6.12.09

Dear Friends of Town Branch Trail,

I had a great opportunity to visit a world-class trail city recently on a trip to Madison Wisconsin with 258 other folks from Lexington on a Commerce Lexington Leadership Trip. It was a great chance to take in a city that has invested heavily in trails and has a great quality of life to show for it. This is the fourth leadership trip that I have attended on behalf of Town Branch Trail, Inc. and it has been a fantastic opportunity to advocate for trails in places where they have been so successfully exploited. I want to share with you a letter written on behalf of Commerce Lexington by Woodford Webb, current board chair. In it he lists the priorities generated by the trip attendees and how Town Branch Trail is recognized as one of the most important initiatives underway in Lexington. What is equally exciting is that Town Branch Trail is an integral component of a number of other great projects like Legacy Trail, Lexington Distillery District, and Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden! Connectivity and cooperation to make Lexington all it can be! Many thanks to Commerce Lexington for its creative trips that have greatly raised public awareness for the importance of trails.

Van Meter Pettit, AIA

Forwarded letter from Woodford Webb, Commerce Lexington Chair below:

A MESSAGE FROM THE COMMERCE LEXINGTON INC. CHAIRMAN

I would like to personally thank those of you who participated in this year’s Leadership Visit. I hope you enjoyed the trip and learned a lot of great things from Madison. Some of you may have received this yesterday, but not everyone who went to Madison is on Commerce Lexington Inc.’s main e-mail distribution list. I wanted to make sure you were properly thanked.

As the 2009 Commerce Lexington Inc. Leadership Visit came to a close on May 20th at the Monona Terrace Convention Center, I couldn’t help but think about all that we had seen and done while in Madison, Wisconsin. We heard from many of Madison’s most influential leaders and entrepreneurs and saw first-hand what Madison offers its residents by participating in tours of its most recognizable features.

Still, I continued to come back to presenting sponsor Linda Rumpke’s “I” for “implementation” pledge, which she mentioned at the opening of our Madison visit. Yes, we recognize that Bluegrass Region is a great place to live and work, but how do we make it even better? How do we leverage what we’ve got so that more young people want to stay in Lexington, start a business in Lexington, or raise a family here? As generational consultant Rebecca Ryan said, “What do we want to be homesick for?”

While we hope to take a few ideas from the cities we visit, these trips enable us to take a hard look at ourselves as a community. We all agree that there is plenty that we can improve about the Bluegrass, but the annual Leadership Visit also opens our eyes to the things that we are doing well. Sometimes we overlook the positive steps we’ve taken as we become embroiled in the things we believe are wrong with our city.

According to Rebecca Ryan’s “Seven Indexes of a NEXT City,” Lexington’s scores met or exceeded the average scores of most of its benchmark cities, and in the categories of Cost of Lifestyle and Earnings, Lexington is ahead of Madison. However, we still have work to do within the other five indexes, including Vitality, Learning, Social Capital, After Hours, and Around Town, to become that “NEXT” city.

Many people don’t realize that many wonderful things that are related to those five indexes are already occurring. In the area of Vitality, Lexington has made a commitment to building more bike and walking trails, and the city is making major strides to improve its water quality for the future. In the area of Learning, FCPS Superintendent Stu Silberman’s efforts have been well documented, the University of Kentucky is well on its way to becoming a Top 20 research university, and Dr. Michael Karpf is guiding the new soon-to-be completed University of Kentucky Hospital.

With all the additions of new music and performing venues and other downtown nightlife establishments, we have made great strides in the After Hours index thanks to the ongoing efforts of the Downtown Entertainment Taskforce led by Tom Martin. With things like the Yellow Bikes program, the re-appearance of trolleys downtown, and the enhancement efforts of LexTran and Rocky Burke, we are making progress in the Around Town category. Improvements to our streetscape and signage will only bolster these efforts. Social Capital was identified as a strong point for Lexington when compared to other major cities, but we can certainly do more to involve and engage young people and produce more diversity throughout the decision-making process. The ongoing efforts of the Urban League and the city are helping us get to where we need to be.

