To the moon and back: Louisville’s sky-high problem with Vehicle Miles Travelled

Aug 4, 2016

One of the two main goals of the Move Louisville plan, the city’s 20-year transportation plan, is to reduce the number of miles people drive each day. The plan calls for reducing Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) by 500,000 per day, which might sound like a lot, but is really only a tiny sliver—2.6 percent—of the overall daily miles traveled.

Still, it’s important to start somewhere, and in the case of Louisville’s quite strong addiction to the automobile, that might require some baby steps.

Louisvillians drive a galactic number of miles each year. (Broken Sidewalk)

In our longform analysis of the plan, we put the astronomical number of miles Louisvillians drive into orbit by comparing them to the distance between the Earth and the Moon—230,100 miles. But that distance turned out to be far too small to measure the total distance Louisville drivers tally up annually. We’re talking 7 billion miles driven by Louisvillians each year! So we upped the ante and went interplanetary.

Above are some comparisons to put just how much Louisville drivers hit the accelerator each year in perspective, measured by some of the farthest out-there planets in the solar system.

But in all seriousness, Louisville’s VMT challenge is a significant one. And it’s one with a lot of low-hanging fruit that we can use to get some immediate, noticeable results.

According to Move Louisville, for instance, 50 percent of all automobile trips made are three miles or less, with 28 percent of trips being a mile or less. Those trips, especially in the latter category, should not involve driving an automobile. The challenge, of course, is getting people out of their cars for these short trips. And it’s not an easy one. First of all, the vast majority of the city is not built for walking or biking. For Louisvillians who live in the suburbs, trying to walk to a corner drug store often means taking their lives in their own hands. Speeding traffic along arterial highways, few crosswalks, and often missing sidewalks make walking deadly even if it’s convenient.

It’s a sort of chicken and egg scenario: what comes first, getting people out walking or building safe walking infrastructure?

We’ve certainly got a lot of walking infrastructure work we’ve been putting off, too. We often hear groans from motorists and local politicians about the state of our streets, and they’re certainly not in the best shape. (According to the city, it will cost $112 to repair the 30 percent of city streets rated as deficient, with another $27 million required to rehab bridges and culverts.) But to fix Louisville’s sidewalk network, Move Louisville notes, it will cost far more: $86 million is required to repair ten percent of the city’s existing 2,200 miles of sidewalks and another $112 million to fill in gaps in the sidewalk network

It makes sense to begin looking for VMT decreases in the more walkable urban parts of the city, where many people are already out walking and the infrastructure is significantly more complete. A bit of education could help remind people that it’s worth leaving the car behind for short trips—sometimes, after all, we just get into a habit like driving and get stuck on autopilot and end up driving everywhere. A few reminders that our feet still work could go a long way.

But we’re going to have to face the challenges of the suburbs and exurbs at some point, and this is where transportation planning and land use planning collide head on. We can’t continue to build unwalkable housing subdivisions and strip malls that require car ownership to participate. Better thought of the built environment is necessary, will require strong city leadership, and will likely not be very popular at first, especially among a development community that’s been building this way for so long.

These hard choices are becoming increasingly important, as data from Move Louisville makes all too clear. The plan documents that challenges Louisville is up against, and the future competitiveness of the city is at stake.

Move Louisville puts data behind what we already know: Louisvillians drive—a lot. “In comparison to our regional peer cities and the nation, Louisville’s percentage of residents driving to work alone is high,” Move Louisville reads. Almost 82 percent of Louisville’s 344,000 workers drive to work alone each day. “For example, 72% of Cincinnati’s residents drive alone, while Nashville’s and the nation’s rates stand at 80% and 76%, respectively.” Some 89 percent of Louisville households have one or more automobiles.

And while car ownership rates aren’t necessarily the problem, when we make using those cars the most convenient option ahead of all other modes, there should be no surprise that we create a city in which everyone drives.

At the other end of the spectrum, only three percent of people in Louisville take transit to work. That’s only 10,320 people out of Metro Louisville’s pool of 344,000 workers. Locally, ten percent of households do not own a car, making them reliant on transit, biking, or walking.

