In the Lexington Herald-Leader of 06 January was the recurring theme that Lexington is simply losing too many of its brightest and best because it’s...well, too back-woodsy or something like that. The columnist, Tom Eblen (onetime managing editor but now apparently commentator-at-large [remember Bill Bishop, who railed against cul-de-sacs back in the 90s]), used the term “creative class” and remarked a session he had recently enjoyed with a 20s-30s gang of architects, educators, and entrepreneurs in the arts and technologies. Some had even gone to Harvard, Princeton and MIT. But, after all, Eblen wrote: “It makes sense that an economy based on innovation and technology needs young, creative, well-educated innovators.”
Almost as if on cue on 01 January, a column by UK professor Ernie Yanarella appeared and ran along the same lines. Yanarella: “This community's leaders have had problems moving from vision to implementation.” The professor outlined a six-part solution for the problems plaguing the city, running the usual gamut from “vision/dream” to “addressing ... issues.” Another UK sage (grad student, I believe) complained the other day because there were not enough outlets for the raucous stuff called music these days by the “enlightened” ones such as he, of course. For Yanarella (and the H-L), Centrepointe was the beef, as always, but he made no mention of the efforts that have been and are being made such as the Distillery thing, new hospitals, new downtown housing, etc.
However, Yanarella has a point regarding the local government. One remembers the time a few years ago when the urban-county government actually voted once to completely close Vine Street at Broadway (suggestion from – yep – academia) and commuters were told to find their way to work by traversing neighborhood streets, which were actually residential parking lots allowing for virtually no clearance as two-way boulevards. A whole gang of citizens got up in arms over that crazy idea and the immediate backpedaling took place. Now, the big deal for the elitists is to rid downtown of one-way streets, the better to snarl traffic on streets not built way back when for two-way luxury vis-a-vis today’s traffic volume.
Politicians and academicians do studies, make charts, draw pictures...DREAM! Downtown here, as the case almost everywhere else, is a utilitarian location – financial institutions, courthouses, office buildings, law firms, restaurants, specialty shops – not very amenable to parks, promenades, etc. Maybe if it were located on a river (like Louisville & Cincinnati), such would not be the case, but it’s landlocked all of the time and grid-locked much of the time. Imagine (another idea from academia) a promenade in the middle of Vine Street. That has actually been proposed for the widest and therefore most easily traveled street downtown. Egad!
How does one entice folks to “come downtown?” Is it by plowing up the best streets and planting trees and flowers? Folks might come downtown, where parking either street-wise or garage-wise is a pain if not an impossibility much of the time if the Webbs put a Kroger Store on the Centrepointe block, with plenty of parking, of course. Or...maybe Walmart would be interested in a downtown location. In either case, people could combine what other pursuits they have in mind with also doing the family grocery-shopping and other types of shopping on a 24/7 basis.
Build a Kroger or Sam’s (especially with gas pumps) in that block and then the lounges would multiply as the “enlightened” combined everyday shopping with entertainment, ballgames or just plain getting drunk. Okay...so that’s a nightmare for the sophisticates, but it would be a DREAM/VISION to others. It would come nearer to revitalizing downtown than anything else.
Or...in keeping with making downtown a “green paradise,” as some want to do, why not encourage the Webbs to install a park (with a couple hundred trees for starters and a state-of-the-art playground) in the Centrepointe lot? Or...apply to the millionaires in the athletic department at UK and buy the land and turn it into an arboretum free from any vehicular traffic and fast-food joints. It would also be the best possible layout for the layabouts who frequent the park across the street now, so, of course, that might make it a bit iffy with regard to safety.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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