing curb cut will remain from the Midas parking lot, but it would be gated.

First Urology on the left and the Midas building on the right. (Courtesy Google)

First Urology owner Michael O’Shannon and applicant Marv Blomquist of Blomquist Design Group met with city officials last year to discuss the project, according to the city’s staff report. At those meetings, the report indicates discussions included ideas to keep the existing building, but the owner did not wish to maintain the structure.

Ultimately, the staff report recommends demolishing the Midas structure and paving the parking lot. “Although demolition of an existing building for the development of new surface parking is discouraged (Principle 1 SP3 and Principle 5 P3), there are other considerations in this case,” the staff report reads. “The Midas building has been vacant for several years and is of such a small size and specific design that re-use or renovation is not useful for the applicant.”

If you’d like to attend the DDRO’s public meeting on Wednesday, January 6, head over to the Old Jail Building Auditorium, 514 West Liberty Street at 8:30a.m.

Parking in Downtown Louisville. Red is surface parking, purple is single-use garages. (Erik Weber) — Parking in Downtown Louisville. Red is surface parking, purple is single-use garages. (Erik Weber / Broken Sidewalk)

The report goes on to note that, despite the recommended approval, this parking lot use is not what the Overlay envisions for the area. “Eventually the Overlay envisions a fully developed urban context for the entire overlay district,” the staff report reads, “but in this specific edge condition the street wall is ill defined and approximately 50% parking lots.”

As history has shown, it’s often difficult to unpave a parking lot once it’s in place, so that urban context is likely very far off. Despite a less-than-ideal context of buildings separated by parking lots, allowing developers to pave even more out of convenience will ensure First Street is a suburban speedway for another generation. And that’s to say nothing of the city’s overwhelming heat island effect problem exacerbated by surface parking that landed it as the nation’s worst.

The staff report includes recommendations that the wall is redesigned with better materials and reduced to four feet to increase aesthetics along the street; that lighting and street trees comply with existing standards; and that the applicant consider adding benches or bike racks along the sidewalk.

A packed room for the DDRO's second Omni meeting. (Broken Sidewalk) — A packed room for the DDRO’s second Omni meeting. (Broken Sidewalk)

Looking back at the past year of downtown development review, it’s clear that our process needs a little work. 2015 saw several major decisions from planning staff and the DDRO commission, most notably the contentious issues surrounding the design of the Omni Hotel & Residences and demolition of the old Water Company headquarters on Third Street that played out last July.

There were other important decisions made by the DDRO in 2015 that advance a questionable picture of the future of Downtown. It’s hard to point at Omni as the odd one out when it follows in a line of similar decisions across Downtown.

Rendering of the Nucleus parking garage now under construction. (Tucker Booker Donhoff)

Back in October 2014, the DDRO approved 14DDRO1012, a project to build the six-story J.D. Nichols Campus for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Parking Garage Structure on the corner of Preston Street and Jefferson Street. That project, still under construction in the shadow of a massive Interstate 65, brings over 800 parking spaces and a dead street wall. But hey, it’s got bike racks located hundreds of feet from anything useful.

Rendering of Kindred's proposed expansion. (Courtesy Kindred) — Rendering of Kindred’s proposed expansion. (Courtesy Kindred)

In March 2015, the DDRO approved 15DDRO1001, the expanded headquarters of Kindred Healthcare at Fourth Street and Broadway, which we’ve covered a number of times. That decision allowed the demolition of Theater Square for a generic suburban office building set far away from the street behind a less-than-overwhelming new park called Kindred Square. That vote compromising the urban context in the area. There’s space for a restaurant, but that’s not a lot considering how much retail potential was there before.

In June, the DDRO pushed forward 15DDRO1010, a plan to rebuild a Thornton’s gas station at First Street and Broadway. While it was replacing an existing gas station, the urban design of the prominent corner remains fundamentally eroded by the built form allowed to proceed on the site.