There’s a clear problem on the streets of Louisville, and it’s not one that’s going to be easy to solve. Even if we want to get out of cars and begin to help solve these problems, it’s often impossible or too dangerous for many Louisville residents. What would it take for you to drive less? To walk or bike for short trips? Or to even try using transit a couple times a month? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Homewood Suites hotel rips up parking lot at Seventh and Market

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 4, 2016

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Bill Weyland isn’t the only one in town digging around in preparation for a new hotel. Tim Mulloy and the Poe Companies have also begun pre-construction work for a new eight-story Homewood Suites hotel on the northeast corner of Seventh Street and Market Street. Thanks to a tipster for alerting us to the activity.

We spoke with Tim Mulloy about the activity on the corner and he told us that while construction hasn’t yet begun, crews from LG&E are on site installing utility vaults.

Rendering of the Homewood Suites hotel slated for Seventh and Market streets. (Courtesy Mulloy / Poe Companies)

“I’m actually walking back from that site right now,” Mulloy told Broken Sidewalk yesterday. “They just started digging Tuesday.” He said the vault is an important step before general construction can begin.

Work on the vault is expected to take around eight to nine weeks. “Our construction timeline has always been to start in late October or early November,” Mulloy added. If all goes according to plan, Mulloy said the hotel could be open by February 2018.

02-homewood-suites-louisville-construction — Crews from LG&E working on a utility vault for the project. (Courtesy tipster)

The structure of the eight-story building will be steel and concrete with brick and metal panel cladding, Mulloy said. It’s being built on a long-time surface parking lot that’s been in Mulloy’s family.

The $26 million Homewood Suites hotel will contain 133 rooms and notably no parking. Instead, it will connect to underutilized parking garages in the area for parking space.

CDC: America falling behind other nations on traffic safety

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 4, 2016

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America is falling behind peer nations on traffic safety—any way you measure it. (Courtesy CDC)

How is the United States doing on traffic safety?

To hear a lot of people tell it, we’re making great strides. President Obama recently referred to the reduction in American traffic deaths as a success story of sorts, contrasting it with the rise in gun deaths.

But while traffic fatalities in America are indeed trending downward, the improvement pales in comparison to what other countries have achieved, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control.

In America, the per capita traffic fatality rate fell 31 percent from 2000 to 2013, nowhere near the 56 percent improvement in 19 high-income countries over the same period. In fact, all 19 performed better than the U.S., with the best performer, Spain, managing to reduce the traffic fatality rate 75 percent.

As of 2013, America’s traffic death rate per person was about double the average of the peer nations, the CDC reports. Even measuring traffic fatality rates based on miles driven instead of population (which makes the sprawling, car-centric U.S. look better), America still has the fifth-worst safety record of the 19 nations.

If America instantly achieved the traffic death rate of the safest country, Sweden, an incredible 24,000 lives would be saved each year.

CDC researchers Erin Sauber-Schatz, David Ederer, Ann Dellinger, and Grant Baldwin say American officials must respond:

Lower death rates in other high-income countries, as well as a high prevalence of risk factors in the United States, suggest that the United States can make more progress in reducing crash deaths. With a projected increase in U.S. crash deaths in 2015, the time is right to reassess U.S. progress and set new goals.

While the CDC emphasizes impaired driving and failure to wear seatbelts as primary causes of traffic deaths (repeating the dominant American traffic safety message of the past 50 years), the agency does single out excessive speed as a systemic risk. The CDC also refers approvingly to Vision Zero approaches to traffic safety, and the philosophy that “system providers” like transportation engineers are responsible for preventing the loss of life.

(This article has been cross-posted from our partner, Streetsblog.)

Activity at Home2Suites site means construction is soon on its way

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 3, 2016

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In a few months, a five-story Home2Suites hotel by Hilton will begin rising on the corner of Jefferson Street and Hancock Street in Nulu. Several tipsters have reported in the past few days that crews were on site digging around, so we checked in with Bill Weyland, managing partner at developer City Properties Group, to get the latest.

“We have gotten in the ground to do some soils analysis,” Bill Weyland told Broken Sidewalk yesterday. “As you can imagine, there’s a bunch of old remnants of buildings—foundation walls and things.” He noted that the work is preliminary and isn’t actually construction. Rather, it will help engineers finalize the building’s foundation plan.

Elevation of the Home2Suites facing Hancock Street. (Courtesy City Properties Group)

The design of the 100-room Home2Suites follows in line with Hilton’s standard look for the hotel chain. The bulk of the hotel faces Hancock Street, which helps with Weyland’s efforts to bridge the gap between East Market Street and areas to the south. It also allows for unloading on the quieter of the two streets. A parking lot is shown to the west of the hotel along Jefferson Street. No retail is planned in the building. The hotel also includes an indoor pool.

