I’m back after a week’s vacation. Each year, several friends and I go to Bike Virginia, a five-day bicycle tour through a different part of Virginia.
This year, about 1,800 of us were riding around Bristol and Abingdon, in far southwest Virginia, with a swing into Kingsport, Tenn. The scenery and weather were spectacular, and the company was even better. I rode a little more than 350 miles, including 100 miles one day. Bike Virginia is both physically challenging and mentally refreshing. It’s hard to think about everyday worries when you’re focused on pedaling up the next big hill. And southwest Virginia has a lot of big hills…
So, what happened in Kentucky while I was gone? A lot, apparently. Over the next few days, I’ll be catching up on CentrePointe and other issues and writing about what comes next.
By the way, Commerce Lexington has posted videos of the main presentations made during the Leadership Visit to Austin, Texas, in early June. While the other 274 Kentuckians on the trip were listening, Mark Turner, the chamber’s senior VP for communications, was capturing the speakers on video. Lucky for you; there are a lot of good ideas on those videos. Click here to watch them.
Dudley Webb is hardly the first ambitious businessman to want to leave his mark on the block in the center of downtown Lexington.
A five-member city board will decide this week whether Webb should be able to erase the marks of all those who came before him.
The Courthouse Area Design Review Board meets at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Urban County Council chambers to hear Webb’s request to demolish the 14 buildings on the block bounded by Main, Upper, Vine and Limestone streets to build his proposed 35-story CentrePointe tower. The $250 million development would house a luxury hotel, high-priced condominiums, stores and restaurants.
The board must approve demolition of the buildings that face Main Street, which are included in the courthouse area historic overlay zone. The board also must approve the design of new buildings so they fit the character of the neighborhood.
Vice Mayor Jim Gray has spoken for a broad coalition of preservationists, architects and downtown activists who want Webb to change his CentrePointe design to be more in scale with surrounding buildings and to preserve some of the block’s existing structures — or at least their facades.
Webb argues that it isn’t economical to keep the old buildings, many of which suffered “modernization” in the late 1940s and more recent neglect by their owners. Webb says none of the buildings, which date as far back as 1826, are truly historic or worth preserving.
The Blue Grass Trust, the citizens group Preserve Lexington and others disagree, noting that these are some of the city’s oldest surviving commercial buildings.
Much of the discussion Wednesday is likely to center on the neo-classical building on Main Street that houses The Dame, a popular music hall that closes Sunday night and is looking for a new home.
Built in 1901, the building was a late work of noted Lexington architect Herman L. Rowe, who also designed the Opera House on Broadway and the Carnegie Center — the old Lexington Public Library — at Gratz Park.
A 1979 survey of the block by architectural historian Walter Langsam said the building, which originally housed a candy factory and ice cream parlor, is notable for its “Chicago School” influence, which was then emerging from the work of such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright. The building later housed the offices of Lexington’s utilities and trolley line, a florist shop and clothing stores.
But the buildings that most concern preservationists lie outside the courthouse overlay zone, and thus beyond the board’s reach.
Most significant is “Morton’s Row” — three structures built in 1826 along South Upper Street and anchored by what is now Joe Rosenberg’s jewelry store and pawn shop. The main building is recognizable by its pediment roof with a half-circle window. It is an early example of the Greek Revival style that became popular in 1830s Lexington.
“Although the interiors have been remodeled, it remains one of the most important early buildings in downtown Lexington, both historically and architecturally,” Langsam wrote in 1979 for the Kentucky Heritage Council survey.
Morton’s Row housed a store and other businesses started by William Morton, an Englishman known as “Lord” Morton because of his aristocratic bearing. He started as a Main Street shopkeeper in 1787 and became one of Lexington’s richest and most colorful characters.
Morton built himself one of Lexington’s finest homes, the 1810 Federal-style mansion on North Limestone that is now the centerpiece of Duncan Park. (After Morton’s death, it became the home of Cassius Clay, the fiery abolitionist and namesake of Muhammad Ali.)
