Better Lexington – Page 2

To-Do List for Lexington: 2. Stop seeking saviors. Start making them.

November 3, 2009October 10, 2015 Rob Morris 6 Comments Local Better Lexington, Business, Community, Economic Development, Government Spending, Ideas

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series. Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

Last July, Florida Tile announced that it was relocating its
headquarters to Lexington from Lakeland, Florida. Kentucky’s state
government made a $3.7 million capital investment to bring 25 new Florida Tile jobs to
Lexington. Florida Tile estimates that the number of jobs may grow to as many as 51 in 10 years. In October, Lexington’s Urban County Council dropped the occupational license tax for Florida Tile to 1.25% from the normal 2.25% – a benefit of up to $1.3 million over the next 10 years.

How will 25 (or 51) new jobs pay back the millions of public dollars invested in bringing Florida Tile to Lexington? It is doubtful that they will. And that points out significant problems with Lexington’s economic development strategy.

In our last post (Get Real), we talked about the destructive effects of Lexington’s booster mentality, which couples a self-deceiving optimism with a compulsive need to look good to others. Boosters often pursue expensive, highly-visible, ego-driven civic projects with the promise of vague future rewards.

The economic development strategy which springs from such boosterism is one in which a great deal of effort and capital is expended to attract outside commerce to Lexington. So boosters promote big civic investments (events, buildings, infrastructure projects, or incentives) with the hopes that those projects will entice new companies to invest or locate here. And the underlying assumption is that the firms we attract to Lexington will – eventually – pay back the investments of effort and capital.

But this kind of economic development strategy has a number of irredeemable flaws:

Waste. Projects like the 2010 World Equestrian Games and CentrePointe are wildly speculative and profoundly inefficient ways to draw new commerce into our city. And, when one looks at the numbers, it is doubtful that Florida Tile’s incentive package will pay back taxpayers over the next 20 years – if they stick around that long.
Loss of Power. When we try to attract companies from outside
Lexington, we cede significant negotiating power to the company we are courting. That
company can stay where they are, or go to a city other than Lexington.
We are prone to enter bidding wars with other desperate cities in the
pursuit of desirable ‘saviors’, and the process becomes a race to the bottom: Who can offer the most lucrative incentives and conditions?
Misguided. These strategies pursue the wrong kinds of firms. When we resort to incentives to, in essence, bribe companies to come to Lexington, what kinds of companies are we attracting? Ones which are much more mercenary and which – by definition – have less investment in our community and its future than firms who are already here. To be clear, every business should be concerned with improving its bottom line. But when public dollars are at stake, we must decide how to allocate those dollars based upon public benefit. And underwriting mercenaries is not the best use of public funds.
Hidden Penalties. The incentives granted to companies like Florida Tile disadvantage already-local firms. Those local firms not only help pay for the new firms’ incentives through taxes, but they also don’t get the financial subsidies, new facilities, or extended tax advantages that are often granted to newcomers.

This economic development approach – attract outside saviors to drive growth – also ignores a vital question: Where are these firms coming from?

Or, put differently: How is it that such firms even have the capability to expand to a city like Lexington? How did they grow? What did their home cities do to foster that growth? And, most importantly, why isn’t Lexington doing that to grow great businesses at home?

Lexington’s leaders frequently look to similar American cities in the attempt to understand how those cities have grown and how they have built a great quality of life. If we look at ‘model’ cities like Austin, Madison, Portland, and Pittsburgh, we see a very different economic development model at work.

In fact, these cities suggest that the old booster model has it exactly backwards: Those cities invest in growth at home first, then outsider attraction follows.

Lexington should be asking a lot of questions about those cities:

How did they foster key industries at home? (For instance, how did Austin nurture the development of vibrant economies around semiconductors, computers, and music?)
How did those cities redevelop key districts into vibrant contributors to their economic engines? (Think Sixth Street in Austin or The Pearl District in Portland.)
What specific approaches did these cities use to leverage their relationships with local universities to drive economic growth? (Think Carnegie Mellon or University of Wisconsin.)
What infrastructural moves did they make to enhance the local economy? (Example: How did Austin Energy help the city save enough energy – even as Austin grew – to avoid building a new power plant?)
What did they do to nurture and promote the careers of key locals? (Think Michael Dell in Austin or Rebecca Ryan in Madison.)

And then Lexington needs to take a hard look inward and think about how those lessons apply here. For instance:

Who are Lexington’s Michael Dells or Rebecca Ryans? How would we know?
What are the best ways to allocate economic development funds to cultivate growth in their businesses?
Which districts in Lexington hold the most promise for redevelopment? What specific lessons can we draw from, say, the Pearl District redevelopment process?
How can we leverage the University of Kentucky and Transylvania University as key resources for economic growth (and not think of them only as educational institutions)?

These cities suggest that Lexington should stop seeking external ‘saviors’, and instead focus on building up our city’s internal competencies and infrastructure. Then, outsiders might find our city desirable without requiring huge ransoms.

Focusing on internal growth is, in fact, how cities like Austin, Madison, Portland, and Pittsburgh have fueled sustained growth over the past 20 years. Lexington should follow their example.

Lexington should stop seeking saviors, and start making them instead.

How does that look? Here are some initial ideas:

Make targeted investments. Instead of, for example, throwing $80 million at the World Equestrian Games in the speculative hope that the investment will draw future commerce from outside the city, make smaller, more targeted investments in growing specific businesses with specific growth measurements and targets (jobs, tax revenues, etc.).
Select target industries, and invest there. Choosing particular industries will allow Lexington to develop self-reinforcing ecosystems around key technologies or competencies. Lexington’s mayor has frequently touted the “3 H’s” strategy for Lexington’s economic development: Horses, health care, and high-tech. These might be valid industries to target, but we’ve allocated precious little development resources toward those goals and seen precious little progress in those areas.
Oversee development with sharp business intellects. Typically, Lexington’s economic development has been overseen either by developer-driven boosters (Commerce Lexington) or by academics and architects (Downtown Development Authority). Lexington needs to shift the balance to more entrepreneurial businesspeople who have experience in business growth and who understand which business models work and which don’t.
Prioritize business investment over infrastructure investment. Projects like streetscapes and buried utility lines, while pretty, will contribute relatively little to Lexington in the way of tangible jobs or revenues. And attempts to financially justify these projects frequently cross into sheer booster speculation about making better impressions. Instead, we should focus on cultivating growing businesses and directly creating jobs and revenues with our development funds.
Think “local” first. Supercharge our investments by prioritizing local businesses before external ones. More on this in our next post in this series.

Rather than spend hundreds of millions of dollars on hope and
speculation, we need to make smarter, more targeted investments with our public development dollars. We need to run the business of growing our city like a business. Anything less is a waste of our time and money.

Next: 3. Local First

To-Do List for Lexington: 1. Get Real

November 2, 2009October 10, 2015 Rob Morris 5 Comments Local Better Lexington, Business, Community, Economic Development, Ideas

(Part of the To-Do List for Lexington series. Click here for an overview and links to the rest of the series.)

Lexington suffers from a booster mentality. That mentality dictates that we must constantly paint our city in the most favorable light. And, often, the booster mentality buys into its own hype: “Everything is great; Everything is wonderful; No problems here!” Boosters often champion ego-enhancing feel-good projects with questionable economic value.

The trouble with such unrelenting optimism is that it frequently crosses into rampant self-deception. When things are going badly, the booster cannot admit it; Doing so would destroy their carefully-constructed mental image of the perfect city.

The booster mentality partly stems from wanting to look good for others, for outsiders. And, from an economic development standpoint, boosters look to attract commerce (businesses) from outside the city.

The trouble with such primping and preening is that an obsessive amount of effort is spent on cosmetic rather than substantive improvement. By spending so much time trying to look good for the outside world, boosters often neglect very real problems at home. And their self-deception means they have trouble even acknowledging the existence of such problems.

