NA Confidential

Recognition for NABC's Tony Beard at The Pour Curator.

2012-01-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

According to The Pour Curator, "There is art. There is beer. This is where they meet." In The Best Beer Label Art of 2011, our man Tony receives lengthy consideration, and I'm delighted for him.

Beard's artwork is consistently as rebellious and outsize as NABC, and consistently thoughtful and well-executed. He's also quite prolific, and updates designs often.

Cars are bad enough. Walk it across, for safety's sake.

2012-01-28T10:40:00.000-05:00

At 6:00 p.m. in winter on a Yum Center event night, a bicyclist riding on the sidewalk of an overcrowded bridge -- the only way for non-motorized vehicles to get across the Ohio short of using a dinghy -- hits a pedestrian, knocking him into traffic, and prompting the Jeffersonville police spokesman to utter the nonsensical admonition that cyclists should be on an expanse of asphalt which is entirely and absolutely unpatrolled in the best of times, and where cyclists previously have been killed and their killers not prosecuted by the cowardly local enforcement and justice arms.

I generally defend cyclists, and the one biking in this instance was right to use the sidewalk lest he be killed himself by distracted drivers (the only sidewalk exception I'm willing to tolerate owing to the danger of the area), but he was in the wrong when it came to the way he chose to use the sidewalk. One should only be cycling in saddle at full speed on that accursed bridge when visibility is perfect. Many is the time I've walked my bike across it in deference to pedestrians, because it is their sidewalk, not mine. Ultimately, all of it owes to the near comical shortsightedness of autocentric metro officials and political ciphers, but we already knew that, didn't we?

Pedestrian in critical condition after Clark bridge accident, by Harold J. Adams (Courier-Journal)

Washing on the water should be easier in a river town, shouldn't it?

2012-01-27T09:48:00.002-05:00

Rocking RateBeer's list.

2012-01-27T04:44:00.000-05:00

(Gravity Head returns ... Friday, February 24)

RateBeer.com's list of "Best Beer Bars 2012" has NABC's original Public House in fourth place, nationwide.

An accompanying "Best Beer Retailers 2012" places Keg Liquors (Clarksville/New Albany) at 44th.

I'm fairly ambivalent about beer ratings, but there are two things about such rankings that I always find pleasing.

First, just being included as part of any conversation about best beer bars is reward enough for me. I've always felt we deserve to at least be mentioned, and I'll leave the exact numbers to others.

Second, it's wonderful to see New Albany's name alongside New York, Chicago, New Orleans and San Diego in an accounting of the best of anything.

Obviously, we could not do any of it without our workers and without you, the customer. Your patronage is much appreciated, and we thank you.

In 2012, we mark 25 years for the business overall (founded 1987), 20 years for me at the Public House, and 10 years as a brewery. Once upon a time, I sat down at a bar somewhere with a pint of Guinness in hand, and the next time I looked up, a career seemed to have found me. Problem is, I still don't know what I'd like to do when I grow up.

Previously: Thanks to LEO Readers' Choice voters for thinking of NABC.

Group convenes to take credit, and does. A lot.

2012-01-27T03:28:00.000-05:00

I can find approximately 108,000 reasons to raise an eyebrow, but what the hey ... let them have their day.

Pillars of the community: Develop New Albany hands out Pillar Awards to local businesses, leaders, by Daniel Suddeath

(photo credit)

Perhaps he's talking about free sidewalks.

2012-01-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

Occasionally one spies a sentence that is completely confusing. First, the sensible part:

Jeffersonville Redevelopment Commission considers forgivable loan program, by David A. Mann (N and T)

JEFFERSONVILLE — A proposed program that would offer new restaurants the incentive to locate in Jeffersonville through forgivable loans got some consideration Wednesday night by members of the Jeffersonville Redevelopment Commission.

Then the weird part:

“Everybody was totally for the program,” said James Lake, a current commission member who also served on the board last year.