Morton helped start Lexington’s first bank and first Episcopal church. He was among those who gave the land where Christ Church now stands. Upon his death in 1836, he left $10,000 for Lexington’s first public school, which was built in 1849 and named for him. He is best known today as the namesake of Morton Middle School.
Morton’s Row has housed groceries, shops and restaurants through the years. The Rosenberg family bought the main building in 1929 and the rest of Morton’s Row in the early 1950s, according to Langsam’s survey.
On the opposite corner of Vine Street at Limestone is a three-story, neo-classical structure with distinctive oriel windows, built in the late 1880s. Older Lexington residents will remember it as Levas’ restaurant, but it was originally Robinson’s European Hotel Dining Room and Eugene Buchignani’s meat market.
By the turn of the century, the building housed Mooney & Klair’s Saloon, which drew a steady clientele from the nearby railroad depot. It was owned by William F. Klair, a colorful character who rose from General Assembly page boy to state representative, railroad commissioner, businessman and Democratic wheeler-dealer.
When Prohibition shuttered Lexington’s saloons, the building became a grocery until the Levas family opened a restaurant there in the 1920s.
A plain but notable building with little chance for survival is the late 1880s shop of R.H. Gray, an African-American tinsmith and inventor who held several patents. The deep, narrow industrial structure, which faces Vine Street in the middle of the block, later housed saloons, a dance hall and several restaurants.
Preservationists would like to see some of this historic fabric woven into a unique piece of contemporary architecture that would help bring people and activity back to the center of Lexington. They want a development that will blend in with the surrounding historic structures — a place people will want to go because it meets modern needs while reflecting Lexington’s rich cultural heritage.
A century from now, Dudley Webb’s mark on Lexington will be considerable. But think how much greater that mark — and Lexington — would be if Webb also could find a way to acknowledge the likes of “Lord” Morton, Herman Rowe, William Klair — and maybe even R.H. Gray.
It’s human nature to focus more on what’s going wrong than what’s going right.
I noticed that a lot when I lived in Atlanta. Except for its traffic and smog, Atlanta is the envy of most Southern cities. But get a group of Atlantans together, and all they do is complain.
Commerce Lexington recently took 275 local leaders to Austin, Texas, to learn about that city’s successes in economic development and improving the quality of life.
Chambers of commerce from other cities visit Lexington, too, and you might be surprised by their reactions.
“These groups come here and they just think we walk on water,” said Robert Quick, Commerce Lexington’s president. “The things they say about us are almost the opposite of how we often see ourselves.”
Since Quick moved to Lexington seven years ago from Evansville, Ind., three chambers have organized trips to Lexington: Gainesville, Fla., in 2001, Springfield, Mo., in 2003 and Evansville in 2006.
The visitors did things you might expect: Some went to Keeneland and Calumet Farm to learn about the horse industry. They heard about New Century Lexington’s livability study and how Blue Grass Airport has improved relations with its neighbors. The folks from Evansville visited Applebee’s Park because someday they hope to replace old Bosse Field, home of the Evansville Otters.
The visitors wanted to know how Lexington managed town-gown relations and leveraged university research for economic development. They wanted to talk about regional planning, and to see how our local governments work together — or don’t.
“All three groups came here before our downtown development was in full gear,” Quick said. “Still, they all thought we had a dynamic downtown.”
In addition to chamber groups, officials from elsewhere often contact UK and Lexington Urban County Government looking for ideas. According to people who get those calls, these are some of the things outsiders think we’ve done right:
• Merged government. In 1974, Lexington and Fayette County became the first place in Kentucky and one of the first in the nation to merge local governments. It saved money, made services more efficient and sidestepped the annexation fights and turf battles that plague cities and counties across America. The decision to make Lexington’s 15-member Urban County Council non-partisan also is seen as a plus.