While our Leadership Visit has resulted in many quality programs and initiatives over the years and influenced things like downtown development and streetscape design, we can do better at implementation. We currently have so many opportunities, ideas, and projects just waiting for that extra nudge to come to fruition. What exactly is our “low hanging fruit,” or what projects are realistically attainable and quickly?

Some of the priorities identified in a survey of participants during the Madison trip included:

MORE TRAILS AND PARKS:

Legacy Trail – Primary Champion: Steve Austin – Of the $10 million needed to implement this entire package, the Legacy Center already has $7 million committed. The resulting gap seems to be achievable if the right group of supporters can get behind it.
Town Branch Trail – Primary Champion: Van Meter Pettit – The plans are ready, and a portion of this project has been implemented. This likewise seems to be low hanging fruit.
Isaac Murphy Memorial Garden – Primary Champion: Councilwoman Andrea James, and some of the others involved are Committee Member Andy Barr and Steve Austin of the Legacy Center. The state is donating the land on 3rd Street, and the plan calls for a financial need of $2 million. The aggressive design and plan could be completed in stages, or maybe a combination of city and private donations (e.g. horse farms, thoroughbred industry, landscaping companies) could be brought together to implement a workable plan.
Phoenix Park – This could definitely be improved. The Courthouse Area TIF proceeds would be eligible to completely rework this park. It could be dramatically transformed with below grade parking and a completely new park above with fountains, stage areas and other improvements.
CONTINUED DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON ENHANCEMENTS: There’s a lot of great work going on here, especially by Harold Tate and the Downtown Development Authority, as well as the Downtown Lexington Corporation led by Renee Jackson. Great momentum is occurring in this area with so many wonderful events downtown, the implementation of trolleys to connect UK/Transylvania and Main and Vine, the Yellow Bikes initiative, many more venues popping up around town, and later bar closing times. Many people have indicated that what is necessary to further improve downtown includes the gradual return to two-way streets to make downtown more pedestrian friendly, below ground power lines, and the implementation of a BID (Business Improvement District) to enhance the current atmosphere and create a true marketing budget with which we can further spread the word and promote downtown as a key destination for all who live or work in the region.

“GREEN” INITIATIVES: As we heard from one speaker in Madison, being “green” is not a trend, but a mentality. Madison embraced this sustainable way of life some time ago, and has not looked back. Madison has 42 LEED certified downtown buildings, shared community car programs, mandatory recycling, green buses, bike riding, carpooling and more. In Lexington, we need to collectively encourage developers to utilize green techniques not just because it is good for the environment, but because it is “smart business.” Green initiatives sa_ve money in operating costs over time. Also, we need to encourage LFUCG to further study our current recycling center and determine if a new center could or would perhaps be a revenue enhancer. Could we make recycling mandatory on some level for our community?

DISTINCTIVE WATER FEATURE: Just about every city we have visited recently has one thing in common – an attractive water feature, whether it’s a natural body of water or man made one like Oklahoma City or San Antonio. We’ll have to accept that Lexington was not settled on a navigable body of water. One thing that continues to come up after each intercity visit is the possibility of Lake Lexington or some sort of “reflection pond” water feature downtown that would include a bike/walking path, outdoor amphitheater, ice skating rink in the winter, and maybe even a parking structure underneath. I believe this project would enhance the West side of downtown and the Town Branch area dramatically. And, it would put the Manchester Street/Distillery District on “waterfront property.”

PERFORMING & VISUAL ARTS ENHANCEMENTS: There are a ton of possibilities that can further enhance are arts community, and Jim Clark with LexArts is always bubbling with great ideas that are very possible with the right support.

Many of these ideas/priorities are posted at Rebecca Ryan’s blog site, which has been set up exclusively for us to share and track ideas. I would encourage anyone who wants to add ideas about Lexington’s future to do so at http://lex-next.blogspot.com. This site will remain active until July 3, 2009.

I mentioned at the close of the Madison visit that the implementation phase is the responsibility of the community as a whole. Myself, Commerce Lexington, and even the city cannot accomplish individually what we need to do collectively. As Linda Rumpke added during her welcome message, “let’s hold each other accountable” as we transform Lexington into the “next” city that we want it to be.