Boosterism takes a number of forms, but follows a pretty standard recipe:

Hold out the promise of a vague future reward
Leverage that promise to justify current sacrifices
Question the patriotism, loyalty, intellectual ability, credibility, and / or intentions of all who question either the extent of the reward or the merit of the sacrifice
Never, ever admit that maybe the reward wasn’t worth the sacrifice

We see this all over town.

With CentrePointe, there was the promise of the state’s tallest building, containing a J.W. Marriott and a fictionalized Hard Rock Café. Lexington would have status. If it meant destroying some historic buildings and taking some gigantic leaps of faith, so be it. And, if folks make too much of a fuss over the historic buildings, marginalize them and the block the buildings stood on. And never, ever admit that the whole speculative venture was a mistake.

With streetscape projects, there was the promise that we’d look good for our out-of-town visitors while the world’s eyes were upon us during the 2010 World Equestrian Games (WEG 2010). By looking good to the world, Lexington might be able to attract more tourists. Or maybe businesses. Or something. If it means severing the most significant southside artery (South Limestone) for over a year and losing some downtown businesses along the way, so be it. And, if folks make too much of a fuss over the cost ($88 million), dismiss their calculations without offering any of your own. Or use silly diversionary tactics like forcing them to remove their logos from key presentations. And never, ever admit that the project’s execution and timing were poor.

Sport is a common justification for such development projects. For the promise of “major league status”, cities have destroyed historic neighborhoods or paid huge ransoms to attract (or keep) a major sports team or event (such as the Olympic Games). Boosters cite the added visibility and prestige that comes with such status as justification enough. But most such “investments” rarely pay off.

With WEG 2010, we have such an example of sports-led economic development right here at home. And the promise of the world’s attention and the event’s prestige have become their own rationale for action – without regard for whether such action is truly justified by a real-world reward.

Boosters assert that today’s torn-up streets, empty blocks, disrupted commerce, and vast new facilities – often paid for with tens of millions of public dollars – will all be worth it…

Someday.

They hold out the vague and unmeasured promise of future visibility, prestige, tourists, businesses, investments, and commerce. In the meantime, they drain significant economic vitality from the city while pursuing future attention and dollars. But the boosters of CentrePointe, streetscapes, and WEG rarely do a realistic accounting of the true value (or value destruction) of their ventures.

In essence, boosterism is an incredibly expensive and inefficient form of untargeted advertising: Hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at the rest of the world in the faint hope that someone – anyone – will throw some of it back into our economy. And, as we’ve written before, Lexington needs to focus less on advertising and promoting how great it is and focus more on actually being great.

Lexington needs to get real.

We need to get real about which community investments will actually pay dividends.

We need to get real about what is wrong (and what is right) with our community and about what it will take to craft a better Lexington.

We need to get real about the destruction wrought by unbridled boosterism.

Getting real isn’t about ceasing to support our fine city. It isn’t about becoming negative – ‘nay-saying’ every project or bad-mouthing Lexington.

It does mean that we start openly discussing and debating the merits and shortfalls of the investments our community makes.

Only by acknowledging that we have significant problems can we begin to wrestle with them. I’ve written before that Lexington is too polite. In conversation, we are so indirect that we avoid confronting our difficult issues.

But we must. We must begin to engage and debate our city’s future. We must get a full accounting for the folly, waste, and fraud which accompanies such unbridled boosterism. We must redirect effort and attention from this
glamorous-but-questionable boosterism to projects and investments
which, while far less ego-boosting, will yield tangible economic
benefits for our city. And we must get real about the present state and future possibility of our city.

And getting real is what the rest of this series is about.

Next: 2. Stop seeking saviors. Start making them.

To-Do List for Lexington: An Overview

November 2, 2009November 20, 2015 Rob Morris 11 Comments Local Better Lexington, Business, Community, Economic Development, Ideas, Jobs, Taxes

On November 8th, this blog will turn turned one year old. It has been an interesting year, and the blog has turned into something very different than what we initially conceived.

One of the surprises: how much we ended up focusing on issues and ideas of local interest, especially those related to downtown Lexington.

We’ve not been shy about offering our opinions on CentrePointe, on South Limestone, on Lexmark, on our local government, and on the future of our city, just to name a few. And you’ve not been shy in offering your (often very different) opinions in return.

We believe that Lexington is a really great city. But we also believe it needs to be much better. And we’ve got some ideas on how to get to that better future.

So, as we end our first year of blogging, we thought it might be good to put together an agenda for our city. Over the next several posts, we’ll share ideas on improving Lexington. Some will be ideas we’ve touched on before; some will be brand-new. We’ll focus a lot on our city’s economic and urban development.

As we build out this list over the next week month or so, please add your thoughts and comments. We believe that an open discussion about our city is vital to crafting a better future for Lexington.

So think of this series as a conversation-starter. Think of it as a love letter to what our city could be. Think of it as the rantings of your local mechanic.

Think of it as a to-do list for Lexington.

To-Do List for Lexington

Postscript (12/15/2009)

This series is dedicated to my son, Carson, and to the future Lexington that he and his generation will inherit.

What presenting to LFUCG is like

October 7, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 4 Comments Local Better Lexington, Community, Design, Economic Development, Government Spending, Ideas, Jobs, Streetscapes

Prologue
It all started with a testy weekend exchange on Twitter with LFUCG council member Doug Martin.

That Twitter exchange started with me posting multiple sarcastic complaints about traffic and then morphed into a conversation on leadership.

Throughout the day on Friday, I saw a series of ‘tweets’ on how bogged down Lexington’s traffic had become. As new street closures on West Main Street and Old Frankfort Pike were added to the long-term closure on South Limestone, traffic in many parts of the city came to a standstill. This was exacerbated by a multi-vehicle wreck on Versailles Road Friday night. Essentially, the entire west and south side of Lexington was impassable.

I then made my sarcastic assessment of the chaotic state of our streets.

Without going into details, CM Martin objected to my flippant tone, and urged me to complain less and lead more. It was a point that he reiterated as other folks jumped into the conversation throughout the weekend. I pulled back from the discussion – stewing a little that CM Martin felt I wasn’t leading already.

I should clarify that Doug Martin is one of my favorite council members. He’s engaged and approachable – by far the most active Twitterer in LFUCG – and he genuinely wants more citizen participation and a better city. Although he and I frequently disagree on specific tactics that we should use as we approach the important issues in Lexington, I feel that we’re on the same team.

But as the weekend progressed I couldn’t get over how he seemed to think I wasn’t a leader.

Preparation
As I stewed about the conversation with CM Martin, I was simultaneously stewing about the state of our city’s traffic.

I have written a few times about the streetscape project and the resulting impacts to downtown. Most recently, I wrote about the “true costs” of the South Limestone project – lost customers, lost productivity, lost services – and estimated the total loss of business to be between $84 and $92 million, far in excess of the approximately $17 million being spent on construction.

Meanwhile, there seemed to be no sense of urgency at LFUCG about accelerating the project.

On Monday, I learned that the next LFUCG work session included a “Downtown Streetscape Update” on the agenda. I decided that I would make a presentation on my findings – and perhaps demonstrate some “leadership”.

Trouble is, I had never even been to council chambers, let alone participated in a meeting. I asked my informal network of friends on Twitter, email, and South Limestone what I needed to do to make a presentation at the beginning of the session.

And the responses I got were great, but a bit intimidating. I only had about 24 hours to get my act together.

Citizens are only allowed 3 minutes to comment on issues on the agenda. But other citizens can donate their time. I figured that I had at least 10 minutes worth of material, which would mean that I needed 3 (or more) other folks to donate their time to me. Everyone has to sign in before the 3 PM meeting starts. Getting 3 other people to come to council chambers at 3 PM on a Tuesday is a daunting task.