• The Urban Service Area. Lexington was one of the first cities in America to try to control sprawl, protect rural land and control infrastructure costs by limiting growth. Without those limits, Fayette County would have more subdivisions, fewer farms and a lot less of its famous natural beauty. A related accomplishment that attracts national attention is our purchase-of-development-rights program, which lets farmers get tax breaks by making their land off-limits for future development.
Sure, people in Lexington still fight over controlling growth and keeping housing affordable, but other cities seem to think we manage the balance better than most.
• Lexington is fortunate to be located along interstate highways that run both east-west and north-south. And it is even more fortunate that, when those highways were built, they were routed around the city rather than through the middle of it. It was a controversial decision — and it still is among people who gripe about traffic.
Still, downtown Lexington has an enormous advantage over most cities trying to rebuild their urban core. There are no noisy highways dividing neighborhoods, no ugly off-ramps, and little industrial blight needing redevelopment.
It also helped that railroad tracks were taken out of downtown in the 1960s, although we’re now wishing we still had some of the old streetcar lines that were removed decades earlier.
• Although many grand old buildings were torn down in the last half of the 20th century, many others were preserved and reused, giving Lexington more historic fabric than most cities can claim. Unique, quality architecture is something that gives a city identity, making it a place where people want to live.
• Keeneland and the horse industry give Lexington a “brand” that is unique and authentic.
• Lexington has a major research university, an excellent liberal-arts college and a top-notch community and technical college, all near downtown. Add to that a good public school system, and we have an educational infrastructure most places would envy.
The secret to success lies in appreciating your advantages and enjoying your accomplishments without becoming self-satisfied, as people in Lexington can sometimes be. After all, if you think things are good enough, you’re unlikely to work very hard to make them better.
As a chamber of commerce executive, Quick is paid to promote Lexington. Still, he thinks many Lexingtonians have too little appreciation for the city’s quality of life, even as they recognize the need to improve some things.
Quick has noticed many changes in Lexington in the short time he has been here, and most of them have been for the better. Downtown is being revived, and fresh faces are bringing more diversity to decision-making, and local leaders are working better together and seem to share more of a common vision for the city’s future.
“It seems like in the last seven years we’ve gotten over the pettiness,” he said. “We still have our differences, but it’s a different conversation. Things could be better, but we have a lot more going for us than against us.”
I would have cut up that brush pile and stuffed it in the Lenny — as my wife probably told me to do — instead of leaving it at the curb for your roving camera to find.
Now, a color photo of my house and brush pile is there for all the world to see on Google Maps’ Street View.
Lexington and 36 other cities were added earlier this month to Street View, a year-old service that allows Internet users to type in an address or click on a map and get a panoramic view as if they were standing in the street.
It’s a big advancement from online satellite images, where you can zoom in and perhaps make out the shape of your driveway. With Street View, you can count the panes on the windows.
For Realtors, it’s a dream come true. For the rest of us, it’s fascinating technology — and more than a little creepy.
Google sent cars out on public streets equipped with special digital video cameras. The cameras filmed everything around them, including the lady walking her dog outside my neighbor’s house and the truck filled with pallets driving past City Hall. The images look as if they were taken last summer.
The video was reduced to stop-action images, embedded with global-positioning coordinates, matched with street addresses and posted online.
To find your house, go to Google, click “Maps” and type in your address. If Google’s video car went down your street, you’ll be shown a picture of your house. (Or, perhaps, a neighbor’s house. Addresses are approximate.) You can see where the video car went, because the maps shows those streets in blue.
Once you have an image on your screen, you can move up and down the street by clicking on computer-generated arrows. You also can zoom in and out, and spin the view around. Way cool.
Of course, not everyone is happy about it.
Communities in other states with private streets have banned Google’s video car. Others have asked Google to remove images of their homes, and the company has generally agreed. The Pentagon has banned images of military bases.
Despite technology that blurs the faces of most people caught in the Google lens, the European Union is concerned that future filming there might violate some countries’ privacy laws.