He said such programs have worked to stimulate business in New Albany.

I'm not sure of which Lake speaks. Is he thinking about the Horseshoe Foundation's revolving loan program? But it isn't just for restaurants, and it is not forgivable.

I'm not sure what he means. Is Paul Wheatley reading?

Billow's got 'em, so smoke one at the new shop's grand opening on Friday.

2012-01-26T08:28:00.000-05:00

Echoing my life's theme of being careful what one wishes for, the advent of Billow has complicated my life in a fashion similar to the proliferation of downtown eateries and watering holes, which is to say there are many more places for me to spread my presumed wealth.

I will continue to patronize Kaiser's, in addition to Billow. The latter's proximity to Quills is enticing, and yet periodically a trip over to Hobknobb for espresso is justified. Working harder to earn the cash for habit support poses certain complications in terms of time. I have little cash and no time.

Let's hope that come fair weather, there'll be some outdoor smoking benches at Billow. In the meantime, the shop is celebrating on Friday:

This Friday is Billow's grand opening, with NABC and Irish Exit lending a hand.

ON THE AVENUES: They didn't ask.

2012-01-26T07:04:00.001-05:00

ON THE AVENUES: They didn't ask.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

(There was a special edition of this column on Monday: ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: River View's sweet dreams are not enough)

After the rear wall of the 153-year-old Peter Weinmann building at 8th and Culbertson crumbled early in 2011, there was an Indiana Landmarks-led rescue effort. Something about it kept bothering me.

Having previously served a stint on the board of the Urban Enterprise Association, I had a hazy notion that elements of “our” program for the zone might have applied to the situation with the deteriorating structure, but being out of practice and otherwise distracted by work, I couldn’t piece it all together.

Eventually I asked my question to the UEA’s director, Mike Ladd, and he filled in the blanks. I wanted to write about it then, but readers must understand that everyday life for the UEA during the final year of the England/Malysz administration’s last-ditch, crony-empowering megalomania was exceedingly difficult. While the 8th and Culbertson situation was discussed often here at the blog, I remained generally cautious, worried lest the tottering administration’s clear assault on the UEA worsen in intensity.

Now it’s 2012, and in spite of the big flush at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the UEA’s future remains almost as unclear as before. Once again there have been proposals at the state level to dismantle the program, which in my view would be a foolish mistake given what the zone is capable of providing to the community.

Here in New Albany, both council and mayor must finalize their UEA board appointments; without these, there can be no board, no meetings, and among other things, no pay packet for Mike Ladd – which is profoundly unfair to him, although just a bit outside my reasoning for covering this material today.

The question I asked Ladd last year was this: “Was there a better way to save the building at 8th and Culbertson?”

Here is his response, tardy but thought-provoking.

---

"Being inside the Urban Enterprise Zone, the building at Eighth and Culbertson is eligible for the EZ-2 Investment Deduction; meaning that the purchase price and any subsequent improvements are eligible for the tax credit, as long as a private party makes the purchase.

"However, the EZ-2 does not work for Indiana Landmarks, which now owns the building. The reason is because Indiana Landmarks is a nonprofit organization and this deduction applies to for-profit entities only.

"The best-case scenario would have been for the purchaser to buy the building in its then-collapsed condition. The purchaser then could have applied to the county assessor’s office for a new (and probably lower) assessed value. Had we been involved, we would have assisted the purchaser with that effort.

"Currently the property is assessed in the $74,000 range. The purchaser could have bought the property for $20K (which is the price Indiana Landmarks paid), gotten the property reassessed and then begun his or her improvements. This new assessed value ($74,000 or lower) would have been set as his assessed value for the next decade once he claimed the EZ-2 Investment Deduction.

"As it stands now, the taxable portion of the stabilization costs actually increase the assessed value of this building, thus reducing the potential savings the new buyer could have claimed. The purchase price under the increased assessed value plus his improvements will now be all he can claim. Just to make it clear: any purchaser has lost out on the savings he could have realized without anyone stabilizing the structure.