City Properties Group expects the hotel to cater to both patients at the Medical Center to the south and visitors to Nulu. The company is working with First Hospitality Group of Chicago on the project. The same duo partnered on the Hilton Garden Inn at Fourth and Chestnut streets.

Jefferson Street elevation on the Home2Suites hotel. (Courtesy City Properties Group)

“We’ve been really working on that and the Louisville Chemical Building to roll them forward at the same time,” Weyland said. “Both those projects have layers of complication. The hotel on the soils side and Louisville chem from the environmental side.

The Louisville Chemical Building will be rebranded as the Lofts on Hancock and will house 12 apartments and three retail spots. You can read more about that project and catch our interview with Weyland on why improving Nulu’s walkability is key to its future here.

The Louisville Chemical Building, right, will be rebranded as the Lofts on Hancock. (Courtesy City Properties Group)

Weyland said both projects should be under construction by the beginning of October. If all goes as planned, construction will wrap up by the end of next summer. “We’ll have a more accurate construction schedule after we verify the issues we’ve got now,” he noted.

Sixty-seven Congress nembers to feds: Measure the movement of people, not cars

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 3, 2016

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weallcount — If U.S. DOT doesn’t change its proposed congestion metric, 50 people riding in a bus will count as much as one person in an SUV. (Courtesy Transportation for America)

The federal government hands states about $40 billion a year for transportation—money they can basically spend however they want. The result in many places is a lot of expensive, traffic-inducing highways that get clogged with cars soon after they’re finished. Can measuring the effect of all this spending lead to better decisions?

The United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) is developing a metric to assess how well states address congestion. This is a minefield—if the new congestion rule only measures the movement of cars, it’s going to entrench 60 years of failed transportation policy. Unfortunately, the first draft of the U.S. DOT rule left a lot to be desired.

Reformers have been pushing the agency to revise the rule so it takes a broader, multi-modal view of congestion. Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation for America reports 19 senators and 48 U.S. representatives have written a letter to U.S. DOT [PDF] demanding a healthier approach.

The Congress members write:

If we focus, as this proposed rule does, on keeping traffic moving at high speeds at all times of day on all types of roads and streets, then the result is easy to predict: states and MPOs will prioritize investments to increase average speeds for cars, at the expense of goals to provide safe, reliable, environmentally sensitive, multi-modal transportation options for all users of the transportation system, despite those goals being stated in federal statute. This singular focus on moving vehicles undermines the progress this Administration has made on multi-modal planning and investments through the TIGER program. Encouraging faster speeds on roadways undermines the safety of roads for all users, as well as the economic vitality of our communities.

The excessive congestion performance measure should be amended to assess people hours of delay and not just vehicles. This change is critical to account for the many non-single occupancy vehicle users, including transit bus riders and bicyclists and pedestrians traveling along the corridor, which provide critical congestion relief and could be undercounted or even penalized under this measure.

The letter also insists that U.S. DOT require state and regional transportation agencies to assess the impact of projects on greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S. DOT is currently accepting comments about the rule change. You can weigh in and help promote a better policy.

(This article has been cross-posted from our partner, Streetsblog.)

Preservation Louisville’s proposed Portland #SaveOurShotguns house could be demolished

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 2, 2016

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While going through a batch of proposed demolitions recently, I had to give one house a second look. Hadn’t I seen that one before? The house is a small brick shotgun at 2136 Lytle Street in Portland.

Valentine's Day heart bomb cards attached to 2136 Lytle Street. (Preservation Louisville / Facebook) — Valentine’s Day heart bomb cards attached to 2136 Lytle Street. (Preservation Louisville / Facebook)

And it turns out I had seen it over a year before when Marianne Zickuhr, the former executive director at Preservation Louisville hosted a “heart bombing” campaign (don’t worry, no explosives here). According to Design*Sponge, the concept emerged out of Buffalo, New York, several years ago:

“[A]n energetic group of forward-thinking preservationists decided to…send Valentines to some of the city’s most endangered buildings in desperate need of love. The idea is called “heart bombing,” and it’s awesome.

An appropriation of the street-art term “bombing,” this version is the brainchild of Jason Wilson and Bernice Radle, two of the founding members of Buffalo’s Young Preservationists. Conceptually, the idea is quite simple: Choose a number of endangered buildings from the city’s demolition list and cover them, sometimes rather haphazardly, with an explosion of paper hearts and love letters.