Taking pictures on a public street isn’t illegal in this country. Already, people with too much time on their hands have found Street View images more embarrassing than a front-yard brush pile. There’s a burning car, a man walking out of a strip club, a boy falling off his bike and a man urinating in an alley. None of those images seem to be from Lexington — yet.
I spent a couple of hours looking at Lexington through the eyes of Google.
The first thing I noticed was that some big streets were missed, while the camera car made a few odd detours — such as Von Alley, between 5th Street and Fayette Park, and the occasional dead-end rural road. The camera car went down every lane in Lexington Cemetery where, predictably, there was little activity. You can check your family plot to make sure.
I didn’t see anyone coming out of a strip club or doing anything risque. But, then, Lexington isn’t a very risque place in the middle of a summer day.
When you were little, your Sunday school teacher told you to behave as if someone were always watching. George Orwell warned us long ago about Big Brother.
But who would have thought Big Brother would have a goofy name like Google?
Since then, I’ve mostly been a newspaper and bicycle geek.
But once you’re in a high school band, especially a marching band, you never seem to get it out of your system.
Just ask the dozens of musicians in the 18 bands performing at the Great American Brass Band Festival this weekend. Not to mention the several thousand people here to listen to them.
“For me, the great thing about this festival is seeing all the younger players coming out, having a great time and producing a great sound,” said Jim Drake of Frankfort, who started playing trombone in fifth grade, switched to tuba in ninth grade and is still playing in two brass bands.
Danville always seems to look like a Norman Rockwell painting, but never more so than each June when the brass bands come to town. People from all over the country set up lawn chairs around one of three stages and listen to bands like the ones most American small towns had a century ago.
“I’ve heard this is our 10th year, but I’ve lost count,” said Dan Shields, who plays tenor sax in the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis.
“All of the people are here for the music,” he said. “It’s a language that people should learn and not forget, even if they don’t keep playing. It makes them a more educated listener.”
In addition to free public performances, the festival included a Chautauqua Tea on Thursday, a Brass History Conference on Friday and a big parade down Main Street on Saturday.
You can still catch some of the action Sunday, when the main stage at Centre College will have performances from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. The annual balloon race, postponed Friday because of bad weather, has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Stuart Powell Field outside Junction City.
The bands range from Ameriikan Poijat, a Midwestern band that plays Finnish-style, to the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers, a four-man combo from Lexington led by Dick Domek, a University of Kentucky music theory professor who plays a mean piano.
There are several military bands - the Hellcats from West Point, the U.S. Army Brass Quintet and the U.S. Air Force Reserve Band. Plus crowd favorites from an earlier era of military bands: the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., and Saxton’s Cornet Band from Kentucky, which use antique instruments to recreate Civil War-era music.
In honor of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial, the history conference this year focused on music from his time. It included a re-enactment by the Olde Towne Brass of Huntsville, Ala., of a concert Lincoln and his Lexington-born wife, Mary Todd, attended. Saxton and Excelsior both played a popular tune that they noted, ironically, was one of Lincoln’s favorites: Dixie.
As a bicycle geek, I was fascinated by the 18 riders from the Ohio Wheelmen, who led the parade on big-wheel “bone shakers” and other two-wheeled relics.
“This is a unique parade,” said Del Nichols of Findlay, Ohio, the group’s leader. “There’s a higher class of people who come here because of the music.”
Back when I was a band geek at Lexington’s Lafayette High School in the mid-1970s, there were two musicians we all looked up to: Trumpeter Vincent DiMartino, who was then at UK and now teaches at Centre, and euphonium virtuoso Earle Louder, then a professor at Morehead State. They each performed solos in concert with us, and we were awed by how they could make their instruments come alive.
Now, DiMartino and Louder moonlight as the directors of the festival’s host band, the Advocate Brass Band of Danville, which is sponsored by the local newspaper. The band played Saturday evening at the festival’s Great American Picnic, and will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday.