"To further illustrate the point: We know that it costs $80K ($20K for purchase plus $60K for stabilization) to put the building into usable condition. This $80K has the effect of increasing the final assessed value at the time the private purchaser makes the buy. Now we’re looking at an assessed value of $154,000 instead of $74,000. (I’m talking theoretically on the assessed value here, but it illustrates the point. I doubt the assessed value will be $154,000, but the stabilization costs will definitely increase the assessed value significantly.)

"The stabilization costs are going to add to the increased assessed value because Indiana Landmarks, Redevelopment Commission, Horseshoe Foundation and the Enterprise Zone are all non-profit or governmental entities, and are not eligible to apply for the EZ-2 investment deduction and therefore not eligible to apply at this time (or any other) for this deduction.

"The bottom line is that any purchaser has been deprived of additional savings he could have realized over a decade-long period; limited funds from the public and non-profit sectors have been diverted from (arguably) other important projects."

---

In December of 2011, the News and Tribune quoted Greg Sekula of Indiana Landmarks:

"Sekula said a contractor signed an intent-to-purchase agreement to buy the property if the structure can be upgraded within a certain time frame, and there’s other interested parties in the building as well."

To be sure, it’s far too late for this question, but in light of what the UEA might have been able to do to help prospective buyers of the Peter Weinmann building, and owing to fundamental considerations of transparency, surely it’s fair to ask whether any of these zone mechanisms were mentioned during the original closed-door meetings, which led to the quintessential New Albanian “rescue” plan by power-broker’s diktat?

Why ask?

It’s because transparency is important, and in this case, there was none. It’s because we always should learn from our experiences, so as to avoid past difficulties and promote better future decision-making. It’s because the UEA already has a toolbox, and doesn't it make sense to use the UEA toolbox as part of a pre-emptive, pro-active plan, as opposed to casting around for convenient ATMs to be plucked when a crisis like this finally comes?

Of course, it also makes more sense to enforce the ordinances we already have as a city, so our elderly buildings and the people in them are not neglected to the point of collapse … but one miracle at a time, please.

Beer dinner with Alsatian choucroute, coming in March to Louis le Francais.

2012-01-26T05:50:00.000-05:00

There have been periodic nods to French culture as glimpsed in downtown New Albany in recent years, primarily through Bastille Day observances, first at the late, lamented Bistro New Albany, and later at Bank Street Brewhouse during Chef Josh's tenure.

Speaking in broad American terms, there always seems to be a higher level of consumer resistance to Gallic language and culture, and I do not exclude myself from this observation. German and Slavic regions have proved more to my taste. Perhaps it is the language, or more likely the historical baggage, although I hasten to add that I've never once had a bad experience travelling in France, even in the much-reviled capital, Paris.

For all these reasons, it is both amazing and encouraging that Louis Retailleau chose New Albany's reviving downtown as the site of his Louis Le Francais restaurant. As you might expect, he's a wine-first kind of guy, but open to outside encouragement, as emanating from my friend Tim "Starlight Distribution" Eads. In short, a beer dinner is being planned for March, and you can learn more about it here:

Advance notice: Beer dinner and Alsatian choucroute garnie at the Frenchman's.

Genuine Alsatian choucroute in New Albany? Am I dreaming?

Non-recusals, Wendy's, 2009, The Gary, a roadway and lessons never learned.

2012-01-25T08:36:00.000-05:00

Readers with long memories (they are to be pitied, in a way) will recall it starting back in spring of 2009, when The Gary (McCartin) wanted to turn a green space into non-permeable asphalt by moving the Wendy's from a regrettably expanding old-school suburban doughnut hole to a spanking new exurban location on Charlestown Road by the rockin' Interstate, where the Hummers and private autos roam.