The Kurfees building will become mini-storage. (Branden Klayko / Broken Sidewalk)

One decision didn’t make it to the DDRO committee at all was the conversion of the Kurfees Paint Company building into mini-storage. That project highlights another way projects can be approved Downtown: with only staff approval. The mini-storage project was approved by staff on July 22, 2015 with no retail planned to activate the street wall. We covered that project over here.

For all the talk over creating a deadened Third Street brought about by a loading dock and parking garage, this sort of thing has become routine. To the casual observer, the DDRO has become a rubber stamping panel that, at most, asks for window dressing on projects that put no windows on the street.

This issue is bigger than any of these individual projects discussed here. As we begin a new year, it’s time to ask ourselves important questions. What is the public review process for? What kind of city do we want to build and live in?

We’ve already got a great set of guidelines already built into the city’s land development codes—it’s time we uphold them rather than kick the can down the road. In 2016, it’s time to send bad urban planning back to the drawing board and read up on good city building. Louisville deserves it.

Reducing congestion: Katy didn’t: How 23 lanes of highway induce demand in Houston

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 23, 2015

Here’s a highway success story, as told by the folks who build highways.

Several years ago, the Katy Freeway in Houston was a major traffic bottleneck. It was so bad that in 2004 the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) called one of its interchanges the second worst bottleneck in the nation wasting 25 million hours a year of commuter time. (The Katy Freeway, Interstate 10, connects downtown Houston to the city’s growing suburbs almost 30 miles to the west).

Obviously, when a highway is too congested, you need to add capacity: make it wider! Add more lanes! So the state of Texas pumped more than $2.8 billion into widening the Katy; by the end, it had 23 lanes, good enough for widest freeway in the world.

It was a triumph of traffic engineering. In a report entitled Unclogging America’s Arteries, released last month on the eve of congressional action to pump more money into the nearly bankrupt Highway Trust Fund, the AHUA highlighted the Katy widening as one of three major “success stories,” noting that the widening “addressed” the problem and, “as a result, [it was] not included in the rankings” of the nation’s worst traffic chokepoints.

There’s just one problem: congestion on the Katy has actually gotten worse since its expansion.

Sure, right after the project opened, travel times at rush hour declined, and the AHUA cites a three-year old article in the Houston Chronicle as evidence that the $2.8 billion investment paid off. But it hasn’t been 2012 for a while, so we were curious about what had happened since then. Why didn’t the AHUA find more recent data?

Well, because it turns out that more recent data turns their “success story” on its head.

We extracted these data from Transtar (Houston’s official traffic tracking data source) for two segments of the Katy Freeway for the years 2011 through 2014. They show that the morning commute has increased by 25 minutes (or 30 percent) and the afternoon commute has increased by 23 minutes (or 55 percent).

Growing congestion and ever longer travel times are not something that the American Highway Users Alliance could have missed if they had traveled to Houston, read the local media, or even just “Googled” a typical commute trip. According to stories reported in the Houston media, travel times on the Katy have increased by 10 to 20 minutes minutes in just two years. In a February 2014 story headlined “Houston Commute Times Quickly Increasing,” Click2Houston reported that travel times on the 29-mile commute from suburban Pin Oak to downtown Houston on the Katy Freeway had increased by 13 minutes in the morning rush hour and 19 minutes in the evening rush over just two years. Google Maps says the trip, which takes about half an hour in free-flowing traffic, can take up to an hour and 50 minutes at the peak hour. And at Houston Tomorrow, a local quality-of-life institute, researchers found that between 2011 and 2014, driving times from Houston to Pin Oak on the Katy increased by 23 minutes.

Even Tim Lomax, one of the authors of the congestion-alarmist Urban Mobility Report, has admitted the Katy expansion didn’t work:

“I’m surprised at how rapid the increase has been,” said Tim Lomax, a traffic congestion expert at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. “Naturally, when you see increases like that, you’re going to have people make different decisions.”