At the same time as I was searching for supporters, I was also trying to throw together a presentation. I am a presentation perfectionist – I like to have every slide “just so”, and I want to know precisely what I’m going to say with each slide. (I’m the same way with writing, by the way.) Normally, crafting a presentation that I am happy and comfortable with takes a week or more.

But I had one day. Time to buckle down.

By early Tuesday, I had only one other person committed to showing up, giving me a grand total of 6 minutes. I was beginning to think I’d have to miss this opportunity to present to council. As I was preparing the presentation, I was also mentally noting the parts I’d have to slash if I didn’t have enough supporters donating their time.

But as my network kicked in on Tuesday afternoon, I saw that I’d have at least 12 minutes.

With that, I “locked in” the content of my presentation, and downloaded a few different versions of it to a thumb drive. I didn’t know which version of PowerPoint to bring (PP 2003 is the best bet). I also didn’t know if I’d have control of the ‘clicker’ to transition between slides (it turns out that I did).

Presentation
I showed up to city hall at about 2:45 PM, hoping to see my “supporters”. I checked in at the front desk by giving them my driver’s license and getting a visitor’s badge (a sticker, really). Then, one by one, I started to see the other folks who were donating their time to my presentation. There were 4 others, which should have given me 15 minutes – more than enough time for what I had to say.

I gave my thumb drive to the LFUCG’s technical coordinator, and had a moment of panic – the thumb drive had an “autorun” file on it which the LFUCG computers saw as malware. I was starting to look like I couldn’t even load up the presentation. After a reboot, we were able to transfer it, and the coordinator showed me the way to navigate through my presentation while up at the podium.

Mayor Newberry started the work session at 3 PM (sharp!), and public comment (for items that are on the agenda) is usually the first item. But Tuesday was also the day that council recognized Lexington’s Junior Fire Chief, and so council made time for that first.

Then, it was time for public comment. Mayor Newberry called my name and, as I approached the podium, he mentioned that I had 12 minutes. My mind scrambled a bit, as I tried to figure out where the other 3 minutes went. Did someone not sign up? Did they do so incorrectly? Since I didn’t know, and since I designed the presentation for about 10 minutes, I decided to go ahead without making a big scene.

I was atypically nervous as I approached the podium. I’m normally a pretty confident public speaker, but I was shaking. What was that all about?

I’ve been suffering from a cold for the past few weeks, and the constant coughing has meant that I haven’t been sleeping well. On top of that, I didn’t feel fully prepared – I didn’t have every detail down pat. Then, there was minute-gate. And, finally, when my presentation showed on screen, it jumped ahead a couple of slides.

Streetscapes

View more documents from Rob Morris.

Then, I started talking. My voice wavered a bit. As I got a couple of slides in, I started to feel my normal presentation rhythm. I usually flip through 6 to 10 slides per minute, and I was starting to get into the flow of the presentation. And, yet, I was still shaking…

For the most part, the presentation flowed as I planned. For the most part. The least well-thought-out section (the one where I shared my Twitter conversation with CM Martin) was where I temporarily lost track. I struggled for what seemed like an eternity, and then finally got control of the presentation again.

In the process of bungling that one section, I fear I may have given the unfortunate impression that CM Martin was some sort of “bad guy” in the South Limestone closure. He most certainly isn’t. (Sorry, Doug.)

As I approached the end of my presentation, Mayor Newberry interrupted me. “You have 30 seconds.” I felt like asking if I got more time because of his interruption. But I knew that I had only 9 more rapid-fire slides, and I knew what I was going to say, so I charged ahead, wrapping up the presentation before he could interrupt again.

GTV3 Video of Presentation (My presentation starts to 6m 30s).

Post Mortem
As I sat down, a few of those around me quietly praised the presentation. Mayor Newberry called the next speaker – who was actually one of my “supporters”. So I could have had 15 minutes after all.

As the council transitioned to their business, it wasn’t at all clear that my presentation had any impact. After I finished, there was no further discussion of South Lime, and no questions for me.

I knew I had some good points, but it wasn’t clear that any of them had connected with the council members. Then, several minutes after my presentation, CM Diane Lawless came by and told me how well I did. But Diane is such a nice person that I wasn’t sure her sentiments reflected the council as a whole.

When the “Downtown Streetscape” item finally came up on the agenda, CM Lawless ripped into the way in which the South Lime portion was executed. And then, an amazing thing happened. One by one, previously staid council members chimed in with comments about the urgency of accelerating South Limestone.

First, CM Kevin Stinnett made a motion for getting an update on what it takes to speed things along. Seconded (loudly) by CM Lawless, I then watched as CMs Jay McChord and Julian Beard reiterated their support for the motion.

In the end, the presentation did connect with a large portion of the council, and – next Tuesday – the issue of jump-starting the South Limestone project is back on the docket.

GTV3 Video of Presentation (Council discussion starts at 1h 33m. Takes a while, but it gets interesting).

The True Cost of South Limestone

September 22, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 7 Comments Local Better Lexington, Business, Community, Economic Development, Jobs, Lowell's, Streetscapes

The South Limestone streetscape project began with the closure of South Lime two months ago today, and the project is slated to continue for another 10 months. Meant to better connect downtown with the University of Kentucky campus, the project includes the widening of sidewalks, the installation of bike lanes, and the underground placement of utilities.

When the project started, we wrote about the chaotic process of closing the street and about the need for practical planning and design on South Lime and other urban development projects. How has the project evolved since then?

Not well.

Severed Artery
The closure dramatically impacted traffic patterns between downtown Lexington and the south side of our city, resulting in gnarled traffic on a number of alternative routes to downtown. At various points in the project, intersections with cross-streets (High, Maxwell, and Euclid) have also closed with little notice, adding to confusion and gridlock for downtown commuters and shoppers. In effect, the closure of South Limestone has walled off downtown from Lexington’s south side.

Several businesses along South Lime have struggled to cope with the substantial loss of customers and the physical disruption of their businesses. Last week, Joe Graviss, the owner of the McDonald’s on South Lime, pleaded with Lexington’s Mayor and Urban County Council to add extra shifts or more workers to speed the project.

City officials responded that extra shifts will not accelerate the project. The project’s manager noted that the city’s concrete supplier closed in the evenings and that local utilities were already providing personnel to assist with the location and relocation of utility lines. At one point, he admitted that he had no ideas for speeding the South Lime project along.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray – the CEO of Gray Construction and the only councilmember to oppose the project – countered the project manager’s claims. “It would be wise of us not to be extravagant in describing the difficulties of this project… With 2000 projects under my belt, I’ve never seen a project that couldn’t be improved or accelerated.”

At this point, most elected leaders and city bureaucrats seem unprepared to take significant action to accelerate the South Limestone streetscape project.

That’s because they have been thinking about the impacts of South Lime on the wrong scale.

Estimates on the price of the South Lime project vary, but the early $5.2 million estimate has ballooned to somewhere between $13.1 and $17 million. The newer, higher price was partly meant to help expedite the project.

But, as we’ll see in a moment, that price far underestimates the true cost of the project to our city, our economy, and to our future.

South Limestone’s closure is not a mere inconvenience – it is a severed artery that is bleeding the life from downtown. It demands an urgent response from our leaders. The cost to the city is too
dear to delay action, especially in this difficult economy.

Disruption: Anecdotes and Hard Data
A number of weeks ago, on the first day that the High Street intersection with South Lime was closed, I worked in my office and overheard two different customers from the south side of Lexington talk about the enormous problem of getting to our downtown shop – the confusion from suddenly closing the High Street intersection had made traffic especially difficult to decipher.

Then, we had an elderly customer from Nicholasville make an appointment for the next day, asking for directions on how to get to the shop with all of the construction. Concerned about getting lost, she decided to do a dry run the day before. After experiencing the jams, diversions, and delays, she called back and canceled her appointment.