During Valentine’s Day 2015, this little abandoned house on Lytle Street began feeling the love. Later that year in June, the nonprofit wrote on its Facebook wall: “Preservation Louisville’s first SOS [Save Our Shotguns] shotgun house is under contract and being prepped for rehab!” There’s a certain sense of relief hearing news like that.

04-2136-lytle-street-preservation-louisville-save-our-shotguns — An announcement that 2136 Lytle Street would be renovated. (Preservation Louisville / Facebook)

A brief note on Lytle Street: the prominent Portland thoroughfare was named for the Lytle family, of which, according to the Portland Museum, “General William Lytle founded the Town of Portland in 1811.” The original settlement is long gone, sitting along the river near the foot of present day 34th street. Due to flood damage in 1937 and 1945, the area was largely leveled during construction of a levee system. But Lytle’s name lives on in the neighborhood street lined with shotgun houses.

But over a year later, 2136 Lytle Street had an Intent to Demolish sign posted, which left me scratching my head. What went wrong with restoration efforts?

It turns out that time required to get through red tape and the elements both played a role. A partial wall collapse eventually broke off the partnership by overwhelming the scale of the project for Preservation Louisville. But as we’ll see, there’s still some hope yet for 2136 Lytle Street.

A partnership forms

“We were asked to do mitigation to counter historic fabric lost in the California neighborhood,” Jeana Dunlap, Director at Metro Louisville’s Vacant & Public Property Administration, told Broken Sidewalk. “Whenever we do a mitigation, the SHPO [State Historic Preservation Officer] reviews some of our demolition candidates when they’re related to historic Section 106 requirements.”

Six houses, including 2136 Lytle, were included in a Request for Proposals (RFP) for reuse seeking interest from private entities to bid on properties starting at $2,500. This led to interest from Preservation Louisville.

“We don’t get access to a lot of brick shotguns,” Dunlap said. “Those are the ones I really like to focus on because they’re a lot more salvageable—they’re more than a wooden house on a dirt foundation. We save as many as possible, but we need partners to do it.”

A partnership between the nonprofit Preservation Louisville, a for-profit entity comprised of PL board members called Shotgun Partners, and Metro Louisville formed to redevelop the shotgun house.

“We have a Landbank pricing policy,” Dunlap said. “If you embark on a Metro-sponsored activity, you get the property for a dollar.” So Preservation Louisville would have received the house for one dollar under the agreement that it contributed $30,000 to its renovation. “Shotgun Partners had a sizeable chunk, too,” Dunlap said.

“We made a commitment to the nonprofit with the expectation they would work with the for-profit,” Dunlap said. “The for-profit was to take title, and the nonprofit partner was to partially fund the renovation.” She noted that Shotgun Partners, headed by Kimberly Stephenson of Marian Development, “was going to do the vast majority of the construction work and oversight and manage the property once it was renovated.”

The Plan

The Lytle Street shotgun represented Preservation Louisville’s most ambitious Save Our Shotguns project. Stephenson said previous Save Our Shotgun efforts had been partnerships with other groups like New Directions to renovate owner-occupied houses.

“The intent was to do restoration to allow the owner to stay in place,” she said. “This would have been the first property where Preservation Louisville would have owned and renovated the home. We were for sure looking for it to be utilized as an example of NPS / SHPO exemplary restoration efforts.”

“It looks like the total project cost was estimated $107,890,” Stephenson said. That number included both hard and soft costs, such as engineering and environmental costs, insurance, construction loan origination fees, and developers’ fees that were to be donated back into the project. The total renovation cost was around $80,000, she said. “None of those funds had been actually raised,” she added.

“Several individuals including ourselves were donating our time and work to the project,” Stephenson said. “Lots of folks did lots of work on that house. No one was making any money off that property.”

Stephenson said the group hadn’t figured out how to use the house once the renovation was complete. “We hadn’t even really gotten that far,” she said. “Perhaps sell it at an affordable rate to someone who lived in the neighborhood.” Dunlap recalled discussions of using the house as a rental property as well.

Red tape

2136 Lytle Street in the larger Portland neighborhood. (Google)

But along the way, the project hit some red tape.

“The process of filling out the memoranda of understanding between Louisville Metro and the state and Louisville Metro and the local partners took longer than expected,” Dunlap said.

“We never had a definitive timeline, but my expectation was that it would happen soon,” Dunlap recalled. “We never set a date or a deadline, we just began putting together the partnership.”