The plan snaked its way through the scores and snores of various bureaucratic channels and came to rest in city council packets, where it devolved into an epic, multi-meeting struggle between the adjacent neighborhood and The Gary's Krafty John.

Live blogging 4: Council votes on The Gary's Wendy's fetish.

Jaws drop as Messer, Coffey execute simultaneous 180-degree flip-flops, killing Wendy's ... for now?

Okay, I'll say it: Messer and Coffey unite to promote cynicism in Wendy's flip-flop.

Ah, the humanity ... or lack thereof.

There was a first council reading, and then a second and third, both occurring with the council short one member; afterwards, the then-council attorney Stan Robison dramatically reversed the finality of those 4-4 ties, and so fourth and fifth readings were scheduled and recorded. After the Messer/Coffey flip-flops finally came to rest, The Gary had been ingloriously defeated, and he stormed away in a pique, muttering about never doing anything for this ungrateful community, ever again -- a promise we piously hope he's keeping.

Except that he had the last Wendy's laugh: A few months later, all was moot when McCartin found a convenient zoning-supported spot nearby to make the community even fatter then before from heart-healthy burger grease.

All of this came back to me today when I noticed in the newspaper that the final resting place of Wendy's on Charlestown Road had so altered the traffic dynamic that the Board of Public Works and Safety had been compelled to consider changes to the roadway.

New signal in design for Charlestown Road; Light would be adjacent to new Wendy’s (Suddeath; OSIN)

New Albany City Council President Diane McCartin-Benedetti said Sam’s ownership needed to be alerted of the plan, though the board of works would still have to approve the actual installation of the signal.

That'd be the CeeSaw-coup-mandated council president Benedetti, also a council delegate to Redevelopment, now graciously helping to broker a traffic solution, and the knowledge of this reminded me of something else about that legendary 2009 council clash, as framed by the inimitable Bob Dusch during public comments about the Wendy's move.

Live blogging: City council meeting of March 19, 2009.

Bob Dusch - (It's an) "end run" to develop commercially. Explains that zoning laws exist to protect property owners. Waste of neighborhood and council time. "We will have been sold out for a hamburger joint ... Wendy's isn't even owned locally." Mrs. Benedetti is now singled out. She ran as Diane MCCARTIN Benedetti. How can she vote on bro's project? (Even the) Tribune pointed out the seeming conflict of interest ... "appearance is important."

Benedetti responds: Yes I ran on that basis. I have no capital gain. Voted him down before. I did my research (she gets very hysterical) ... wants to make "solutions not problems." Doesn't have an e-mail address because "I don't want people e-mailing me ... I want them calling me." Now says that brother and the others have actually spoken with Bob. She now gestures to the crowd like Steve Price always does. Now she denigrates downtown New Albany as comparison. She cherishes the exurb. BIG BIG time grandstanding. BIG BIG time grandstanding. No capital gain, no conflict of interest.

New Albany stories typically don't have morals, because for there to be a moral, it is necessary for there to be a lasting lesson. So, I'll stop here.

Even some of the cops get confused by bump-outs and POP-tarts.

2012-01-25T06:40:00.000-05:00

As the anonymous newspaper reader comments already show, this is a particularly controversial topic in a city with no shortage of them.

When the POP program first was announced, I had mixed feelings. The idea struck me as progressive and useful -- well nigh retro -- but within a fixed context.

On the other hand, the fact that POP was being implemented in a neighborhood where, comparatively speaking, crime always seemed less of an issue than elsewhere in town (the school is a couple of blocks away from my house) just seemed to heap even more personal disgust at the pervasive cronyism running rampant during the dying days of the third England administration, where it was all fluff, no cattle.

Now what? Who knows?

POP goes the program: Problem Oriented Policing method out in New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Instead of concentrating efforts on one neighborhood, New Albany police are now spreading out to better patrol the entire city, NAPD Assistant Chief Greg Pennell said Monday.