If that wasn’t enough to make me love the Advocate Brass Band, there was this: Former director George Foreman spent years having the band explore the great heritage of newspaper music. Yes, newspaper music.
The most famous example is John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March, which was commissioned in 1889 for the U.S. Marine Band to play at an awards ceremony for the newspaper’s student essay contest. The march became one of Sousa’s most popular, and started a trend.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers across America commissioned marches. It was like the 19th century version of a TV marketing jingle. Foreman documented more than 300 newspaper marches, and under his direction the band recorded four CDs of them.
There’s even a Lexington Herald March, written in 1936 by Robert B. Griffith, a UK student who went on to direct the University of Louisville marching band. Click the arrow below to hear a short clip of the Lexington Herald March. Click here to find out how to buy the Advocate Brass Band’s CDs.
If you have time Sunday, drive over to Danville. It just might make a band geek out of you, even if you weren’t one in high school.
Photos, top to bottom: Mick Gould of the Ohio Wheelmen leads out the parade Saturday. Members of the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., play on a wagon in the parade. Dick Domek of Lexington plays with the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers. Natalie Fieberg, 3, of Danville, watches Dan Shields of the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis run by during the parade. Photos/Tom Eblen
This state doesn’t lead the nation in many aspects of education.
But Kentucky Educational Television has, over the past 40 years, been one of America’s most innovative and admired public TV systems.
KET produces more hours of programming and creates more instructional materials than almost anyone else.
“Around the country, everyone wants to grow up to be KET,” said Mac Wall, the executive director.
But that could change, if Kentucky isn’t careful.
State budget cuts have hit KET especially hard. About $2.4 million was sliced from KET’s appropriation for the coming year. Changes in state employee benefits have given many of KET’s veteran staff members little choice but to retire. About a fifth of KET’s 220 employees will be gone by December, including 10 who were laid off last week.
Among the biggest hits: Half of KET’s 12 program producers are leaving.
“These are really invaluable human assets that they are going to be losing,” said Leonard Press, KET’s founding executive director, who retired in 1992. “The loss of what they could have done for Kentucky will never be recovered. Time lost is tragic.”
It’s too early to say what all of this will mean to KET consumers in schools and living rooms across the state. Network executives are working on a plan that will be presented to the agency’s governing board in October.
State funding accounts for 52 percent of KET’s $25.5 million annual budget. The rest comes from fund-raising (17 percent), federal money (15 percent), grants and other revenue (16 percent).
“We will be helped a lot by new technology and what that will bring in terms of efficiencies,” said Shae Hopkins, KET’s deputy director. “But it still takes a producer to find a story and tell that story.”
What is happening at KET has set off alarms across the Public Broadcasting System.
“I’m deeply concerned about the impact these budget cuts may have,” said Paula Kerger, who has toured KET twice since becoming PBS’s president two years ago.
“If the long-term consequences of these cuts are not carefully considered, I worry they may diminish the impressive gains KET has made — especially in serving the state’s children. If further cuts are made, it would be a great loss not only to Kentucky, but also to public broadcasting as a whole.”
More than TV shows
I remember when KET first went on the air in September 1968. Cardinal Valley Elementary got several big black-and-white TVs on carts that teachers wheeled into class. If Mrs. Dawson timed our fourth-grade class just right — and if she could get the rabbit-ear antenna adjusted just so — we could watch a dowdy lady on KET’s one channel do science experiments.
Believe it or not, at the time, that was impressive.
Of course, that was years before Sesame Street helped teach my daughters to count and spell, Reading Rainbow fueled their love of books and Inspector Morse and Prime Suspect hooked me on British detective dramas.
Most Kentuckians know KET through those shows, and some of the 1,200 hours of original programming the staff creates each year: Kentucky Life, Comment on Kentucky, Kentucky Tonight, On to One, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the General Assembly and documentaries such as Where the River Bends: A History of Northern Kentucky.
KET has aggressively explored Kentucky’s history, celebrated its culture and created the kind of public affairs programs that commercial TV news has all but abandoned.