Zickuhr left the top post at Preservation Louisville late last year and no interim director has been put in place, taking some focus off of the shotgun house project. Dunlap recalled Zickuhr’s enthusiasm for the house and noted that the heart bombing campaign put it on their radar in the first place. Zickuhr did not return a call for comment.

As time dragged on, the shotgun house began to deteriorate further, and this past June, part of a side wall collapsed.

The collapse

06-2136-lytle-street-preservation-louisville-save-our-shotguns — (Courtesy Metro Louisville)

“This is one of those properties that I think at one time had one or two side entrances,” Dunlap said. “Over the years when they filled up those entrances they didn’t do such a good job. It was a pretty large chunk of wall section that fell out and was no longer there.” A photograph of the house before the collapse shows two doors, or perhaps a door and a window, boarded up and covered with siding at the collapse site.

“We had to go in and put some reinforcements in,” Dunlap said. “They were able to shore up the remaining portions of the wall and seal it up so people couldn’t just walk in and out of it.” That stabilization took the weight of the roof off the now fragile brick wall and a new stud wall sealed up the opening.

“We have building inspectors look at all the properties under our control,” Dunlap said. “To no surprise he thought this building was too far gone. I do know that when it comes to historic preservation, people can do some amazing things if they have the resources to do it.”

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“We let Shotgun Partners know to see if they were still interested,” Dunlap said. “They were no longer interested after visiting the site.”

“Several people looked at it,” Stephenson said. “Our construction division and the president of Marian walked through the property. They felt the damage was too severe and it would make restoration cost prohibitive. Preservation Louisville is a very small organization.”

In the end, Stephenson said the collapse simply made the project too big of an undertaking. “It was seen that if we did it in its current state of disrepair we’d end up losing money,” Stephenson said.

“It’s in a perilous state,” Dunlap cautioned. “The longer it sits the weaker it gets.”

Silver lining?

By mid-July, an Intent to Demolish notice was sent out for the house by Metro Louisville. According to the request, the city can issue a wrecking permit any time on or after August 11. But come next Thursday, bulldozers won’t be waiting on site.

For now, Dunlap said the city would hold off on demolishing the house while discussions over its future are ongoing. “We chose not to do asbestos [abatement yet] because it’s fairly invasive,” Dunlap said. She noted that it can take some time to award all the contracts involved with a demolition.

“We are talking to the VAPStat team about purchasing that house,” Stephanie Kertis, Managing Director at the Portland Investment Initiative (PII), told Broken Sidewalk. “Their asking price is $2,500, which is pretty standard for these houses that are slated for demolition. It’s right in the scope of the other nine houses we’ve done in the neighborhood.”

Kertis said the wall collapse wouldn’t stop them from taking on the project. “I and my construction team walk through houses all the time,” she said. “That sort of thing is scary to a lot of folks but it’s something we see all the time and it’s not a deterrent.”

Still, any proposal could take up to a month or more to move forward. “Gill would submit [an offer] and then we would review and make a recommendation to the Landbank Authority which meets once a month,” Dunlap said. “If we’re really on top of our game we can have everything in place so it can close shortly thereafter.”

But Holland and his team have been through the process before. “Our house at 1837 Bank is another we purchased from the Landbank Authority,” Kertis said. “I remember it taking it quite some time.”

“My primary goal is not to demolish historic properties,” Dunlap said. “There’s enough blight in this community that really does need to be cleared, the last thing I want to do is spend precious resources demolishing something historic.”

“We are leaving room for someone to take over this property who has the resources to do it justice,” Dunlap said. “In the event that doesn’t happen we plan to move forward with demolition.”

SoBro Kroger site up for sale: Will buyer seek to keep grocery or propose redevelopment?

For Sale

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 2, 2016

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The Kroger location at 924 South Second Street in SoBro, the area south of Broadway between Downtown and Old Louisville, has hit the market, and the future of the last urban grocery store in Louisville remains uncertain.

“We have Kroger on the lease until the end of the year,” Scott Gilmore, Senior Associate at CBRE, told Broken Sidewalk today. “If you wanted to keep them on they could stay until the end of next year.” After that, a new lease would need to be negotiated.

A large brick wall faces Second Street. (Google)

The 2.58-acre property and its 26,410-square-foot grocery store building are listed by CBRE for $1.6 million. The single-story structure, facing a large parking lot (for which SoBro is famous), was built in 1980, according to the listing. The property includes three parking lots separated by alleyways spanning from Second to Third to Breckinridge streets.