Last month, I talked with another downtown business who is in our same industry. They were scratching their heads about why their August business “fell off a cliff”. I talked with them again last week, and their business was still much slower than usual.

Yesterday, a regular customer who owns a shop in Festival Market came into Lowell’s and opened the discussion with a flat “Business sucks”.

When I started hearing these anecdotes, I began to think that the impacts of the South Limestone closure extended far beyond South Lime. I wondered about the effects of South Lime as a customer deterrent for our business:

How many of our customers come from the south side of Lexington?
How many of those south-siders might have chosen to stay away from “the mess” downtown?
What could that data tell us about the impacts to all of downtown Lexington?

And what I saw in the data was astounding and troubling:

About 30% of our customers come from ZIP codes which would use Nicholasville Road (which turns into South Limestone) as the primary corridor to downtown
Since July 22nd – the date of the closure – we have lost one third of the business we’d normally expect from those ZIP codes. By comparison, the rest of Lexington is relatively flat or growing.
The net of this was a loss of 10% of our sales (and a much bigger hit to our profitability) directly attributable to the South Lime closure.

I disclose these facts not as a woe-are-we pity party, but as a fact-based assessment of how “the mess downtown” affects one downtown business. Our business is a relatively healthy, well-respected business with incredibly loyal customers (Last week, we won “Best Honest Mechanic” from Ace Weekly readers). And, still, the closure of South Limestone accounted for a loss of a full third of south-side customers.

Ripple Effects
Can we extrapolate from just one business to the whole of downtown? Not with any degree of certainty. But my conversations with other business owners make me believe that my business’ experience with the South Lime closure is not exceptional. Admittedly, not every downtown business is as impacted by traffic disruptions, but most are impacted in some fashion: lost customers, lost productivity, supply chain delays, etc.

Hard data for downtown Lexington is difficult to come by.

Just how much of Lexington’s $11 billion economy takes place downtown?
Which businesses depend upon the smooth flow of traffic? To what degree?
How many of their customers / employees / suppliers come from the south side?

Depending on the assumptions used, the estimate of impacts to downtown can vary wildly. Our best “conservative” estimate? Downtown Lexington loses about $360,000 each business day that South Limestone is closed. (Depending on our assumptions, the estimates ranged between $275,000 and $600,000 each day.)

That translates to between $7.0 to $7.7 million in lost business every month, or between $84 and $92 million for the year-long duration of the South Limestone project. That’s around 700 to 1000 jobs which could evaporate from downtown Lexington, especially as the closure drags on.

Are these numbers absolute? Not by any means. But they do provide a ballpark idea of the true cost of the South Limestone project.

Much of the focus on the costs of South Lime have focused on either a) the direct taxpayer costs ($17 million) or b) the costs to businesses on South Lime. And while those South Limestone businesses deserve special attention for the degree this project impacts them, our estimates suggest that our leaders and our community have been thinking about ‘cost’ on the wrong scale. There is a much bigger, much more urgent cost which must be addressed.

The irony of South Limestone – as the cycle of lost customers, declining businesses, lower employment, and more lost customers continues – is that the project may well end up strangling the very downtown that the streetscape is meant to connect with.

Our leaders frequently assert the necessity of a vibrant, livable downtown. It is time for them to live up to their words.

With the South Limestone closure, they must now choose: Will they continue to choke off downtown from a significant portion of the city, or will they act with urgency and extraordinary effort to accelerate and improve the project?

Their actions now will determine whether the prediction from our Chaos post will come true:

“And the results of the chaos are easy to predict. Confused commuters and shoppers stay away from ‘the mess’ downtown. Downtown businesses die. And, after fits and starts, Lexington ends up with a beautiful street. To nowhere.”

Time to choose.

The Spotlight Effect

September 10, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 2 Comments Local Better Lexington, Community, Ideas

There’s an old saw in business: “That which gets measured gets results”.

I have to admit I’ve always been a bit dismissive of that saying (usually attributed to the late business guru Peter Drucker). In corporate life, I saw plenty of things that were measured which didn’t get results. The mere act of measuring something accomplishes nothing if effort doesn’t also go into improving that ‘something’.

But a couple of events over the past few weeks has me thinking about what does get results.

Newtown Pike Extension
The first event was the much-acclaimed burial of utility lines along Lexington’s Newtown Pike extension. After Graham and Clive Pohl (of Pohl Rosa Pohl Architects) highlighted the discrepancy between the pretty artists’ renderings of the extension and the actual plans for the construction that was about to begin. Instead of the beautiful, pristine streets promised in the renderings, the extension would have been littered with utility poles and power lines.

LFUCG engineers cited the high relative cost of burying the utilities, estimating that putting them underground would add nearly $900,000 to the project’s cost.

Since the extension will be a kind of “gateway” into Lexington, there was an outcry from many on the Urban County Council about how important it was for us to look good for visitors. Our Vice Mayor was quoted as saying “We’ll never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Local columnists and Lexington’s online community jumped on the issue as well, and it snowballed.

Within a couple of weeks, city leaders lined up with Kentucky’s Governor to announce that they had found the extra funds to put the utilities underground in the Governor’s contingency fund.

I have to admit, I support putting utilities underground, but am dubious of the “first impression” argument. The utilities are currently slated to go underground only on the Newtown Pike Extension. The existing stretch of Newtown will still have above-ground utilities. So a visitor’s true first impression will still be filled with wires and poles from I-75 to Main Street, as seen in this shot of Newtown from this afternoon.

The Treeds Experiment
The second event was a little closer to home. In the Treeds Experiment, I decided take up a challenge from an Urban County Councilmember to see how long it took to get a response from LFUCG’s Division of Code Enforcement. So, last Friday – just before the holiday weekend – I sent an email to Code Enforcement about a lot next to our main building which had become overgrown with tree-weeds, or “treeds”.

At the same time I sent the email, I posted an outline of the experiment on my blog, along with pictures of the overgrowth. And I pledged to chronicle the responses I got from the city.

This past Tuesday, the city’s contractors showed up to clear the lot – less than one business day after my email and post. Pretty impressive by any measure. Code Enforcement hasn’t addressed all of the concerns I outlined (the main drain in the lot is still clogged). But, to be fair, they have addressed most of the public safety issues which accompanied the blight in that lot.

On Twitter, a couple of folks brought up valid points. Russell and Ann both pointed out that Treeds had an unfair advantage – because I talked about it publicly, that may have helped artificially accelerate the responsiveness of the city. (Indeed, within hours of my initial Treeds post, a city employee commented that the experiment would ‘fail’.)

The Spotlight Effect
These two events both benefited from the “spotlight effect”: When the public’s spotlight turns to a particular issue, and that spotlight begins burning intensely, ‘normal’ reactions and ‘normal’ timelines are no longer acceptable.

Russell and Ann were right: my experiment wasn’t ‘normal’, and the average citizen shouldn’t expect that kind of responsiveness.

And others would point out that the Newtown Pike Extension wasn’t ‘normal’ either – it was a one-time event which utilized one-time funds. We shouldn’t expect city officials to move that quickly to fix an oversight or mistake.

But we should.

Everyone should get prompt action on valid complaints. Everyone should expect city leaders to fix their mistakes, to do the right things, and to do them quickly.

But we can’t wait for our leaders to do the right thing. We need to push them. We need to build bigger, brighter spotlights, and we need to shine those spotlights on the things that matter.

It is up to us.

Building a Spotlight
What does it take to build an effective spotlight? I can’t claim to be an expert, but here are some of my thoughts culled from the past few days and weeks (feel free to contribute your own in the comments below):

We must be more vocal. We tend to be indirect folks here in Lexington. It is awkward and impolite to complain; it is much better for the other person to do what they should. But they don’t. And we stew. And nothing much changes.