Maybe commuters will be forced to make different decisions. But for the boosters at the AHUA, their prescription is still exactly the same: build more roads.

The traffic surge on the Katy Freeway may come as a surprise to highway boosters like Lomax and the American Highway Users Alliance, but will not be the least bit surprising to anyone familiar with the history of highway capacity expansion projects. It’s yet another classic example of the problem of induced demand: adding more freeway capacity in urban areas just generates additional driving, longer trips, and more sprawl; and new lanes are jammed to capacity almost as soon as they’re open. Induced demand is now so well-established in the literature that economists Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner call it “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion.”

Claiming that the Katy Freeway widening has resolved one of the nation’s major traffic bottlenecks is more than just serious chutzpah, it shows that the nation’s highway lobby either doesn’t know, or simply doesn’t care what “success” looks like when it comes to cities and transportation.

[Editor’s Note: This article was cross-posted from City Observatory. Images courtesy Google.]

Poof! The Omni site is now completely leveled

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 22, 2015

Now you see if, now you don’t. Thanks to a tipster for sending in these photos of the now-leveled old Water Company Building at the Omni Hotel & Residences site. Metro Louisville was under a deadline to deliver a cleared site by the first of the year, and with the help of a lot of gray area in the city’s preservation laws, that they will meet that deadline.

These views were taken on Friday from the 16th floor of the Rudd Heart & Lung Building at Jewish Hospital.

For a few days after the old Water Company Building facade was removed but before the structure was leveled, the building presented a particularly mutilated, scarred face that’s sure to linger with those who saw it.

Construction is slated to begin next year on the $300 million Omni Hotel & Residences. The location of the now-gone Water Company Building will house the loading dock for the hotel.

Here are America’s ten best new bike lanes of 2015

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 18, 2015

(Editor’s Note: Another year, and Louisville still isn’t competing with cities serious about bike infrastructure. While the city did build a few miles of new bike lanes this year, Louisville still has no protected bike lanes like the ones below that are so great to ride on. In fact, plans for the city’s first have lost steam and will be built as a standard lane.

This article was cross-posted from PeopleForBikes’ Green Lane Project blog. Follow along with PeopleForBikes on Facebook and Twitter. Top image by Toole Design Group.)

In its 2010 ranking of the country’s best biking cities, Bicycling Magazine opened with a question: Remember when a striped bike lane was a big deal?

Five years later, it’s time for an update: Remember when plastic posts were a big deal?

We still love separating bike lanes with posts, and preference surveys show that most Americans do too. But this month, as we set about making our third annual list of the country’s best new bike lanes, we were overjoyed to realize that (with about 80 projects to choose from) almost every new lane on our list separated bike and auto traffic with some sort of permanent physical curb.

“The things that we thought were really out there a few years ago are now accepted as part of our design palette,” said Jennifer Toole, president of the bikeway-focused Toole Design Group, in an interview Wednesday.

The rise of curb-protected bike lanes has been dreamed of for decades in the United States, and in the leading cities, it’s finally arrived. But the lessons we can all learn from the best new bike lanes of 2015 don’t end there. Let’s look at each in turn.

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1. Western Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts

American bike lanes hit a new standard of excellence in August in one of the country’s most underrated biking capitals.

This beautiful half-mile project out of the heart of Boston’s next-door neighbor has it all: clear separation from both sidewalk and auto traffic; a direct route from a major commercial node and transit hub to a regional network of bike paths; bike signals at the intersections with leading intervals that give people biking and walking a head start to cross.

A design like Western’s requires a street to be completely rebuilt, and most streets (including River, the other one-way street in this couplet) will wait a long time for something like this. But if every rebuilt street in the United States looked like Western, we’d be on our way to making biking so good that almost every American would choose to do it regularly. Kudos to Cambridge for facing down skepticism and showing the rest of us the way to do something totally right when we get the chance.