“Local production is the most expensive programming you can put on the air,” Wall said. “But it’s also the most important, the most relevant.”
What’s on your TV is only the beginning of KET.
In addition to the KET1 and KET2 channels, the network operates a channel just for schools and a new digital Kentucky Channel.
KET’s new EncycloMedia is a comprehensive online service with thousands of videos, photos, quizzes and lesson plans that Kentucky teachers can download and use. KET produces for-credit college courses, educational content for state prisoners and professional development materials for teachers.
KET developed study materials that have helped more than 1 million adults nationwide — including more than 20,000 in Kentucky — earn their high-school equivalency degrees. The staff will soon begin a $6 million project to update those materials to reflect changes being made in GED tests in 2012.
New Equipment
Ironically, KET’s loss of staff and experience comes as the network is installing millions of dollars worth of new digital equipment, bought with money appropriated by previous legislative sessions.
“We’re now able to do the things that Len Press envisioned 40 years ago, but the technology and the capacity didn’t exist then,” Wall said.
KET will have the equipment, but it will have a smaller staff with less experience left to use it.
Times are tight, and Kentucky leaders face difficult decisions about how to raise and spend taxpayers’ money.
Can this state still afford to maintain a first-class educational resource like KET?
As a small crowd looked on, the ceremonial reopening of the Lexington Public Library’s Kentucky Room ended Wednesday with two white- gloved librarians carefully placing in a glass display case a copy of Kentucky’s second-oldest newspaper: the Kentucke Gazette of Aug. 18, 1787.
So where’s a copy of Kentucky’s first newspaper — the Kentucke Gazette of Aug. 11, 1787? That’s a good question.
“I just have to think somebody, somewhere has one in their attic or an old trunk,” said Library director Kathleen Imhoff. “And I hope if somebody ever finds one, they’ll let us know.”
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Lexington was one of the major cities in what was then the West. Several local newspapers sprang up soon after John Bradford began publishing his then-weekly Gazette.
The library has a substantial collection of old Lexington newspapers, including the most complete archives of the Gazette. Except for that first issue.
One story holds that somebody, many years ago, was looking at the library’s copy of the first Gazette, let it get too close to a coal stove and — poof! But that may just be a story, said Jan Marshall, the library’s assistant manager in charge of the reference department.
No other copies of that first issue of the Gazette, which measured about 8 x 10 inches and probably contained four pages, are known to exist.
The Kentucky Room reopened Wednesday after an extensive renovation made necessary by a water leak that flooded the library on Feb. 21, 2007. Of course, the room containing the library’s most precious books and manuscripts was the most heavily damaged. But quick, tireless work by the library staff enabled everything to be salvaged — even waterlogged books that had to be sent off to Chicago to be freeze-dried.
All it needs now is a copy of Kentucky’s first newspaper.
One of the old arguments against building a water pipeline from Louisville to Lexington now appears to be all wet. You know, the argument that went something like this: “We don’t want that nasty Ohio River water. You can’t even eat fish out of that river!”
The American Water Works Association, meeting this week in Atlanta, has declared that Louisville has the nation’s best-tasting water. The selection was made by a panel of judges that included a newspaper dining critic, a wine educator, a chemistry professor and the chair of the association’s “Taste and Color Committee.” Second place went to the Mal Paso Filtration Plant in Puerto Rico and third place went to Blythe, Ga.
Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson celebrated today by passing out free bottles of tap water to people at Waterfront Park, and he credited the win to the fine work done by the folks at the Louisville Water Co.
So here’s the question: Does Louisville’s water taste better because the water company is publicly owned? Or did the years of fighting over condemnation of Kentucky American Water Co. in Lexington just leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth?
What if someone brought several dozen of the world’s smartest, most innovative people to Kentucky?
And what if you could spend three days listening to them talk about ideas that may change the world?
Sound unlikely? It’s not.