While we have all been impressed with Oklahoma City, Boulder, Austin, and Madison in recent years, we know that we absolutely don’t want to be an Oklahoma City or an Austin or even a Madison. We simply want to be the very best Lexington that we can be. To that end, I would ask two questions: What do “we” as a community, want to accomplish over the next year, and how can each of us contribute to this effort?

Finally, I would like to thank all of those who participated in or sponsored the 70th annual Commerce Lexington Inc. Leadership Visit, as well as recognize the efforts of our planning committee and the CLX staff, which put the trip together. I would also like to thank Tom Eblen of the Lexington-Herald Leader and Tom Martin of Business Lexington for their coverage of the Madison trip. We need our local media to both document these trips and help keep our community focused on the big picture.

It was a tremendous honor for me to lead the Madison trip, and I look forward to all that we will accomplish together in the future.

Sincerely,

Woodford Webb
2009 Commerce Lexington Inc. Chairman
President, The Webb Companies
wwebb@thewebbcompanies.com
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4.5.09

Friends,

Please make contact with your council person to support the Water Quality Fee up for a vote by LFUCG council this Thursday. What we have heard from people who have spent decades on this issue is that, while not perfect, this fee is a good faith start toward addressing a long-neglected problem. Hats off to the many at LFUCG who have worked very hard with little time and scant resources to get this going. We would encourage everyone to take the perspective of this being a work in progress that will need continuous citizen input. There is money in the proposed scope of work that will be dedicated to greenways, so this gets us started in a positive direction. It is our hope that what began as a response to an EPA lawsuit will develop into a long term effort to redefine Lexington’s relationship with our urban waterways. More about that later.

Thanks,

Van Meter Pettit, AIA
Town Branch Trail, Inc.

Dear Friends, 4.28.09

With horses racing and spring in the air, we are delighted to report that trail construction is at the post and ready to run. We would like to share with you the project milestones reached over the last quarter:

• The first 1.8 miles of trail will be complete this spring, connecting Masterson Station Park with Alexandria Drive. This first section has been built with $750,000 raised from two Transportation Enhancement grants and state road funds. Land donations from Dennis Anderson totaled over $800,000. Stay tuned for a dedication event this summer.

• A 5-mile design and feasibility study underway will lay out the alignment of the next section of the trail running from Alexandria Drive to the Newtown Pike Extension (NPE) at the rear of Rupp Arena. LFUCG is funding this work.

• A one-mile McConnell Springs Nature Park trail running to Town Branch Creek at New Circle Road is funded and ready for design. This will be constructed with a $650,000 Transportation Enhancement grant awarded in 2007. LFUCG has submitted grants to fund a pedestrian crossing on Old Frankfort Pike for this segment.

• Town Branch Trail, Inc. and the Lexington Distillery District have built a strategic partnership on a 25-acre $85 million TIF project along Manchester Street. When this project is realized, TIF financing will restore a large section of the Town Branch Creek and build a section of the trail. This collaborative investment will make Town Branch Trail a vital urban segment of the state’s Bourbon Trail.

• Town Branch Art Bridge! Working with state and city engineers and other stakeholders, TBT collaborated on a design for a unique bridge for Newtown Pike Extension (NPE) over Town Branch Creek, where the trail will connect with Newtown Pike, Downtown, and the Distillery District. It is designed to become a city landmark that can accommodate art installations in the future. Many thanks to the NPE project team.

• Town Branch Trail, Inc. and R J Corman Railroad have met repeatedly over the last year to discuss the following issues:

-15-mile rail-with-trail from Town Branch to Versailles (on the Mayor’s stimulus wish list and currently in feasibility study)

-Possible railroad passenger service from behind Rupp Arena to Midway and Frankfort. Although this is only a long-term goal at this point, can you imagine how great it would be to bike to Midway or Frankfort for lunch or dinner and ride a vintage train back?

-Preliminary trail design to study a below-grade crossing of the existing rail line in order to avoid any impact on railway service.