2. 200 West, Salt Lake City, Utah

Of all this year’s advances in protected bike lanes, the most important is the protected intersection.

One year after a homemade website gave this Dutch-inspired infrastructure an English name, Salt Lake City opened the country’s best so far. The new corner of 200 West and Broadway makes biking as intuitive as walking. It arrived alongside a big street upgrade that included street planters, better crosswalks and sidewalk art.

Maybe that’s why retail sales rose 8.8 percent on Broadway after city leaders removed street parking and travel lanes to make these changes late last year. Now that the two streets are joined into a starter network, we’re eager to see SLC’s next trick.

3. Queens Boulevard, New York City

Queens Boulevard is the anti-Western Avenue: instead of two years of public meetings about something beautiful and permanent, these new protected bike lanes were part of a quick fix for a street in dire need of immediate help.

If you ask us, that’s just as impressive.

Between 1990 and this July, 185 people were killed and thousands were wounded by traffic on theso-called “Boulevard of Death.” The mother of one of them, Lizi Rahman, mounted a years-long campaign for bike lanes that was finally victorious in 2015. The city announced that Queens Boulevard would get changes in January, started planning the following week, released its plan in March and started work in July.

“It might not bring my son back, but I would know that my son died for a good cause,” Rahman said at a 2008 rally. “I will do this for him and it will help save the other bikers in the future.” This was the year New York City listened, then acted. Next year, work on the permanent version begins.

4. N Street, Lincoln, Nebraska

This project is barely in time for awards season: it’ll open sometime in the next few days. But enough of it is built for us to certify this project as one of the country’s best. The physical beauty of the rain-garden strips combines with the major investment of dedicated bike signal phases and the practicality of a direct link between two major regional paths through the university district and downtown. Local developers have noticed; they’ve been lining up to build new apartments along N Street aimed at “mobiles and Millennials.”

Also, if you know eastern Nebraska, you know it was basically put on God’s green earth to be biked on. Just saying.

5. Clybourn Avenue, Chicago

Seattle has the money, Pittsburgh has the gumption and Tucson has the heart. But when it comes to actually connecting protected bike lanes into a true network, no city in the country can beat Chicago.

That’s only part of the appeal of Clybourn Avenue, which overcame a political feud to prove that Springfield and City Hall could team up for the greater good. Since 2013, when an allegedly drunken driver killed Bobby Cann while he was biking home from his job at Groupon, Illinois DOT has become a willing partner in creating the city’s second curb-protected bike lane. Though further intersection treatments would improve Clybourn, the street is a crucial link in the north-side biking network — which is why Cann was riding there. Today, thanks to the new curbs, hundreds of Chicagoans are doing so in comfort.

6. First Street, Washington, D.C.

Last year’s list neglected these first curb-protected bike lanes in the nation’s capital, a physically beautiful connection from the massive transit hub at Union Station to the regional Metropolitan Branch Trail. Our concerns were its narrow width, nonexistent buffer and the fact that it’s a bidirectional bike lane on a two-way street, a combo we rarely like to encourage.

The short extension that followed this year, offering better access to Union Station and the promise of a link all the way south to Pennsylvania Avenue, shares none of those shortcomings. So let’s celebrate the full length … and start rooting for phase three.

7. Arapahoe Street, Denver

If only these plastic posts could talk. This one-mile project was languishing as a line on a map until the Downtown Denver Partnership business advocacy group, inspired by a trip to Copenhagen and a wave of demand for better biking among downtown tech firms, rallied public support by creating a one-day demo and leading a successful crowfunding campaign that kicked off with an anchor donation from oil company Anadarko, among others.

The $36,000 raised through Ioby.org convinced Denver leaders that the public had their back. With their green light, city staff threw themselves into Arapahoe and its couplet street with a passion, rethought their bidding process and cut the ribbon this month, less than a year after approval. Like Queens Boulevard, it’s a national model for quick-build street projects.