It has happened five times since 2000, and it will happen again Sept. 25-27, when the Idea Festival returns to downtown Louisville.
Scott Jones, the man who invented voicemail, will be there. So will J. Richard Gott, a Princeton University astrophysicist.
Richard Kogan, a psychiatrist and world-class concert pianist, will perform and lecture on the genius of Mozart. Immaculee Llibagiza, the international peace activist, will talk about what it was like to survive genocide in Rwanda.
Diandra Leslie-Pelecky will discuss her book The Physics of NASCAR, which examines how race cars can go so fast. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk-management expert and derivatives trader, will discuss his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, the top-selling non-fiction title of 2007. Will Shortz, the crossword editor of The New York Times, will talk about puzzles.
The European architect Emiliano Gandolfi will launch the Curry Stone Design Prize, a new $100,000 award for innovation in architecture, to be administered by the University of Kentucky’s College of Design.
Vova Galchenko, a world-champion juggler, will demonstrate his skill and discuss the thinking behind it. Amy Chua, who analyzes global politics and economics, will discuss the rise and fall of hyperpowers.
They are among more than 30 presenters recruited for this year’s festival, said founder Kris Kimel, president of the Lexington-based Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. Program details were announced Tuesday.
“They’re all either doing something or thinking about something that’s really cutting-edge,” Kimel said.
They’re also people who think about how ideas cut across all areas of life, and they are good communicators to a general audience.
The big idea behind the Idea Festival is this: In today’s global economy, ideas and innovation are the keys to business success and making the world a better place. If you can bring together a diverse group of innovative thinkers from a variety of disciplines to discuss their ideas, it will stimulate more creative thinking by everyone else.
The Idea Festival started in Lexington in 2000, and it was held again in 2002 and 2004. Organizers wanted to make it a bigger, annual event. In 2006, they moved the festival to Louisville, where there was more access to corporate sponsors and large presentation venues.
The festival costs about $850,000 in cash and $350,00 in in-kind contributions to put on, Kimel said. A big group of sponsors — including Best Buy’s Geek Squad and the universities of Kentucky and Louisville — help keep ticket prices low.
“Business executives pay $3,000 to $6,000 to attend these types of events elsewhere, but we wanted to make it accessible to the public, to all ages, at a reasonable price,” said Kimel, whose private, non-profit corporation works to advance science, technology and innovative economic development in Kentucky.
Last year, about 7,000 people bought more than 12,500 tickets to Idea Festival events. At least 200 of those attending were school children, who can participate in a special program.
After five festivals, Kimel said, the event has gained an international reputation. The 120 or so presenters since 2000 have ranged from Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak to Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer.
Perhaps best of all, the Idea Festival has helped create positive buzz for Kentucky.
“We’ve always been known for a lot of things; innovation hasn’t been one of them — but now it is,” Kimel said. “Many of the presenters we bring in have never been to Kentucky before. They leave with the impression that innovation is valued here.”
Idea Festival
What: More than 30 top thinkers from around the world discuss cutting-edge ideas in science, business, the arts and other fields
When: Sept. 25-27
Where: Several locations in downtown Louisville
Cost: Full pass is $298 until July 15, $350 afterward. Tickets for individual events go on sale July 15. Some individual events are free; others cost $15 to $65
Tom Eblen is a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader who writes about life, people and issues in Kentucky. A Lexington native, he was the Herald-Leader's managing editor from 1998 to 2008. Before coming home in 1998, he was a reporter and editor for the Atlanta Journal- Constitution and Associated Press.
This year, about 1,800 of us were riding around Bristol and Abingdon, in far southwest Virginia, with a swing into Kingsport, Tenn. The scenery and weather were spectacular, and the company was even better. I rode a little more than 350 miles, including 100 miles one day. Bike Virginia is both physically challenging and mentally refreshing. It’s hard to think about everyday worries when you’re focused on pedaling up the next big hill. And southwest Virginia has a lot of big hills…
Posted by Tom Eblen