The Kroger site sits directly south of the Puritan Uniform Rental Building that Spalding University proposes to demolish for yet another parking lot.

The Kroger property. (Via Google / Montage by Broken Sidewalk)

“There’s no guarantee” on whether Kroger will renew a lease or move on, Gilmore said. “They seem to say they’re losing money and have been for some time. They did put some money into it a few years back, but didn’t realize the sales they thought they would after the investment.”

Gilmore said the property has been on the market for about two weeks and there has already been a lot of solid interest. He said interest is coming from both locals and out-of-towners, but declined to elaborate on any potential buyers.

There’s interest in seeing Kroger stay on, Gilmore said, but the site also offers a good redevelopment opportunity if that doesn’t work out. “It’s a moving target,” he said.

“It’s a very integral piece of real estate for the area,” Gilmore said, “especially being one of the only grocery stores in Old Louisville.”

(Top image courtesy CBRE.)

Design overhaul of proposed Conti Apartments in Clifton shows improvement

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 2, 2016

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A proposal for a new apartment building on Clifton‘s Vernon Avenue is back with a much-improved plan. When we first wrote about the so-called Conti Apartments in February, proposed by real estate broker Tami Conti of the Brown Conti Company, there was a lot to be desired. The original plan demolished a building for a parking lot along the street and proposed a large structure at the back of the lot.

But Conti took the project at 124–128 Vernon Avenue back to the drawing board, hired Scott Kremer of Studio Kremer Architects, worked with Mark Madison of Milestone Design Group and Metro Louisville Planning & Design Services, and completely re-imagined the project. And it’s much better for the effort.

Next, Conti and Ashburner will again meet with the neighborhood to present the latest plan. A meeting is scheduled for 6:00p.m. on Wednesday, August 10 at the Clifton Christian Church across Vernon Avenue from the project site. Another meeting will eventually be held with the Clifton Community Council as well.

Elevations of the new design show a long slender structure with seven units. (Courtesy Brown Conti Company)

The development plan increases the total number of units on site from seven today to ten—a reduction from the original proposal’s 13 units. An existing brick double-barrel shotgun house containing three units would be renovated as part of the project. Apartments would range from $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom to $1,400 for a two-bedroom unit.

Floor plan for the new building. (Brown Conti Company)

The new structure would feature a contemporary design that fits with the massing of the rest of the streetscape. The long, slender structure is designed as three distinct volumes connected by stairwells. Most of the units would be accessed from the side of the structure along the driveway. It would be clad in Hardy fiber cement siding and panels. No decision on color has been made yet, but the team hopes to have some ideas to present at the next neighborhood meeting.

“I think the project really just went through another level of design,” Cliff Ashburner, an attorney representing the project, told Broken Sidewalk. “We spoke with planning commission staff, we heard from neighborhood representatives. We recognized the parking couldn’t be totally in front of the building.”

Site plan for the Conti Apartments. Grey structure is an existing double-barrel shotgun, red shows the new building, and green shows the permeable pavers along the driveway. (Courtesy Brown Conti Company / Color by Broken Sidewalk)

The Conti Apartments have been evolving since the original pre-application plan was filed with the city in February, Ashburner noted. “From the time of pre-application to the first neighborhood meeting, we had already moved the plan somewhat,” he said. “It went through another round with Mark at Milestone Design Group. We heard from neighbors both at a Clifton Community Council meeting and at our own meeting.”

“The site is challenging because it is pretty steep from Vernon down,” Ashburner said. “In addition to the density that could be allowed, you have the issue of parking.” He said the team opted for ten units because it fit with the parking the site could accommodate. The Land Development Code requires 1.5 parking spaces per unit, less a 20 percent credit for preserving the double-barrel shotgun and 10 percent for being near TARC. “It creates a balance with the site—an increase [in density] but not too big.”

The new design has tried to ease the overall impact of the parking lot on the site. Plans show a “California-style” driveway, with strips of concrete flanked by grass-filled pervious pavers instead of a wide expanse of asphalt. “It was Tami’s idea for the driveway,” Ashburner said. “She wanted something that would disturb the site as little as possible.” The rainwater detention infrastructure has been moved beneath the parking lot. Overall, ten existing trees will be lost on the site, mostly for the parking lot—fewer than under the original plan. Ashburner said code will require new trees be planted.