• NEW•TOWN•BRANCH: We continue to advocate for a dramatic redesign of the rear of Rupp Arena as Downtown Lexington’s new front door and a critical link to connect Newtown Pike Extension, Town Branch Trail, potential passenger rail service, and the Distillery District with the Lexington Center and Downtown.

• Networking and friend-raising Downtown: We are continually networking with organizations like Commerce Lexington, Downtown Lexington Corporation, Downtown Development Authority, Fayette Alliance, the Legacy Center and Blue Grass Community Foundation, among many others. Downtown is where TBT takes root and where a culturally and economically vibrant Lexington will become competitive on a national level. Highlights: working with the Legacy Projects (Trail and Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden), supporting 2-way street conversions and streetscape design.

• One Quarter for Creeks! We have closely followed the EPA consent decree process and believe Lexington has opportunity hidden inside of an EPA lawsuit. Rather than seeing it as a punishment to be minimally addressed, we see it as a 50-year opportunity to set our environmental goals for our children and grandchildren. The sanitary and storm fees are designed to satisfy EPA minimum requirements. Little or no creek restoration is included in the scope of work even though our creeks are our greatest unrealized assets! No one will move to Lexington to look at our sewers, but they will move here if we have beautiful creeks with trails! Our motto of “one quarter for creeks” (25% for creeks) is meant to reframe the debate and scope of work as a vision for Lexington’s future.

• The Environmental Education Project is nearing completion! A three-part DVD and KERA curriculum to teach local middle-school students about our local watershed. Look for news in the Fall.

• Getting the word out! To spare your recycle bins we have cut back on newsletters, preferring to use the internet and our local papers to better connect with the greater community in a clear and cost effective way. We have contributed multiple editorials to the Herald-Leader, Business Lexington, and Ace Magazine. We keep adding material to our website www.townbranch.org and we are now a group on www.facebook.com, which is proving to be a brilliant networking and information-sharing system. Please log on, join up, and stay connected!

With sincere thanks for your continued support,

Van Meter Pettit, AIA

“Less talk, more action downtown, Lexington city council is told”

Lexington Herald-Leader www.kentucky.com
11.26.09

By Beverly Fortune – bfortune@herald-leader.com

A vibrant downtown with a wide array of cultural activities, festivals, bars and restaurants is no longer simply a social amenity, but an important economic development issue for Lexington, the Urban County Council was told on Tuesday.

The Downtown Lexington Corp. brought individuals from business, entertainment and hospitality venues to tell the council that developing a thriving downtown is essential for the entire community’s economic prosperity
And the time to act is now.

“We’ve studied the issue to death,” said Van Meter Pettit, who has spearheaded development of the Town Branch Trail. “Compared to other cities around the country, we’re a day late and a dollar short.”
Tom Martin, chairman of the Downtown Entertainment Task Force, said, “We’re at a point where we want to see less talk and more walk.”

Specifically, Martin said, people want to see aggressive recruiting of “entrepreneurial activities downtown.”

Lexmark and Toyota, two of the area’s largest employers, teamed up recently to study how to recruit and keep racial minority talent in their organizations.

The companies recognize that “diversity is fundamental to our long-term success,” said Linda Hollenbaek, vice president of customer services at Lexmark.

The task force talked to young minority professionals in the two organizations. “No one, not a single one mentioned racial issues,” she said, but rather “over and over” talked of the need for more entertainment and cultural programs, live music and festivals, plus more affordable downtown housing.

“They also looked for more and better sources of information about where to eat and hear live music,” Hollenbaek said.

A primary recruiting tool for attracting young professionals to Lexington for all businesses, not just Lexmark and Toyota, is a vibrant downtown. “We need to make Lexington a more exciting city,” she said.

Several individuals told council members that downtown had been “studied to death,” in the words of one.

“We don’t need any more studies. What we need is to get our foot off the brake” and make things happen, said Eric Patrick Marrs, a downtown supporter. Creating an exciting downtown had become for Lexington an economic survival issue, he said.

Council member Jay McChord concurred. “People are tired of talk. What they want to see is action and implementation.” He said 77 percent of young professionals today first find a city where they want to live, “then they find a job.”

One step the council could take immediately to improve downtown, McChord said, is to overhaul the outdated sign ordinance to allow signs to be mounted perpendicular to the side of buildings for better visibility.