8. Fifth Street, Pueblo, Colorado

Yes they can.

Pueblo, population 108,249, hasn’t ridden the same economic rebound as Denver, 115 miles to its north. “They are a rust belt type of community that is adapting to the modern economy with a new seven-block cycle track in their downtown,” said Carlos Hernandez, a consultant who worked on Fifth Street’s protected bike lane. For a bargain-basement $5,500 per block, Pueblo planned and built a downtown centerpiece for its new 20-mile network of buffered bike lanes, winning over a major business skeptic, nearly eliminating sidewalk biking and inspiring a monthly “taco tour” ride to restaurants along its length.

“The Cedar Rapids, Iowas, of the world are going to see this example and say, gee, that’s more like us,” Hernandez said.

9. Harbor Drive, Redondo Beach, California

Traffic is the curse of almost every beachside neighborhood, and low-stress bike access is almost always a useful treatment — not because it makes driving next to a popular beach more pleasant (nothing could) but because it actually gives people a viable alternative. These gorgeous, busy new bike lanes, which serve crowds in the thousands on summer weekends, prove that this is as true in greater Los Angeles as anywhere else.

10. Clinton Street, Chicago

Though Clinton Street lands our final slot because of its importance to the city’s connected network — which is poised to keep making exciting leaps in 2016 — this bidirectional post-protected bike lane with dedicated bike signal phases is remarkable for another reason: it’s almost exactly the same as nearby Dearborn Street, which was “the country’s most sophisticated downtown bikeway” when it justly earned our No. 1 spot in 2013. Two years later, a slightly improved version of that same design is enough to squeak in at No. 10.

We can’t think of any better illustration of how fast the practice of U.S. bike infrastructure is improving right now. Whatever your philosophy of street design, that’s something to toast about as we head into the next year of great ideas.

Developers announce plans to convert New Albany’s M. Fine & Sons factory into assisted living

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 18, 2015

You’ve got to walk down Main Street in New Albany a little ways out of Downtown to find the old M. Fine & Sons Building on the corner of Main and 14th streets. The stout two-story brick building operated as a shirt factory from its opening in 1922 until it shuttered in 1997. But the vacant structure is in for some upkeep.

The 115,000-square-foot, block-long property at 1420 Main Street is set for a $12.5 million renovation to convert it into an assisted living facility, according to a report from Chris Morris in the News & Tribune.

Louisville-based Denton Floyd Real Estate Group plans 94 assisted living units in the building, which seems an appropriate use for the structure surrounded by residential neighborhoods. A new streetscape along Main Street was just completed to improve pedestrian walkability in the area.

Construction is expected to begin in spring 2016 with construction taking around 14 months, meaning the facility could open in the summer of 2017.

“It’s a historic building and we are going to preserve the historic integrity of the architecture of the building,” Brandon Denton, co-founder of Denton Floyd, told Morris. “It’s a big project and obviously we are starting with a blank canvas inside.”

The project is partially funded by $2.5 million in tax credits from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

According to Morris, the 93-year-old structure was designed by Louisville’s Joseph & Joseph Architects and built for $100,000. M. Fine moved from a previous home at 146–148 East Main Street.

A decade ago, another plan for the site also sought to house the elderly. In 2005, a proposal called for a $7 million conversion of the building into an 83-unit retirement community.

Wait, what?! Louisville removes sidewalk in the name of pedestrian safety [Updated]

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 17, 2015

Louisville’s Ninth Street Divide just got a little bit wider, and Downtown Louisville a little less walkable.

During a street repaving project, two small pieces of sidewalk in the median of Ninth Street (aka Roy Wilkins Boulevard) at Magazine Street were removed, and engineers from Metro Louisville Public Works say the move is ab effort to increase safety because there’s no traffic signal at the intersection.

