Realizing the potential for downtown redevelopment

I first heard people fretting about the future of downtown Lexington when I was a kid and Turfland Mall had just opened.

Now, Turfland Mall is an almost-empty shell surrounded by big-box chain stores and restaurants. The mall’s biggest tenant, Dillard’s nee McAlpin’s, is wrapping up its going-out-of-business sale, fixtures and all.

Downtown Lexington, on the other hand, is on a roll that seems to be just beginning.

Old buildings around the new courthouse plaza that were once in the wrecking ball’s shadow have been reborn with such businesses as Giacamo’s Deli and Molly Brooke’s Irish Bar. Condos are sprouting up all over downtown, both in rehabbed old buildings such as the Kimball House and in new developments such as Main & Rose.

As big events always seem to do, the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games has given Lexington a new sense of energy and urgency. It’s like your mother yelling, “Clean up your room — company’s coming!”

For many people, the debate over Dudley Webb’s proposed CentrePointe tower has helped change the tone of the downtown conversation from “any redevelopment will do” to “what’s the best redevelopment we can do?”

The Downtown Development Authority, which the city created six years ago, recognizes the new climate. The authority is now reviewing and updating its mission statement, goals and objectives to reflect it. A revised draft is likely to be discussed at the DDA’s July meeting.

The authority is looking to expand its sights to include a broader downtown footprint, such as the historic neighborhoods north of Fourth Street. It also is looking at broader, thematic issues, such as transportation and zoning and doing more to educate and involve the public in downtown redevelopment.

“I think it’s time to step back and look at the bigger picture,” said David Mohney, the authority’s new chairman and an architecture professor at the University of Kentucky.

Mohney is on the right track. The DDA must be seen as more than an arm of private developers — keeping their secrets and facilitating their individual plans. It must look at the bigger picture, and the broader public interest.

Part of the challenge is helping people in Lexington realize just how much potential is downtown.

Unlike many cities, Lexington a generation ago chose to have the interstate highways go around it rather than through it. That left the city’s historic neighborhoods and original design intact and easier to redevelop. And, because there were no big industrial sites downtown, there’s no post-industrial blight pockmarking the landscape.

With the University of Kentucky on the south side of downtown and Transylvania University to the north side, much more could be done to integrate campus life into the larger community. And those opportunities will increase when Bluegrass Community and Technical College consolidates its campus near downtown, to the Eastern State Hospital site on West Fourth Street.

If our goal is to make downtown Lexington a destination, rather than a place to drive through quickly, we must look for more and better public-transportation options, change some one-way streets back to two-way and make the streetscape more pedestrian-friendly.

And if we can preserve much of our historic architecture — or incorporate elements of it into high-quality contemporary buildings the way other cities have done — it will create an environment that’s uniquely Lexington, and not simply generic modern America.

If we create a downtown where locals want to go, tourists will also want to visit. And, perhaps most important, Lexington will have a better shot at attracting the diverse, intelligent workers of a 21st-century economy and the companies that want to employ them.

“We can create an A-plus downtown that’s equal to our A-plus rural area,” Vice Mayor Jim Gray told the Bluegrass Hospitality Association at a recent meeting. “The downtown is our touchstone … and it’s all about the economy.”

Once that’s done, then perhaps we can turn our attention to Turfland Mall, Lexington Mall and some other once-vibrant parts of Lexington that have fallen out of favor. Like downtown, they also could be better than they are now, if we’re willing to use some imagination.