Mayor Jim Newberry said a new sign ordinance was expected to be unveiled in the spring.

Another road block that could be eliminated would be to streamline the process businesses have to navigate to get their many permits, said Ann McBrayer, a board member of CommerceLexington.

Pettit observed that private developers have invested $200 million in downtown, “but where is the public investment?” he asked.

The city must put up the money for improvements, Pettit said. “Any company that does not invest in its infrastructure will no longer compete.”

The context of this discussion is the EPA consent decree and the city’s response. We need to meet better than minimum standards if we want to let or dogs, let alone children near our urban creeks.

Wading too long in dirty water
Lexington Herald-Leader editorial
www.kentucky.com

Sunday, Apr. 12, 2009

One of the most engaging, enduring images of summertime is children playing in water. This newspaper has run countless photos of kids splashing in streams, glorying in the sudden white water produced by a summer storm.

What we usually don’t tell you, what most people don’t know, what those children certainly can’t know is that in Fayette County that water is probably so dirty it’s dangerous, and especially after those storms.

On another page, there’s likely to be a photo of a homeowner wading in filthy water in a flooded basement. On the worst days, there are stories about people who were swept away to their deaths by raging waters.

That, in a nutshell, is why the Urban County Council should approve the Water Quality Management Fee that will be brought before it on Tuesday.

That’s the message of those red lines on the map accompanying this editorial. Those are streams that, in the arcane language of environmental bureaucrats, don’t support their designated uses — including human contact. The larger map shows where, and it is almost everywhere, flooding and sewer overflows were reported after heavy rains in September 2006.

This water — that runs behind back yards, across roads, through parks and farms in our community — is dangerous to humans and other animals. On horse farms, they build fences to keep valuable animals away from that water.

You won’t see that in the glossy brochures produced to lure new investment here. The city Web page doesn’t feature it along with scenic photos of our beautiful landscape. It probably didn’t come up when we made our bid for the World Equestrian Games, and it’s highly unlikely that Lexmark, Toyota or the University of Kentucky mention it to top prospects. We really doubt anyone pointed it out to Coach John Calipari.

It’s our dirty little secret. Except it’s not little and it’s not secret.
We’ve known about it for a long time; so has the Kentucky Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet, which does the field work to produce the ratings on the streams map (there are a lot more streams and creeks and they’re probably dirty, too, but just aren’t rated).

Finally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency knows about it, which is why we must have a fee whether we like it or not. The EPA sued Lexington in 2006 over violations of the Clean Water Act. The settlement we’ve reached requires us to, literally, clean up our act.
Why is our water so dirty? Simply, because we allow too much dirt, trash, toxins and human and animal waste to wash into it.

This happens because developers strip and grade land without doing enough to prevent mud from washing away in the first rain; because too many businesses and individuals dispose of chemicals, oils and other wastes by dumping them into the storm sewers or onto the ground; because so many thousands of acres of land that could absorb, clean and slow down water are covered with buildings and parking lots, so that when it rains everything on or near the surface washes rapidly into our creeks and streams.

And that’s just the dirty part. There’s also the danger when storm water rages so hard that basements flood, streets become impassable and sometimes, as happened just two and a half years ago, people are swept to their deaths.

A task force of the council has worked hard and publicly to consider the steps we need to take to fix all this and what it will cost. Objections to the $4.32-a-month fee seem to fall into one big category: the timing is bad.

True enough, these are hard times. It’s also true that the agreement with the EPA isn’t signed yet so, technically, we could sit on our hands for a while. There are a lot of good reasons why this argument doesn’t fly, but the most important is that this work has to be done, not just because the federal government is forcing us, but for the safety of our community.

Politically, there’s never a good time for a new or increased fee. Even if the council approves this one, it will take at least until January of next year to work out the logistics to begin collecting the fee. The economy may be on an upswing by then; if not the council can choose to reconsider.

But for now, delay is not acceptable.

We’ve sat on our hands for a generation. Council members tempted to wait a little longer should visit one of the red-lined streams, take off their shoes and let the water run over their bare feet. If they dare.