I actually live there and support the local businesses. What have you done?

“you would have more impact if you could find at least one thing the webbs were doing right. and you say you don’t have a vendetta? the biggest problem with your opinions is that you suggest nothing constructive while others actively effect change in our downtown.”

If there was a positive, I would be the first to acknowledge it. I find the changes proposed by the Webbs anything but constructive. Giant edifices to the Webbs egos that will do nothing to bring people downtown or revitalize the downtown area and will only serve to revitalize the Webb’s pockets the wrong direction…considering you don;t address a single one of my arguments and attack me and not my logic, perhaps it is you that has already received your check….with Dudley Webb’s signature on it….

On the one hand, Mr. [Rafael Pelli] lauds the Green Building Council’s program as a “remarkable advancement,” and says part of its success is that it has broadened the definition of green building beyond simple energy efficiency. But he also says the program is “rather cumbersome” and “needs to be made better,” especially in the way it gives weight to certain building features. Mr. Pelli declined to comment directly on the Coke Can. A Goldman Sachs spokesman said the company is pleased that the Coke Can has been recognized by the Green Building Council, and that it is “committed to energy efficiency and the environment.”

“The issue of our time is climate change, and that’s all about energy use,” says Mr. [Auden Schendler]. He calls the certification program “broken,” saying that getting the certification, not constructing environmentally-sound buildings, has become the primary goal among some builders. He considers his own ski lodge project, as well as the Goldman tower, to be “mediocre ‘green’ buildings.” Mr. Schendler says he could have won a point for painting the ski lodge roof white to avoid the “heat island effect,” in which dense clusters of buildings drive up temperatures in urban areas, not “8,000 feet up in the Rockies.”

Jeff Remtema, director of sustainability at Progressive Architecture & Engineering, a 150-person design firm in Grand Rapids, Mich., has worked on more than 10 certified projects, and remains a “huge supporter.” But lately he’s actively discouraged some clients, especially smaller ones, from pursuing the group’s standard because of the time and cost to complete the required forms. “I’d much rather spend the money installing photovoltaic cells or a green roof than spending my time filling out papers.”

Here is a link to the full article:

http://www.ebuildsystems.com/LEED_article.html

I will end by repeating that you completely avoid acknowledging the severe problems current projects are having not just financially, but finding actual residents. You provide no rationale why with the fragile state our economy is in, a “high end” project like this makes any sense. You avoid the Webb’s record with similar projects like this in Lexington. The Radisson, a Webbproject, has never had more than an average of 60% occupancy and yet now the Webbs want to build competition for one of their old projects that barely gets by? This is the same “build it and they will come” mentality that has been promised time and time again for Lexington. Well, we have plenty of hotel space, plenty of rental units, and the same amount of tourism we have and will always have and that is primarily centered around Keeneland. The conventions and financial boon everyone of the projects like this promised have never materialized. We always hear ” they won’t come because we aren’t big enough. We don’t have enough convention space downtown.” Yet we never have filled what we already have. It is always tomorrow and tomorrow never seems to get here.

You were unable to refute even one of my points on the history of development in Lexington, especially regarding the Webbs and the alleged “success” of their projects. I come from a family that has been deeply involved in Lexington’s growth since the early 60’s and have watched as every new council and mayor change the zoning laws and development plan time after time to accommodate the sales and development of land they owned. Nicholasville Rd. the Blue Sky area, and many others are prime examples, as is Festival Marketplace. Quick Tim, can you name a single Webb project in Lexington that has been a money maker and actually accomplished the promises it was funded under? Instead of spewing fallacious and baseless ad hominem attacks like your “hero”, why don’t you actually respond to to mine and others legitimate criticisms? While you’re at it, explain how a project like this has any business being started, let alone any hope of it accomplishing its goals with the City and Nation’s current and projected long term economic crisis?

Again, there has never been more than 60% occupancy of Lexington’s hotels and motels (see the Herald article on the Marriott and others a few weeks ago) and with the proposed Horse Park Hotel (another doomed to fail for the very same reasons) there will be even more “empty rooms”. The current and recent crop of “condo developments” downtown have less than 30% occupancy, have had trouble moving any units at all for quite some time, some being sued by their contractors for nonpayment, and some have expressed real concerns the projects will go bankrupt. So tell us all Tim, what chance is there that “BloatedPointe” will fare any better, especially considering the Webb’s own record of failures in Lexington? No Tim, we have spent far too much tax money on the Webbs already, we also have much bigger and practical needs for this city than to build yet another “white elephant” downtown. So instead of slinging baseless and quite frankly juvenile “personal” attacks, why don’t you actually respond to the issues at hand and provide some reasons why this project has anything positive going for it or the city of Lexington?

2. You also talk about the 1000 jobs this will create. What’s the average salaries of these jobs? Hotels and other service sector jobs are notoriously low paying jobs and many of these jobs in Lexington are already filled with “undocumented” workers. Wouldn’t we be better off using the 70 million to attract high tech or other companies with high paying jobs. As an economic engine, this is a very, very poor way to spend 70 million.

3. You said that the City made Millions from Festival Market. Really? There was 8 million dollars of Federal or State bonds issued for Festival Market and it eventually sold for $600,000. Isn’t that a net loss of 7.4 million? It may not have been the LFUCG that lost the money, but it’s clear the tax payers lost big and more importantly, if 10 years from now, CentrePoint isn’t successful and it’s tax base doesn’t live up to expectations, who will be responsible for making up the difference in order to pay off the 70 million dollar worth of bonds? I believe the answer is the public, not the Webb Companies. It’s quit clear that the current TIF proposal shifts a large amount of the risk of CentrePoint to the public with little public input.

…. and we have every reason to believe that CentrePointe will be a failure. Name one major project like CentrePoint, that demolishes the historic buildings and puts a large modern building up in it’s place that has no sense of time and place that has been successful. In Lexington and eveywhere else they have been monumental failures. The only cities that have been sucessful in reviving their downtowns, like Memphis’s Beale Street, have built on their historic and cultural heretage, not destroyed it.

We have a Court House Area Review Area and Board, we should demand they fully enforce the Court House Area guidelines for CentrePointe. We should also demand that the public have real input into how the 70 million dollars of public financing is spent. No contest, no money!

The public deserves a better deal than this and City officials should demand it.