Location of the removed sidewalk. (Courtesy Google)

Work on the $500,000 repaving and sidewalk accessibility project, begun last month, is now wrapping up. Sidewalk ramps between West Market Street and Breckinridge Street were made ADA accessible to better accommodate wheelchairs and the street was repaved between those extents.

People waiting to cross Ninth Street at Magazine before the changes. (Courtesy Google)

“Intersections are being modified to improve safety and mobility for pedestrians,” a press release dated mid-November from the city agency stated. That release made no mention of removing sidewalks.

Before and after on the Ninth Street medians. (Courtesy Google; Tipster)

We asked Harold Adams, Communication Strategist at Public Works, why the sidewalks were removed. He provided a statement from the city’s engineering team:

Magazine Street is located midway between two signalized intersections (W. Broadway and W. Chestnut). Both of those intersections have traffic and pedestrian signals and are safe locations for pedestrians to cross Roy Wilkins.

Magazine street has no traffic or pedestrian signal and the concrete in the center median was promoting pedestrians to cross six lanes of uncontrolled traffic as well as multiple turning movements from all approaches. The concrete was removed to deter pedestrians from crossing at an unsafe location.

(Courtesy Google; Montage by Broken Sidewalk)

Removing a sidewalk here won’t deter pedestrians crossing the street—and it won’t increase safety. The problem isn’t pedestrians crossing at this location, it’s that a six-lane speedway runs through the middle of Downtown. All this sidewalk removal accomplished is making the city less appealing to get around on foot.

If pedestrians were to cross as city engineers desire, a person would have to walk 570 feet south to Broadway or 450 feet north to Chestnut Street, potentially requiring five or more minutes of extra time to simply cross a street. Forcing people to walk 1,000 feet out of their way effectively reinforces an invisible wall along the street. You’re not welcome here unless you’re in a car.

What this sidewalk removal does mean is that the city can point its finger at any person struck by a motorist at this site, since there is no marked crosswalk and it’s between two regulated intersections. According to state law KRS 189.570, the statute governing pedestrian behavior:

Every pedestrian crossing a roadway at a point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway…

Between adjacent intersections within the city limits of every city at which traffic control signals are in operation, pedestrians shall not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk.

A better approach to pedestrian law makes every intersection a crosswalk, whether it's marked or not. — A better approach to pedestrian law makes every intersection a crosswalk, whether it’s marked or not.

In general, Kentucky laws are not very friendly for people outside of a car. And it shows. A better model is to treat every intersection as a crosswalk, whether it’s marked or not. Many cities already have such standards, and it’s one way to make a place more walkable and pedestrian friendly.

Such an approach would mean motorists would be required to slow down and yield to people crossing at Magazine and Ninth streets, rather than vice versa. But sadly in Louisville and throughout the state, the car is still king.

Louisville is in the midst of a three-year, federally funded pedestrian safety campaign called Look Alive Louisville. The program is a response to the city’s above-average pedestrian fatality rate.

If removing a sidewalk and making a Downtown street even more of a motor speedway is the city’s idea of pedestrian safety, Louisville won’t make it very far.

[UPDATE 12/23/2015: After this story was featured on the Streetsblog Network, readers pointed out that the city’s actions could be in violation of ADA laws. Two readers pointed out that Broadway and Chestnut Street are not adjacent intersections, so the pedestrian would have the right of way in the unmarked crosswalk and that the sidewalk elimination could be challenged in court. Take a look at the comments below.]

Editorial: Why Louisville should embrace the Phoenix Hill Apartments

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 16, 2015

Had it been proposed today, the Puritan Apartments on the corner of Fourth Street and Ormsby Avenue in Old Louisville might have caused an uproar. When it opened in 1914, the six-story building was distinctly different from the detached, single-family homes that lined the neighborhood’s streets.

A rendering of the Puritan Apartments showing the original phase that opened in 1914.