Speaking during the New Albany NAACP’s monthly meeting, Pennell said the new police administration’s policy is to implement patrols evenly throughout the city instead of concentrating primarily on one neighborhood.

The position is in contrast to former NAPD Chief Todd Bailey’s Problem Oriented Policing, or POP, plan. Under POP, the department focused a majority of its patrols in the S. Ellen Jones Neighborhood, which was cited by the former administration as a high-crime area.

Beyond patrols, the POP program targeted crimes related to narcotics, gangs and burglaries.

At the same time POP was implemented in SEJ, the area was being re-branded as Midtown led by the $6.7 million federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Bailey touted POP as successfully reducing crime in SEJ, though some city officials questioned the strategy citing lack of patrols in other parts of the city.

Before Bailey was replaced by Mayor Jeff Gahan this year with Chief Sherri Knight, the POP program had been shifted to the Broadmeade neighborhood.

The saga of the Parson's Facebook site continues.

2012-01-24T21:39:00.003-05:00

A week ago, I noticed the Clere Channel actually allowing most of the FB posts opposed to Rep. Clere's pro- "right-to-work" position to stand, sans deletion. Indeed, this is a mature and healthy trend, and we must commend it.

Too bad it didn't apply to equally legitimate questions about bridge tolls back in 2010, but what the hey; we can't have it all in NA.

State Representative Ed Clere
To everyone posting comments here. This is Amy Clere, administrator of this page. Ed and I have no objection to people expressing a variety of opinions on this page and welcome all viewpoints thoughtfully and civilly presented. We do not, however, allow any name calling, overt rudeness, bullying or vulgar language on this wall, even when it is expressed in text message shorthand. "gth," for example, is inappropriate on this page and will be deleted. Ed is unable to get on Facebook while at the statehouse (and he is there all week), but he does read the comments with me on weekends and likes to hear from all of you. Please keep your comments on topic and civil. Thank you for your kind adherence to our page guidelines on this matter. Amy Clere

"Sunlight For A Moonlight Man."

2012-01-24T06:30:00.002-05:00

My ambivalence about sports is deeply rooted. There's love and hate in fairly equal measure, and yet this long read by Tom Dinard produced tears over coffee this morning, perhaps because the story reaffirms life itself, with or without baseball.

The Baylor family has its own one-game Yankee pitching appearance story much like Stefan Weyer's, but more closely resembling the fictional Moonlight Graham's. According to legend, my father's uncle supposedly hurled a major league inning or two for the Yankees in the late 1920's. That he was a minor leaguer loosely attached to the Yankees in spring training at the time is probable, albeit not beyond dispute. Unfortunately, a half-century of diligent baseball research on the part of statistics fanatics has failed to yield any evidence that his moment came in a genuine regular season game.

Dinard's piece is worth the time: Sunlight For A Moonlight Man.

Community Gardening meeting is tonight at the Ritter House.

2012-01-24T05:10:00.000-05:00

Michele Finn reminds you that the Community Gardens meeting is tonight.

Hello!

This is a quick reminder of the Community Gardens meeting tonight at 7:00 p.m. The meeting will be held at the Cardinal Ritter House, located at 1218 E. Oak Street in New Albany. This meeting has several purposes.

1. A basic meet and greet for people interested in providing support to the community gardens effort.

2. Sharing the results of the Community Gardens Survey.

3. Providing a place to share ideas/ concerns with having a community garden.

4. Discussing garden design ideas.

5. Discussing garden location possibilities.

Master Gardener Joe Renwick will be present, and has agreed to give us information on how to take soil samples and why they are important.

Just so you all know, I have no desire to start monthly meetings. I think we can work together through emails and phone calls with the occasional meeting. If someone feels differently, please feel free to host a meeting at any time.