To make way for the new building, one existing structure dating to the 1880s, would be demolished. Today, the structure at 124 North Vernon is a wooden four-plex, but it was originally built as a two-room schoolhouse.

Ashburner said Conti hired an engineer to evaluate the old structure. “He determined it wasn’t sound,” he said. “It wasn’t adequately framed to its foundation—there are significant signs of stress and decay in the foundation. There had been a fire in the back of the building. The kicker was the structure itself was built as a single-story building. At one point it was moved and they put in a second floor.”

“Once the drywall came off, it was clear to her that the building was probably going to have to come down,” Ashburner said. He noted that the appropriate bracing for the second floor was never installed and that ceiling heights are a lot seven feet due to the second floor.

08-conti-apartments-louisville-clifton-new-design

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The original two-room schoolhouse was built by early Clifton residents in the 1880s and closed in 1938, according to the Louisville Metro Archives & Records Center. The original building say right up against the street behind a small fence. You can still see a wider sidewalk in front of the building hinting at its previous non-residential use. After sitting vacant for six years, a plan to convert it to housing was proposed during World War II.

Contractor Alph C. Kaufman planned to convert the structure to “small apartments for war workers” in 1944. According to a January Courier-Journal article, he received permission from the Board of Zoning Adjustments on the condition that he move the structure back from the street 25 feet to conform with the required front yard in the city’s codes of the time.

Two months later, the move was underway. “Already the old porch has been dismantled,” a March 1944 clipping reads. The old school bell was taken by Peter Knopf, Jr., the son of the one of the schoolhouse’s original trustees. He planned to install it in a tree in his backyard and ring it during social events.

The schoolhouse was built by Clifton’s first residents, the article continues, before the neighborhood was part of Louisville and before there was power or running water. It hosted the first meeting of the Clifton Christian Church, which now stands across the street.

There are still a lot of hurdles left before the Conti Apartments could break ground. The Clifton Architectural Review Committee (ARC) would first have to give permission to tear down the old structure and then grant approval of the new design. The site also needs to go through a rezoning process, which can take four to six months, with hearings before the Planning Commission and ultimately Metro Council. The project also seeks a waiver from section 5.4(D) of the Land Development Code that requires a private yard area of 30 percent. The project seeks a 1.4 percent reduction to 28.6 percent due to the odd site shape and lack of alley access.

“It’s going to take a while,” Ashburner said. “We’re already behind schedule by redoing the plan. I would expect we’re 150 to 180 days from a final decision on zoning, six months from construction.” Reworking the plan, though, has brought major improvements and a better design, and we’re thankful that Conti and team made the effort.

Americans can’t afford the high cost of parking requirements

By Branden Klayko -

Aug 2, 2016

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Building a single parking spot can easily cost more than many Americans’ life savings. In the latest issue of Access Magazine, retired UCLA economist Donald Shoup brings this point home to illustrate the huge financial burden imposed by minimum parking requirements, especially for poor households.

The average construction cost of structured parking, across 12 American cities, is $24,000 for an above-ground space and $34,000 for an underground space. (Surface parking spaces are cheaper, but keep in mind those prices don’t include the cost of purchasing land.) Those costs get bundled into the price of everything, driving up the cost of living even for people who don’t own cars.

Americans are paying off the cost of parking construction whether they can afford it or not.(Courtesy Access Magazine_

The burden of parking requirements, which mandate the construction of parking spaces that otherwise wouldn’t be built, is most acute for people of color.

In 2011, the average net worth of Hispanic households was $7,700 and of black households was $6,300, Shoup notes. Thanks to parking requirements, households without much savings—many of whom have more debt than assets—must contend not only with the cost of parking construction, but the cost of car ownership as well, writes Shoup:

Many families have a negative net worth because their debts exceed their assets: 18 percent of all households, 29 percent of Hispanic households, and 34 percent of Black households had zero or negative net worth in 2011. The only way these indebted people can use the required parking spaces is to buy a car, which they often must finance at a high, subprime interest rate. In a misguided attempt to provide free parking for everyone, cities have created a serious economic injustice by forcing developers to build parking spaces that many people can ill afford.

A more equitable policy would be to simply do away with parking requirements, which in London cut the number of new parking spaces in half. Barring that, even just reducing parking requirements can still have a profound effect on the cost of living, Shoup says.

(This article has been cross-posted from our partner, Streetsblog.)