The Puritan’s scale dominated the residential street, standing nearly twice as tall as surrounding two- to three-story structures. The building itself required demolishing a series of sturdy brick and stone mansions that stood in its way. And the materials it was built with—brick and terra cotta—represented the cheap new construction method of the day. Where buildings older than the Puritan were typically built with hand-carved stone, this new terra cotta was a mass-produced molded alternative of the machine age.

A postcard view of the Puritan Apartments showing its front porch with terra cotta facade and detailing.

In fact, advertisements celebrated that the Puritan was “scientifically planned” to eliminate the “servant problem.” Units were small and efficient so residents needed not hire domestic help. The building generally presented a blank wall to the street, set back behind a grassy berm as is typical of houses in the area. (Inside on the basement level, there was a retail grocery store.) And the apartments were expensive. In 1929, rents ranged from $65 to $150 per month. In today’s dollars, that would be $900 to $2,100 for a unit.

A postcard of the Puritan Apartments showing a later expansion to the north. (Courtesy Boston Public Library)

But today, the Puritan stands as a landmark structure in Old Louisville. We’re glad to have it. And when it opened, the city welcomed it proudly. Construction has changed again, and that once cheap terra cotta is now quite expensive by our modern standards. It’s scale is not so out of place with a century’s patina and it’s quite at home in Old Louisville.

The Baxter Avenue side of the building. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)

Today, Louisville struggles with the same kind of new development. And there hasn’t been a lot of examples, good or bad, in the urban core with which to draw experience. Questions over scale, preservation, design, urban contribution, and building quality have brought with them praise and disgust for various apartment buildings proposed around the central city.

For sure, some of the new buildings proposed today are better than others. Here on Broken Sidewalk, we’ve criticized elements of the 310@Nulu, the Amp Apartments, and the Axis on Lexington Road and praised others like the Main & Clay apartments. I’m adding to that latter list the proposed Phoenix Hill Tavern apartments by Columbus, Ohio–based Edwards Companies.

Located on a triangular assemblage on the corner of East Broadway and Baxter Avenue, the Phoenix Hill Apartments bring 280 units, 30,000 square feet of ground floor retail, a compact layout, and a variegated design to a stretch of street pocked by parking lots and concrete block buildings.

The house, left, and commercial building, right, that will be incorporated into the new structure. (Courtesy Google)

Also within the project site are a number of historic structures, a dozen houses and three commercial buildings. Five of those houses will be left in place, renovated, and likely sold or rented once the project is complete while the facades of an Italianate house and a commercial building will be incorporated into the new structure.

It’s not preservation, but it’s a compromise on a complicated site. And this block has been a development pickle for decades. I’m saddened to lose a couple of the old commercial buildings on Baxter, but to see a cohesive and urban project like this proposed on the site of parking lots and irregular parcels is exciting. It will change the character of the area, certainly, but for the better.

The East Broadway side of the building. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)

The four- to five-story scale of the buildings is an appropriate height to complement the grand entrance and spire of Cave Hill Cemetery across the street. This height will help focus attention on the landmark limestone spire rather than dwarf it. In fact, most of the context on the Baxter Avenue side of the project consists of cemeteries (Cave Hill and Eastern), making density here even more appropriate. Open spaces like cemeteries and parks make great locations for added density.

The design doesn’t scream look-at-me as others have attempted, but they do provide valuable urban context with an active street wall on Baxter. While I believe that activity would have been appropriate to continue around onto East Broadway, developers kept that frontage residential at the request of neighbors.

The Baxter Avenue side of the project. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)

The Phoenix Hill Apartments is the type of project that can actively reduce traffic congestion as it places hundreds of new residents within walking distance of their retail destinations—and it adds to the street with new retail of its own.

This project will be a boon for the corridor’s small businesses, increasing walkability, and reducing the need to drive for short trips. Plans still call for a 550-space parking garage tucked inside the project and not visible from the street, which I believe is overkill, but the reality that this project reduces the need for cars remains unchanged.