It is time for that to change. As out-of-character as it may be for many of us, we need to become much more vocal about what is wrong and what we expect. Only then can things improve.

We must join our voices. When one person calls a city department, they are a complainer. When several people call – and are joined by bloggers, columnists, and media – that’s a movement.

And a movement is what dislodged the status quo of the Newtown Pike Extension. We need more movements in Lexington with more voices working in concert. We need to utilize our public platforms – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and papers – to draw others to our cause.

We must be more visible.
When one person calls one other person at LFUCG, there’s no spotlight. No one else knows about the call, and no one else can amplify the sentiments expressed there.

One of the reasons that Treeds got such a rapid response was probably the ‘publicness’ of the experiment. That visibility helped the amplify the spotlight and, in all likelihood, accelerated the response.

We must measure. This statement isn’t about micro-measuring every detail of every issue. It is about documenting who we talked with and what they said, and holding them accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).

Any regular reader of my posts knows that I’m not shy. They know that I’m not afraid to use my platforms to try to build a movement. In the past few months, my blogging and writing has become fairly visible. (And, for what it is worth, I’ve got some like-minded friends.)

So if you need a spotlight, let me help you. If you see blight around campus or around downtown, let me know. If your business is suffering from the South Limestone road closure, let me know. If you have a great idea for our city, let me know. If you see a problem which needs fixing, let me know.

Together, let’s be more vocal. Let’s join our voices with others who agree. Let’s be more visible. And, then, let’s hold people accountable.

I want a better Lexington. One where businesses aren’t squeezed out of their locations by poorly-planned year-long road closures. One where our government operates much more transparently. One where blight is quickly and effectively addressed. One which has a real (and realistic) urban development plan for downtown. One which has a thriving arts and business community. One which leverages its past to build a brighter future. One which will make my son homesick if he ever leaves.

If you want that too, then join me – or rather, have me join you. Tell me what matters.

And I’ll do my best to help you build a spotlight. Let’s make a better, faster Lexington.

The Treeds Experiment

September 4, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 6 Comments Local Better Lexington, Community, Lowell's

Back in May, I blogged about the abandoned properties next to our shop, and about what to do about blight in our city.

In this week’s Urban County Council meetings, residents of several neighborhoods surrounding the University of Kentucky campus registered their concerns about the changes taking place in their communities.

The biggest concerns surrounded how some property owners were effectively converting single-family homes into makeshift dormitories / frat houses / flop houses to take advantage of the burgeoning student population at UK. The complaints centered not only on the creation of multi-unit apartments and the paving of lawns for parking, but also on the often-destructive behavior of the residents who move in.

Some on the council wished to impose a moratorium on these kinds of conversions while the city figures out how to accommodate growth at UK.

Last night, the council rejected the proposed moratorium, to the disappointment of many of the residents. At one point, Councilmember Lane suggested that neighbors should simply “file a complaint on property owners you feel are in violation of zoning ordinance, see if our government can apply the laws we have on the books,” to which citizen Janet Cowan responded “I know all of the numbers, Mr. Lane. I have them on speed dial.”

So, how well can the government apply the laws we have on the books? It is time to see.

The Treeds Experiment
What happened after openly blogging about the properties surrounding Lowell’s back in May?

Nothing.

Well, not nothing, exactly.. The 8-foot tall tree-weeds (“treeds”) I talked about then have now grown to some 16- to 18-feet tall, dwarfing the hedges that they have grown through.

The treeds now spill out over the sidewalks, making them impossible to navigate without a machete. Some pedestrians step into the street rather than navigate the mess on the sidewalks.

The grass growing next to our building has now grown to 7 1/2 feet tall (That’s me back there earlier this afternoon, risking chiggers and other man-eating varmints. I’m 6 1/2 feet tall…).

And, finally, the only drain on the lot is completely crusted over. So, during heavy rains, the lot drains straight into Mechanic Street, contributing to an occasional “Lake Mechanic”.

All of which sets the stage for what I’m calling “The Treeds Experiment”. The Treeds Experiment is a test — wherein I plan to take up Councilmember Lane’s suggestion — and learn just how long and how well our government takes to apply the laws that we already have on the books.

Simultaneous with this blog post on the afternoon before a holiday weekend, I am sending an email to code_enforcement@lfucg.com requesting that they take remedial action upon this lot and its owners.

I will chronicle the communication (and, I anticipate, the non-communication) I get from the Code Enforcement folks and other city officials in updates to this post and on Twitter. I will not tell them that I am doing so (so that they will not artificially accelerate their actions).

But I am telling you.

Should be interesting. Look for updates here as the weeks and months progress.

Note: Many thanks to AceWeekly for chronicling the LFUCG meetings and civic discussions. Ace captured the quotes I used above.

Pat Gerhard at Third Street Stuff has recently contacted the Downtown Development Authority about the lot. We agreed a month or so ago that I would contact Code Enforcement. (Sorry for the delay, Pat.)

9/4/2009, 3:46 PM: Sent initial email to LFUCG Code Enforcement, while publishing this post.

To whom it may concern:

I am the owner of Lowell’s, an auto
repair shop at 111 Mechanic Street. There is a lot at the North corner
of North Limestone and Mechanic which appears to be abandoned, as no
maintenance has been done by the owners for over 2 years.

There are now large tree-weeds growing through the hedges
surrounding the lot, making progress on sidewalks very difficult. The
only drain on the lot is clogged, and the lot drains into Mechanic
Street, contributing to flooding during heavy rains. There is a large
clump of grass which is now approaching 8 feet in height which is
growing next to our main building. Many customers assume that the lot
is ours (since it borders our building), and a few have asked us to
clean it up.

Can you take remedial action on this property and update me on your progress in addressing these issues?

Thank you,
Rob Morris

9/4/2009, 6:18 PM: Blog comment from the Lexington Streetweeper (written by an LFUCG employee) on how the Treeds Experiment is “destined to fail”.

9/4/2009, 9:28 PM: I reply that failure really isn’t possible.

9/7/2009, 10:50 AM: During torrential downpours, Lake Mechanic forms again as Mechanic Street is completely flooded, due in part to runoff from the Treeds lot with a clogged drain.

9/8/2009, 10:45 AM: I receive an email from David Jarvis, Director of Code Enforcement:

I will have Calvin Powell assign an Inspector. Thank You.

9/8/2009, 1:25 PM: I respond:

Thank you. I look forward to your updates.

Rob

9/8/2009, 2:19 PM: David Jarvis sends me another email:

Property will be cited (14 day time limit) and the limbs will be cleared back off the sidewalk as soon as we can get our contractor there.

As I read that email (and post this update) the contractors arrive with weed-eaters and loppers in hand:

Buh-bye treeds! But where will the varmints live now?

9/8/2009, 2:45 PM: Taylor Shelton and 10th District Councilmember Doug Martin post responses on the blog. Councilmember Martin mentions that Code Enforcement is particularly short-handed and suggests that citizens use LexCall 311 with details of their similar complaints.

9/8/2009, 6:31 PM: I came back to Lowell’s after being out since about 3:30 PM, and most of the debris was removed. Still a couple of piles which couldn’t fit into the contractor’s truck.

9/9/2009, 9:15 AM: Contractors cleaning up remaining debris from lot next to Lowell’s main building.

9/9/2009, 10:14 AM: The lot’s only drain is still clogged. Not sure whether that is a Code Enforcement issue or not. Sent a response to David Jarvis and Calvin Powell:

Thank you for your quick actions in getting this lot cleared.

Is the clogged drain in the lot something under the purview of Code
Enforcement, or would there be another department which handles that
drainage issue?

