I am about to commit heresy. I have been interested in and a supporter of historic preservation all my adult life. For four years, I served as chairman of Kentucky's Historic Preservation Review Board, the body which reviews every property nominated to the National Registry of Historic Places. My wife and
I restored a National Registry property as our personal residence. My former law firm restored a National Registry property for our offices. With several other individuals, I helped found the Lexington History Museum, which counts among its goals the preservation and restoration of our historic former Courthouse. I am the historian for my church, a congregation begun in 1789, where we worship in a National Registry listed sanctuary.
I support the new hotel and office project.
Before the brickbats start flying, let me offer some historical perspective to this discussion.
In the mid-1960s, our community took a radical step for a small town looking to grow and prosper. We decided to remove the railroad tracks which sliced through downtown, together with the warehouses, sheds, and ancillary buildings. We adopted an Urban Renewal Plan which resulted in Vine Street as we know it today, the Civic Center, Rupp Arena, and, ultimately, Triangle Park.
The block on which the hotel and office project is proposed is simply the last block to be redeveloped in the Urban Renewal Plan. Its time has come. Every building on that block is there because another earlier building was torn down to make way.
We decided over 40 years ago to change the layout, scope, feel and scale of part of downtown, and the office and hotel project is just the culmination of that decision. The scale of Vine Street is not two or three stories like the north side of Main. The scale of Vine Street, from the top of Park Plaza to the top of the Financial Center, is higher than one realizes, as will be the towers to be build on top of the transit center. We have decided that the Vine Street corridor is to be developed on a different model.
I learned from the professionals and experts who do historic preservation for a living that one critical element of determining whether a building is sufficiently "historic" (versus just "old") to warrant inclusion on the National Registry is context. Does the building still exist in its original context? I remember particularly a pre-Civil War farmhouse nominated for its representation of farm residences of its era, with broad porches overlooking the vista of the fields. The problem was the entire farm around it had been subdivided into house lots. It had lost its context. Our board voted not to send it on to the Registry.
Victorian Square was a valid preservation effort because it retained its context. There is no context left to the project block. The Rosenberg building stands alone as an early commercial building; but its windows no longer represent the original facade. The former Levas' restaurant building is of a different era and architecture. The Main Street buildings at Upper are of a third era. There is no context, no unifying theme, no sense of history remaining to this block.
If there is a unifying theme to a business district it is that buildings become functionally obsolete and are removed to make way for new buildings. A good example is the recent rezoning of part of Manchester Street to create a downtown Entertainment District and proposed changes to those buildings; a solution for the entertainment venues being displaced.
Finally, we must confront another decision made by our community. In adopting our most recent Comprehensive Plan, we elected not to expand the Urban Service Boundary in favor of infill and "up not out" growth. The proposed project is a natural result of that decision. Instead of another hotel far from the business and convention core of downtown, or another motel at an interchange, it proposes a first-rate hotel downtown which can support the expanded Civic Center. Instead of another office park on a former horse farm, it proposes more office space downtown. Instead of another strip mall at our urban edge, it proposes additional retail downtown. Now is not the time to say, oh, wait a minute, I didn't mean infill downtown.
Where else can it be? Thanks to our success in historic preservation, we have put a strangle hold on downtown. The historic neighborhoods to the south, west, north and east, coupled with our two universities, have put hard limits on any expansion of the downtown business district horizontally. Combine our communal decisions on Urban Renewal, historic preservation and non-expansion of the urban boundary, and building up is the only answer.
A city is either growing or declining. Any balance between the two is a fleeting moment. I am not one of those in thrall to the notion every decision must be made in the context of the 2010 Games. Some decisions have a broader reach in history, such as our decision to remodel Vine Street from a railroad and warehouse district to a commercial and business corridor. When a project comes along which comports with our communal decisions, we should recognize it and support it as part of what is good for our community; or confess that our decisions to preserve farm land and neighborhoods were wrong.