Thank you and I'm very happy to have so much support for this not for profit community project. I have asked Wick's, and they have agreed to donate a couple of pizzas for the meeting. If you don't have time for dinner, just get there on the early side and we'll try to make sure you don't go hungry. I understand traffic is making dinner time later for most people. If anyone would like to bring drinks, cups or anything else let me know. I could also use a volunteer for taking notes.

Thanks and hope to see you tonight.

Expanded hours for Earth Friends Cafe.

2012-01-23T13:50:00.000-05:00

Earth Friends Cafe & Coffee Bar at 3211 Grant Line Road, Suite 3 (at the Summit Square) has announced new operating hours:

Starting this week, EFC will be open from 8:30am-7:00pm Monday through Thursday. Full menu will be available for dine-in and carry-out. And as always, free wi-fi is up and running. So come chat while your kids are at practice, hang out while your parents are at work, or study just because it's an awesome place with a full coffee bar and café menu focusing on local, organic, fair-trade, and cruelty-free products. Hope to see everyone soon!

New Albany First's newsletter for January, 2012.

2012-01-23T08:29:00.001-05:00

(NA First's page at Facebook is frequently updated. You are encouraged to "like" it, and to participate in the ongoing discussion.)

We hope everyone had a great and productive holiday season of 2011. A number of projects are being discussed to better serve the independent business community in 2012, including partnerships with Ivy Tech, IU Southeast, Develop New Albany and the Urban Enterprise Zone. Our "be local" seminars continue as well into the new year. We're excited about the upcoming year, the challenges it will bring and the success we hope to have in helping our independent businesses continue to thrive.

Our "be local" seminar series returns on Thursday, February 2nd starting at 7pm at Strandz and Threadz, located at 322 Vincennes Street in New Albany.

Marketing a Small Business in a Tough Economy

Join us as Allen Howie of Idealogy Marketing + Design shares insights into how a small business on a tight budget can still market effectively by focusing on the right customers, building a memorable brand, having a smart plan and looking for unusual tactics that can cost little but produce a lot.

There still are local sponsorship options for the Go Local, Grow Local 2012 AMIBA national conference to be held in Louisville in March. Contact Andy at newalbanyfirst@gmail.com for more information.

A look ahead at 2012

We'll be inventorying all local, independent businesses in the New Albany area to make it easier for businesses to network together and use each others' services. The more we can do that, the more money stays in our local economy.

Our "be local" seminar series will continue with some great topics/speakers already being lined up. These seminars are being presented, free of charge, to the public to help our current business owners, but also to encourage new ones. We were very happy to see Ryan Rogers, owner of the soon-to-open Feast BBQ, at our last seminar. That's what we hope to continue to do.

We will continue to work on partnerships with various groups. The possible projects with IUS and Ivy Tech are particularly exciting and we look forward to continuing to work hard to make them a reality.

A website should be up in a matter of days. There have been some delays, but we're excited to get it going! It will include a membership page with links to all of our business members websites. The webpage will continue to expand as time goes along.

We plan on bringing in another speaker this summer/fall. We'll have more on that in the future.

Obviously, membership recruitment is huge for us. Any help that our members can provide would be appreciated. Whether it's just a matter of telling fellow business owners about us or participating directly with the board on recruitment strategies, we'd love for you to get involved.

Thanks everyone.

ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: River View's sweet dreams are not enough.

2012-01-23T01:20:00.000-05:00

ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: River View's sweet dreams are not enough.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

At a lazily advertised work session last Thursday evening, New Albany’s city council learned that the River View waterfront development project would no longer be coming to town as originally conceived.

That is, if it comes to town at all.

I couldn’t have been the only onlooker catching an unmistakable whiff of airborne desperation, because far from making the River View dream more palpable by openly addressing past concerns and doing pleasant touch-up work to the architectural renderings, Mainland Properties’ most recent presentation instead revealed a slew of major fundamental alterations.

These changes muddy the project’s conceptual basis, and cry out for intensified scrutiny on the part of city officials, who must yet toss a parking garage into the collection plate before the first pitch is thrown.