Thanks,
Rob

Toward a Better Lexington

July 9, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 1 Comment Local Better Lexington, Community, Ideas

“It has taken five years on Council to understand what we can and cannot control.”
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council Member Kevin Stinnett, 7/2/2009

How do we make Lexington a better city? Really better? I have some ideas, but first we need to understand some of Lexington’s fatal flaws in order to design something better…

A Broken City
As a relative newcomer to the inner machinery of our city (but a lifelong resident), I have spent a few months trying to figure out how Lexington ‘works’. As a downtown business owner, my focus has been on how we craft a functioning, vibrant, and livable city: How do we create a better Lexington? And it has been a maddening exercise. The more I delve into how decisions are made in Lexington – the more I understand what is actually going on – the more perplexed I become. I am forced to conclude that our city is deeply, systemically, and utterly broken.

Lexington is an uncoordinated tangle of overlapping agencies, boards, task forces, committees, departments, rules, and processes. Within this messy system, each organization is charged with its own distinctive – but often overlapping or conflicting – mission, mandate, authority, ability, accountability, and expertise. Some of the organizations consist of long-term government administrators, some of elected officials, some of volunteers, others are quasi-governmental public/private agencies, and still others are fusions of all of these.

This highly fragmented machinery yields a city which fosters turf battles, redundant effort, convoluted processes, secrecy, uncertainty, and, as we have seen most recently, corruption.

The ultimate result is a profoundly inefficient city with an effectively paralyzed government.

Scandalous
Lately, our local news has been rife with scandals and poorly-conceived,
-designed, and -executed projects:

Out of control spending sprees at the Airport, the Library, the Kentucky League of Cities, and the Kentucky Association of Counties.
The scar of CentrePointe’s failure with its phantom financier, phantom tower, phantom business model, and phantom jobs.
The seemingly hasty and disorganized pending closure of South Limestone.

All of these scandals fit a disturbingly regular pattern: Inadequate oversight which leads to lax controls which permits gross mismanagement and/or outright waste of taxpayer dollars.

Behind this pattern of scandal and appalling inefficiency lies Lexington’s deeply flawed governing apparatus. And when we observe that apparatus in action, we can begin to understand the root of the scandals.

Laurel and Hardy
Many Urban County Council meetings bear an astounding and troubling resemblance to a Laurel and Hardy “Who’s on First?” sketch. A prime example of this was last Thursday’s Economic
Development Task Force meeting (See Ace Weekly’s wonderful reality-show spoof here for further examples). A central question of last week’s meeting was “Who is (really) responsible for economic development in Lexington?”

At the outset, one councilmember stated, “It has taken five years on Council to understand what we can and cannot control.” Re-read that statement, because it is a profound indictment of our city’s overcomplicated decisionmaking infrastructure. Five years. It takes five years for a councilmember to “get it” when they are steeped in it day-to-day? How long will it take for an ordinary citizen?

And by the way, despite the councilmember’s assertion, I don’t think the Council yet understands what they can and cannot control, as the ensuing conversation demonstrated.

The Task Force (Consisting of Urban County Council members) debated the Council’s role in economic development relative to Commerce Lexington (“CLex”, Lexington’s semi-private chamber of commerce) and the Downtown Development Authority (“DDA”, a corporation commissioned by the city and charged with helping redevelop downtown). Both CLex and DDA have a board of directors and a staff of professionals.

What emerged from the discussion (chronicled best by Debbie Hildreth on her new blog about acclimating back to Lexington) is that the councilmembers have little clarity and little agreement on the respective roles, responsibilities, plans, and accountability of the Council, CLex, DDA, and the CLex and DDA boards. Reading through Debbie’s transcript, the councilmembers’ statements are filled with stale bromides, helpless complaints, quick answers and utter confusion. It all becomes tragically comic when you see how our elected officials are not even remotely on the same page.

And it is no wonder that our Council is befuddled. The situation is actually far more complicated than just the Council, CLex, and DDA. Within the Council itself, there are a bewildering array of committees and task forces, all of which could lay legitimate claim to economic development. There is, of course, the Economic Development Task Force. But there is also the Infill and Redevelopment Task Force. There is the Planning Committee. But there is also the Budget and Finance Committee. And the Outside Agency Oversight Committee. And the Corridors Committee. (But wait, there’s more!) There are staff professionals within Lexington’s Division of Planning. There are volunteers who serve on the Planning Commission. And with CentrePointe, there is the Courthouse Area Design Review Board, which issues the building permits for the site.

Within this ridiculous balkanization of our government, who has the jurisdiction, the responsibility, and the accountability for building a better Lexington? Everyone and no one at once. And therein lies the problem.

All of these organizations can claim they spearhead Lexington’s development into a better city. All of them “own” a piece. But ultimately, none appear truly accountable for actual on-the-ground progress.

The Lyric
With a noble project like the restoration of the Lyric Theater, who is in charge? Who takes the lead on coordinating and executing the Lyric’s redevelopment?

The Lyric could plausibly fall under the auspices of the DDA. Or CLex. Or the Infill and Redevelopment Task Force. Or the Economic Development Task Force. Or the Planning Commission. Or, even, the Corridors Committee. Ultimately, though, responsibility fell to another shard in the splintered machine: the Lyric Theater Task Force (who, by the way, appeared to do a great job).

And while the Lyric task force optimized the project for the theater’s redevelopment, it isn’t at all clear where this project falls within the wide array of potential development opportunities in our city. It isn’t clear how the Lyric was connected to our other urban initiatives. In a fiscally-strapped economic environment, was the Lyric the best possible allocation of public funds? We can’t really tell, because we haven’t really prioritized such development projects by return on our public investment.

Destination 2040: Destined to Fail
Some councilmembers have pointed to the Destination 2040 report as a roadmap for Lexington to follow in its development endeavors. Destination 2040 is an admirable vision of the future constructed by our citizens. It is filled with interesting ideas and initiatives to help improve our city. But it is most certainly not a roadmap.

Destination 2040 lacks clear prioritization of the initiatives it proposes. It fails to identify adequate operational details of how to fund, structure, and execute the components of the Destination 2040 vision. And, most of all, it fails to address the profound structural inefficiencies within Lexington which have long hampered such well-intentioned visions.

Toward a Better Lexington

What kinds of structural changes are needed in Lexington? I have a few ideas. I hope that you will add more.

Transparency
When I began to look at how our city works, I quickly joined the chorus of advocates for greater transparency in how decisions get made in Lexington and throughout Kentucky.

And that advocacy has begun to pay dividends (whether the results of our actions or not). As local officials take their first baby steps on Twitter, and as more of our citizens engage in local decisionmaking through attending meetings in person, watching them on public access television (GTV3), or following vibrant discussions on Twitter, one fact has become abundantly clear to me: Transparency is not enough. Not nearly enough.

While transparency has helped reveal the scandals and issues facing our city, transparency alone won’t really solve them. Don’t get me wrong – we’re now starting to see into the machine. It’s just that we’re learning that the machine is completely dysfunctional.

Comprehensive Urban Development
Whatever ‘system’ we have in place today, it isn’t one which promotes sustained urban development. I use the term urban development purposefully here: It is more than mere city planning; It is more than simply promoting our city; It is more than just economic development. Urban development looks at our city as a functioning engine of economic and social progress, and strategically deploys our city’s ‘fabric’ – spaces, corridors, amenities, people, businesses, buildings – to maximize sustainable advancement in our economy, in our social lives, in our physical environment, and in our aesthetic surroundings.

In short, it looks at how we intentionally design a better-functioning, vibrant, and livable city.

Simplification
It is clear that the splintered approach to bettering our city is failing. Our continuous scandals and perpetual lack of progress cement that conclusion, as does the bewildering overlap of dozens of separate well-intentioned but poorly-conceived organizations.

My proposal: Eliminate today’s governmental tangle by collapsing the DDA, Planning Commission, the Division of Planning, and the LFUCG Economic Development Office (for starters) into a single, centralized, and well-staffed organization with the clear mandate, clear authority, and clear accountability for successfully implementing our city’s urban development initiatives.