The East Broadway side of the building viewed from Baxter Avenue. (Courtesy Edwards Companies)

The old structures in the area mostly date to the late 19th century when Louisville was a very different place. Back then, this was the edge of town and the entrance to a toll road leading to destinations south. Buildings topped out at two stories and many houses at one. For much of the 20th century, the corner was either a gas station or a parking lot, contributing nothing to the area’s urban character.

Today, this corner is in the heart of the city. It sits at the beginning of the most active part of the Baxter-Bardstown corridor, a gateway to Downtown down Broadway, the Highlands, and to Phoenix Hill and Irish Hill. That confluence only stands to benefit from a project like the Phoenix Hill Apartments.

Louisville has grown up and gotten bigger. There’s absolutely no reason that we should still be bound by the scale of 19th century hinterlands in the core of a 21st century city.

But Louisville has not seen this kind of urban-style development activity for nearly a century and it sometimes feels like the city doesn’t know what to do about it. On one hand, there are NIMBYs whose good intentions would shrink the project and its ability to contribute to a vibrant urban neighborhood—or undermine the economics that make such a development possible. On the other side, there are development-at-any-cost parties that would have a Walmart built on this corner if the proposal came up. The best path forward is somewhere in the middle.

What’s now evident with the resurgence of development in the core city is that Louisville is not a desperate city. We don’t need to beg for developers to build here—to build a quality product here. The city should stand up and be confident as development returns to the core. Don’t be afraid of urban buildings, don’t settle for satisfying a developer’s bottom line, and don’t idly let bad urban form be built for the next generation to fix.

Louisville needs to look at the various products being offered and built around the city, learn from them, and demand the best product possible. One that makes Louisville a more walkable, more vibrant, more attractive place to live. That happens on a case-by-case basis. I believe we’ve found that with the Phoenix Hill Lofts and I’m excited to see this project move forward.

Yang Kee Noodle’s new Baxter Avenue cafe is a model on how to adapt drive-thrus for people

By Branden Klayko -

Dec 16, 2015

Here’s a story you don’t see everyday: a former fast-food outlet is being repurposed without its drive through. That’s the news on the sharply acute corner of Bardstown Road and Baxter Avenue, where Yang Kee Noodle recently unveiled plans for the old KFC Eleven building.

Construction will begin in early January to redo the property, according to Insider Louisville’s Caitlin Bowling, with a grand opening expected about three months later. The $500,000 renovation will remake the building—and the outdoor space around it—into a modern “Asian casual” restaurant with ample patio space.

Louisville’s Design+ Architects is designing the project. That firm has extensive experience designing fast-food architecture, including every brand name you’d expect to see along a suburban strip. Design+ previously designed the original KFC Eleven building, a previous Yang Kee Noodle location in Middletown, and a mixed-use structure housing their offices on the corner of Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway.

Design+ Architecture’s Jon Barker described the design to Bowling as “modernistic Asian.”

The real highlight of the design is its use of outdoor space. According to Bowling, the restaurant will include a retractable patio cover and fire pits for about 60 people. The window where motorists once picked up buckets of fried chicken will be repurposed into a pedestrian station for to-go orders.

Renderings show a new slatted pergola structure holding the retractable awning, bridging over the former drive-thru lane and bringing the building to meet the sidewalk. Out front, tables with umbrellas make space for relaxing rather than driving off, chicken leg in hand.

We couldn’t be more thrilled with the decision to use the drive-thru lane as a seating area. It just sends all the right signals that the Highlands is a place for walking and enjoying the neighborhood.

A token patch of landscaping containing a small sculpture had long formed the tip of the triangular parcel, but with the roadway gone, that patch is expanded into a larger usable space, if not a true public space. We look forward to watching city life move by when Yang Kee Noodle opens next Spring.

Yang Kee Noodle announced it would open at the triangular site this past August. The first location opened in the Oxmoor Center shopping mall in 2003.

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