Lexington, Ky. - So there is life after the Rosenberg-Block-As-We-Knew-It. As work seems underway on CentrePointe (will the project survive recession?), The Dame has relocated to East Main. And Lexington's downtown nighttime economy has seen definite improvement with the 2008 arrivals of The Chase, Devassa and Lower 48 in Victorian Square; The Penguin in the nearby 500's on Main; Al's Bar and Sidecar on Limestone and the Green Lantern on Jefferson. The expansion of Natasha's into a multi-cultural center featuring live music and theater is bringing life and light nightly to the easterly end of Main. Annette's CafĂ on Old Vine is offering live jazz on Friday and Saturday nights. Manchester's, billed as "Lexington's newest entertainment lounge, featuring jazz, R&B, Old School Nights and Open Mic" just opened in the proposed Distillery District on Manchester Street. And ground has been broken on the forthcoming Tin Roof restaurant/music venue on the corner of Maxwell and Limestone.
Downtown now has a Jimmy John's and a Dunkin' Donuts at the recently completed mixed-use project, Main & Rose. Public art has blossomed all around. LexPark has made important strides in the availability and convenience of parking. LexTran has announced plans to reintroduce a trolley circulator throughout the downtown area, pending funding.
It's a far cry from where we were at this time last December and this is due largely to the strong civic engagement present in our city since the election of 2006.
For that, credit is due Vice Mayor Jim Gray who made the most of the limited authority of the office by creating an array of citizen task forces charged with studying and recommending ways to bring about the full-scale realization of Gray's long-held vision of downtown-as-21st-century-industrial-park.
Those efforts coincided with Commerce Lexington's three most recent annual Leadership Visits to cities specifically chosen for the lessons offered by their downtown development experiences.
What followed was an unprecedented period of broad-based, energized public engagement in the civic affairs of the city.
Yet, here we now are, wondering what's around the next bend in a progressively worsening economic climate few could have foreseen only months ago. Very high expectations for downtown revitalization have suddenly collided head-on with a city struggling under enormous stress just to maintain basic services even as the private sector hunkers down to weather frozen credit and plunging investments.
The temptation is to throw up hands and just put it all off for a sunnier day.
We can't.
To now place progress on lay-away at the expense of all of this civic engagement and momentum will leave Lexington unprepared for the upswing that will come, not to mention doing great disservice to the many corporate and civic groups and task forces that have invested time (time is money) and talent (also costly) identifying what has prevented downtown Lexington from realizing its full potential.
These groups, having exhausted discussion and study, now expect implementation. And they have been joined by two of the region's most powerful economic engines, Toyota and Lexmark.
One of the most pressing economic development challenges for Lexington was outlined in eye-opening fashion during the November 25 work session of the Urban County Council.
Linda Hollembaek, vice president for customer services at Lexmark, offered the sobering findings of a study made in collaboration with Toyota aimed at understanding why these companies have been having difficulty recruiting and retaining minority professionals. Why is that of concern? "We recognized that diversity is fundamental to the long-term success of our companies," she explained. "Our customers are not homogenous, so having diverse, creative talent is critical to our ability to meet the wants and needs of a diverse customer base. In short," she added, "we view having a more diverse workforce as a competitive advantage."
So there it was: local corporate validation of the theories of urbanist Richard Florida, touted by Mayor Newberry since his campaign for office. In Florida's view, cities that accommodate diversity in order to attract knowledge, workers and creatives, succeed. Those that don't, fail.
It doesn't take long to get to the really fascinating finding in the Lexmark/Toyota study. Hollembaek, explaining that "we approached the problem not as a social issue but as a business issue," said the study was launched with the premise that it has been difficult to recruit and retain minority professionals because Lexington is not especially welcoming to minorities.
Wrong.
Discussions with young professionals at both companies found not one who considered racial issues to be a top factor in their views of the Lexington community. All, however, mentioned a need for more entertainment options - - more cultural programs, live music, festivals, a more vibrant and welcoming downtown area, more affordable and appropriate downtown housing ("not basic student housing they've grown past, but not married with children houses in the 'burbs"), and better sources of information about places to eat, hear music and experience art.