Focus
Concentrating urban development authority in a single organization will only work if we provide them with crystal-clear priorities on what is important. With dozens of possible initiatives, visions like the Destination 2040 report lack clear priorities. In essence, it declares that everything is important. And in trying to do everything, we’d fail to accomplish anything.

We need to provide such an organization with guiding principles on what’s important (and what isn’t). Is the organization designed to maximize tax revenue, jobs, infill, downtown density, or something else?

From out of these principles, we should set realistic and quantifiable goals: “3000 new jobs by the end of 2010”; “$30 million in new tax revenues by 2012”; “10% higher residential density in downtown by 2014”; etc.

My initial thoughts are that the core principles and the goals attached to them should be outlined by the Urban County Council. That said, I’d like to see a way to balance continuity and change: As a city, we probably don’t want long-term initiatives derailed by short-term political changes. But we also don’t want to ‘lock in’ failing projects merely for the sake of continuity.

From these principles and goals, staff professionals should derive the best 4 or 5 initiatives for achieving the established goals. Would the Lyric Theater have emerged as one of the 4 or 5 best possible urban development projects? I don’t know, but I have my doubts. It doesn’t appear to scale very well on “jobs” or “revenues” dimensions. But, of course, neither does CentrePointe at present. Would we risk destroying surrounding businesses to “beautify” South Limestone’s streetscapes? I don’t know, but I have my doubts.

Accountability
When the Economic Development Task Force met last week, councilmembers bemoaned the $400,000 provided to Commerce Lexington to bring new business to the area. To date, there’s little proof that this ‘investment’ has paid dividends. How much business? How many jobs? What new tax revenue? CLex really isn’t accountable to the Council, so there’s no real penalty for not delivering. Where’d the $400,000 go? The Council would like to know, too…

When we make the transformation to a simplified and focused urban development authority, we must have accountability for progress on these development initiatives. Do they adhere to our principles? Are they meeting our goals? Are they successful? If so, who gets rewarded? If not, who gets fired?

Do I expect my proposed system to be adopted? Not really. But I would like for our leaders to begin to discuss seriously reforming how our city’s decisionmaking machinery functions. And the system which emerges must be more transparent, more simplified, more focused, and more accountable. It must help us build a better Lexington.

A modest proposal to end blight

May 27, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 2 Comments Local Better Lexington, Business, Community, Ideas, Lowell's

Comprehensive Care Parking Lot

Every morning when I walk into work at Lowell’s, I see 8-foot-tall tree-weeds growing through unkempt hedges and spilling over into the public sidewalk. I see a planter adjoining our building, burgeoning with weeds and grass and the massive stump of a long-dead tree. I see a pitted, crumbling parking lot with clogged drainage.

Many customers assume it is our lot. It does adjoin our building. And they can’t see the sign declaring “Comprehensive Care Center Parking Only”.

116 Mechanic Street

Across the street I see a tiny old shotgun house with a gigantic half-rotted tree looming ominously over both the house and the main Lowell’s parking lot. After the ice storm and other storms this spring, downed branches lay in the asphalt front yard of the house. For over two months.

Absentee owners neglect both properties. Neighboring businesses have conducted the most of the maintenance on the properties over the past couple of years. In effect, they are abandoned.

As a business owner, I worry about the effect it has on Lowell’s famously loyal customers. Even if they cherish us and the service we provide, I’m genuinely concerned about the ability of such eyesores to repel visitors to the shop.

I often talk with nearby business owners, who share my concern for the negative effects of these properties on our neighborhood.

* * *

Many folks have wondered why I have been so vocal on the CentrePointe mess. There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is that the abandoned properties surrounding Lowell’s have given me firsthand experience the negative effects of blight like the CentrePointe scar.

There are many such highly-visible, blighted, non-productive and apparently abandoned properties in Lexington: CentrePointe in Downtown, Lexington Mall on Richmond Road, and Continental Inn on New Circle at Winchester are some of the most apparent. But there are numerous smaller examples littering our city.

Just like the properties surrounding our shop, the absentee owners seek to avoid any and all expenses. They avoid capital gains taxes by refusing to sell their properties. They avoid maintenance expenses by refusing to invest to make their properties economic contributors to the community. They avoid property taxes by refusing to improve their decrepit real estate.

Such abandoned properties generate near-zero direct contributions to the economy. Moreover, they generate negative economic effects for surrounding properties and businesses: They drive away business and drive down property values.

* * *

It is time for such neglect to end. It is time to make sure that lazy landowners are motivated 1) to improve their holdings and 2) to transform their properties into contributors to our community’s economic engine.

My modest proposal: Implement a ‘blight tax’. Lexington landownders whose property qualifies as ‘blighted’ would have to pay a moderately severe annual blight tax.

The definition of ‘blighted’ would need to be worked out, but should include an assessment of the property condition, as well as proof of substantial progress on needed improvements. We could start with Division of Code Enforcement standards.

To overcome their avoidance of maintenance expenses, property taxes, and/or capital gains taxes, I’d propose that the blight tax have some teeth: Say, 35% to 50% of assessed property value per year.

In the CentrePointe case, the blight tax would generate $8 to $12 million per year of revenue to the city until the developers improve their land. When historical buildings were demolished to make way for CentrePointe, many rationalized that the old buildings were greater eyesores than the pit which remains today. I disagree. But a blight tax may also have helped prevent the demolition-by-neglect which occurred on that block over the years.

I would imagine the former Lexington Mall and Continental Inn properties would generate amounts similar to CentrePointe, given their sizes and their locations on busy thoroughfares.

Such tax revenue could be specifically allocated to offsetting the effects of blight: community improvements to sidewalks, bike paths, streetscapes, parks, community centers, business incubators, community ventures, and the like. If property owners avoid the blight tax by making their properties more valuable (i.e., by improving them), then all the better.

To create a vibrant city, we need to ensure that Lexington doesn’t have the economic scars that blight leaves behind: dead spots which contribute little (or which actually destroy) monetary value in our community.

My proposal is the blight tax. What’s yours?

Homesick

May 21, 2009March 9, 2016 Rob Morris 3 Comments Local, Personal Better Lexington, Community, Ideas

An open letter to Lexington’s leaders from the next generation
by Carson Morris

“How do we build a city the next generation will be homesick for?”
– Rebecca Ryan (via Tom Eblen)

Dear Leaders of Lexington,

Carson Morris, Superstar

As you return to Lexington from your trip to Madison, Wisconsin, flush with ideas and possibility in the wake of your visit, I wanted to let you know that we stand ready to help make Lexington better.

While 260 of you were experiencing Madison directly, several hundred of us were following your visit in near-real-time, thanks to those few of you who shared the event using Twitter. And while you were talking with Madison, we were actively talking about you, Madison, Lexington, and our future. We had a vibrant discussion.

And when I saw Rebecca Ryan’s question, I hoped that you really took it to heart. Because it means everything when I decide whether to stay in Lexington or not. And it should inform every decision you make about our city: How do you build a city I will be homesick for?

Making me and my generation homesick won’t really be about “stuff” and status. I know many of you were talking about tangible things – jobs, industries, neighborhoods, amenities, buildings, bike trails. But that isn’t really what we value. Those things don’t really make us want to stay here. Making UK a top 20 research institution? That may be great for attracting companies to Lexington, but I don’t see how that keeps me here.

If you want me to be homesick, you’ll have to connect with my heart. Then, when I leave, Lexington will tug on my heart. It will call to me. Lexington will be the one place on earth I want to be.

How do you create a Lexington for my generation? How do you make us homesick for Lexington? As you settle back into your regular routines, I wanted to help you set an agenda to implement the lessons of Madison for me and my
generation. Here are a few of my ideas. I’m sure my friends will have many more:

Listen to us. For years, we’ve listened as you tell us what our generation wants and needs. And then we leave town to go to school or to find a job. And those other places seem built for us, so we never come back.