"Companies like ours," she said, "need young, diverse talent to effectively compete in the global marketplace. The young professionals we're trying to recruit no longer go to wherever the job is, they pick a place they want to live and then find a job. One of the primary requirements they have is for a vibrant downtown with appropriate entertainment options. Lexington must recognize that meeting those requirements is not just an important social issue; it is a business-critical economic development issue.
"There seems to be a lot of talk and study concerning developing the downtown area," Hollembaek observed, "but what is currently being done is not moving fast enough in the eyes of young professionals considering relocation to Lexington."
"I don't believe we can envision and create such a place on the theory that if we build it they will come," offered Councilman Tom Blues whose 2nd district includes a portion of downtown. "They must be a part of the visioning and the transforming. So, my suggestion: ask some of those 'young, diverse, professional talents' who are not here now, what it would take to get them here."
The Lexmark/Toyota message was underscored coincidentally in the very same week by the results of a Gallup study funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Entitled "The Soul of the Community," the Knight research confirmed that a better social scene as well as improvements in welcoming new residents are top concerns among a majority of those surveyed in Lexington. And each of these reports supported conclusions reached earlier in the year by the Downtown Entertainment Development Task Force (full disclosure: I chair that task force.)
In a video companion to the Lexmark/Toyota report, available for viewing online at bizlex.com, Stephen Bennice with Toyota's Engineers-In-Training program and one of those young professionals to whom Hollembaek had referred made it clear that the recent growth in the downtown bar scene may be okay for some, but it misses the larger point. "There's a lot of nightlife in Lexington, however it seems to be geared towards UK and when you become a professional you don't really want that college atmosphere," he said.
A second participant in the Toyota Engineers-in-Training program, Robert Markt, spelled out what still has to happen: "Putting young people in the downtown area would allow a community of diverse young people to develop by having nearby businesses, shopping, restaurants, bars and also cultural opportunities."
He's talking about actively engineering a live-in downtown professional community, that "industrial park of the 21st century" Gray has spoken of for years.
A fine physical master plan has been developed for the downtown area in the hope that entrepreneurs will fill spaces with commercial activities. But what about strategies to ensure that they do? Councilman Blues suggests "a publicly-privately financed incentive program, tailored to the particular needs of particular entrepreneurs to attract them to an environment that is not yet what they may want it to be, but which they must help to create." Success, he counsels "depends on being open, supportive, and getting out of the way of wherever their creativity and energies lead."
Incoming council-member Diane Lawless whose 3rd district also encompasses a portion of downtown will add another voice to the call for incentives. "We need to support small business and new businesses. Small locally owned businesses are often neglected and are an essential part of economic health. We need a streamlined way for new businesses to cut through the paper work."
Now is the time to work out a well-crafted and determined business strategy for downtown Lexington. This "is not just an important social issue," as Ms. Hollembaek put it in words worth repeating, "it is a business-critical economic development issue."
That means somehow, some way, funding and implementing the streetscape plan and changing a ridiculously restrictive sign ordinance to allow businesses and venues to announce their presence, in colorful and creative ways, as one travels through the district. Above all, however, is the imperative of developing an aggressive business recruitment effort to fill in the many gaps between the commercial clusters that do now exist downtown.
Wouldn't it be great if the council's new downtowners, Lawless and the 5th District's Cheryl Feigel, immediately reached out to their fellow downtown representatives, Mr. Blues and 1st District council member Andrea James, as well as downtown denizen, business leader and vice mayor Jim Gray, recognized the convergence of conclusions reached by all of these various studies, synthesized them into strategies designed to be implemented, then worked to convince their suburban colleagues that as goes downtown Lexington goes the entire city?
Beyond the World Equestrian Games which will come and go in a blink in 2010, we have got to figure out how we position our city to take full advantage of the economic recovery that will certainly come, eventually.