Too many times, your tuners are set to “broadcast” instead of “receive”. As leaders, you are used to being listened to. We understand that. But I and my generation need to be heard. And we need to know that you hear us.

The Madison experience was a great case in point. For months now, our generation has been urging you to adopt Twitter (and other social media platforms) to talk with us. In Madison, a few of you suddenly began using Twitter. While we appreciate your new openness, we also wonder why you didn’t grant us the same credibility as those you talked with in Madison.

If you want us to stay, you must listen to us more.

Engage us. At one point yesterday, Mayor Newberry declared that “I don’t think there has been a time in Lexington’s history where we’ve had the level of civic engagement we have now… Lexington needs your engagement in our community now.”

This is a profound and true statement from our mayor. We do need your engagement (including you, Mr. Mayor). Now.

We’re already having conversations about the future of our city. We’re already saying what matters to us. We’re already talking about leaving.

In order to engage us, don’t wait for us to find you: you need to come to where we are and join our ongoing conversations. Follow us on Twitter. Spend time in our schools. Read and comment on our blogs. Share your thoughts and what you think about ours. Debate with us. Ask us what you can do. Then do it. Build on our ideas. (P.S. We have a LOT of ideas.)

If you want us to stay, you must engage us more.

Value us. As community leaders, you have so many opportunities to keep us in Lexington. One of the biggest: demonstrate how much you value our talent and our intellect and our creativity.

When I get to high school, hire me as a summer intern. Let me work on special and important projects. Encourage me to engage my friends in the efforts to grow your organizations.

While I’m in college, toss me the keys and give me the opportunity to create something you might never imagine. Will I stumble? Absolutely. Could you lose money? Possibly. But – if I’m successful – we both will profit. And, either way, knowing that you value me will make me incredibly loyal – to you and to our city.

When I graduate and get a job, ask me what kind of places I want to live in. What I want to do after hours. What kind of neighborhood I want. What is important to me. Then – and this is the vital part – go build it for me. It will benefit us both.

(P.S. Also do these things for your current generation of citizens and employees. Then stand back. Your success will blow you away. It might keep some of the current generation in Lexington, too.)

If you want us to stay, you must value us more.

Respect us. Listening. Engaging. Valuing. It is all about showing fundamental human respect for us and our viewpoints. If you demonstrate that kind of respect in your actions and in your attitudes, several wonderful things will begin to happen.

First, the right kinds of “stuff” – jobs, buildings, neighborhoods, amenities – will begin to emerge to tug on our hearts. Our community – and our love for our community – will become much more vibrant.

Second, our economy will begin to flourish. Giving us a platform to express and implement our ideas will help create the idea-rich economy that you learned about in Madison. Having our voices and views incorporated into the community’s future gives us a stake in making that future happen.

Third, our brand will improve. As Daddy has mentioned previously, you don’t get to decide our brand. Blue horses or spotted yaks are irrelevant to whether I choose to love my city and to whether I choose to stay in Lexington. A better brand emerges from being a better city. And that starts with respecting your citizens and employees.

If you want to build a better Lexington – the kind of Lexington you are envisioning upon your return from Madison – you must listen to us. You must engage us. You must value us. You must openly and actively demonstrate your respect for us.

Then, you will have built a city that my generation will be homesick for. That could be your legacy. We’re already here. And we want to engage you. We want to help you succeed. Join us.

Thanks,
Carson

Carson Tate Morris
2 years, 5 months old
Citizen, Future Voter, and Superstar

I choose both

May 4, 2009March 3, 2016 Rob Morris 5 Comments Ideas, Local Better Lexington, Community, Economic Development, Ideas

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are
hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (via Ace Weekly)

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
— Mohandas K. Gandhi

There is a revolution brewing in Lexington. Fed up with the intransigence and bureaucracy of ‘old’ Lexington, ‘new’ Lexingtonians are gearing up for an overthrow of the old regime.

As a lifelong rebel and iconoclast, I love it. As a business owner, I want the more vibrant Lexington (and downtown) that these changes promise. As a father of a two-year-old, I want my son to have the greatest opportunities to learn, live, play, and work – and want his birthplace to provide those opportunities. Lexington must change, or it will not grow. If it does not grow, Lexington will wither and die.

Still, I’m a bit troubled…

More on why in a bit. First, we need to describe the new and old Lexingtons. (Or, if you Twitter – and you should – #OldLex and #NewLex.)

OldLex is rooted in our city’s and our region’s traditions. It wants to build on the heritage of our horse farms, our coal, our bourbon, our tobacco, and our basketball. It values formality and processes and order and control, and is often obstinate in the face of change. OldLex tends to respect big international companies, large events, and wealth. It generally shuns technology.

NewLex is borne of our city’s innovative and intellectual potential. It yearns to be free of restrictions and limitations imposed by centuries of tradition. It values innovation and creativity and transparency and freedom, and usually gleefully wallows in the messiness and chaos of change. NewLex tends to respect speed, intellect, local-ness, and the environment. It embraces technology.

So there, in admitted caricature, are the two cultures of Lexington. They currently stand in perplexed opposition to one another. They blink in bewilderment at the other’s actions (or inactions) and question the other’s motives.

I am a confirmed NewLex kinda guy. As a reader of this blog, I suspect that you also lean toward the NewLex camp.

But, as I mentioned, I’m troubled by something in the conflict between NewLex and OldLex. I also hear the same concern echoed in comments on my blog and in NewLex Twitter discussions. In summary, it is this: The desire for continuity is almost as strong as the desire for change.

While we decry the adoption of outdated icons of horses as the central identity our city, we still love the beautiful horses, the farms, the racetracks, and the uniqueness they bestow upon our city and state.

We wish that some of the $36.5 million that just went to our new basketball coach had gone instead to improve our schools or our university. But we do love our ‘Cats, our Coach Cal, and our championships.

We cannot fathom why our city’s representatives haven’t adopted more transparent practices and implemented more current technologies, but what, really, have we done to facilitate that? (Have I already forgotten how mystifying Twitter was just a couple of months ago?)

As much as we advocate overturning the old ways of thinking and the old ways of doing things, we NewLexers sure like a lot of the old things.

And we should like them. The horses, the basketball, and the bourbon are all significant and important parts of our heritage and our identity. They are a part of what makes us ‘US’.

And in that heritage lies our one bond with our OldLex foes, and, I believe, our single best opportunity to effect real and necessary change in our city. As NewLexers, we must challenge ourselves to embrace and leverage our past as a springboard into our future.

Can a vibrant horse industry exist alongside an even-more-vibrant Eds-and-Meds economy? I think so.

Can we use Lexington’s defunct distilling industry and empty warehouses to build a vibrant arts and cultural (and distilling!) community? I think so.

OldLex certainly comes with many flaws. But, if we’re honest with ourselves, NewLex can be just as problematic. We often come off as brash and abrasive. I kinda like being brash and abrasive. The problem is that ‘brash and abrasive’ doesn’t get the hard work of changing our city done; It brings such work to a halt as OldLex digs in their heels.

NewLex often appears impractical. We are full of plans and ideas, but frequently come up way short on tangible actions and, ultimately, results. We must learn to transform our ideas and plans into actions on the ground. We must, in short, be the change we wish to see in the world.

So I make a declaration that may not be popular with all of my NewLex compatriots: I choose both. I choose the heritage that makes Lexington great. I choose the creativity and intellect that will drive us into the future. I choose to act with transparency and speed. I choose to love the singular beauty of our horse farms. I choose to reject the parts of (Old AND New) Lexington which hold our city back from becoming truly great. NewLex? OldLex?

I choose both. I choose Lexington.