Mainland has now gone on record, implicitly or explicitly, as conceding virtually every objection previously voiced about River View. By doing so, it has rendered null and void the alleged toxicity of previous questioners, an obfuscation used to justify the England administration’s persistent inability to be truthful in answering queries about the development.

Improbably, the latest, revised River View build-out raises even more questions than the original version, although predictably, the city council chose to ask none of them at Thursday’s work session. I choose to believe that council members were stupefied by sheer incredulity in the face of the fantasies they were being asked to embrace, and I trust they will recover their senses when River View returns to their inboxes.

---

Critically, the revised three-phase plan for River View 2.0 utterly contradicts Jack Bobo’s oft-stated goal for his project, as stressed time and again from inception: It will enable a bold, game-changing caste of condominium owners in downtown New Albany, whose very presence will “trickle back” myriad benefits to the remainder of the community.

Doubtful in the best of times, but for the sake of argument, I’ll temporarily accept that up-market condominium occupants are capable of single-handedly shifting downtown paradigms, and ask this question:

Given the altered three-phase development plan, what is the chance of these transformational condos ever being built?

In answering, let’s first dispense with the fallacious number “three” in reference to River View’s supposedly escalating phases, each one proceeding from the presumed success of the one before.

Of course, there is a fourth phase, actually the very first phase, and without it, not one other domino can so much as consider falling into place: The city of New Albany’s essential “TIF Tithe” for the construction of a 500-unit parking garage.

Both literally and figuratively, River View is to be built atop this commitment.

We must soberly recognize that no matter the continued expediency of River View’s evolution, the city of New Albany’s founding stake cannot ever change. Without the TIF-enabled parking garage, there is nothing, because Mainland has no capital without it. The city’s opening phase is a fait accompli, and so the city must play its hand cautiously as steadily worsening odds suggest another question:

What is the chance that even with a functional parking garage, River View is ever completed as proposed?

---

Before Thursday’s River View remix, New Albany was to have been promptly rewarded for providing Mainland with the necessary parking garage collateral, in the sense that the vital condominium occupancies would be animated right out of the gate.

Now, with Mainland at long last acknowledging prevailing banking, investment, economic and cultural realities, and admitting to errors in creating so many lofty and unlikely expectations, River View’s entire reason for being – its game-changing condominiums – is being pushed all the way to project’s end, and slated to come last, if at all.

In the interim, before the condos are ever close to coming on line, there are to be rental housing units – perhaps useful to Mainland as cash-flow mechanisms, but to repeat, quite contradictory to every previous stated aim of River View as helping to create a residential ownership society downtown.

Besides, do we really need to strengthen the anti-ordinance enforcement bloc, one traditionally dominated by rental property owners, by adding another bloc of rental properties?

And yet for all of Mainland’s lofty, messianic housing aims, Version 2.0 of River View as now described hinges not on residential occupancy, but retail proliferation. Frankly, that’s a risky proposition, and as a cure, it might be worse than the malady.

Realtor and primary Mainland sales appendage Mike Kopp openly divulged to the council on Thursday that the recent merger of his Blue Sun real estate startup with Remax was for the express purpose of tapping into the latter’s commercial strengths, so as to locate a prime retail anchor tenant for River View. These usual code words reek of chain retail covetousness on Mainland’s part; what are the chances of such a retail anchor tenant being an independent local business?

Worse (better?), what are the chances that any of the coveted, cookie-cutter retail chains will occupy space in downtown New Albany prior to the proximity of new condos, their free-spending owners, and the anticipated ripple effect of their presence? Kopp surely is good at his job. At the same time, he’s no miracle worker.

Furthermore, if the “first” phase of River View (to follow the required parking garage) is about retail occupancy, and if no retail anchor tenant can be found, chain or independent, why would banks and investors mandating the phased-in approach still agree to finance the next rental and condo phases?

And, if River View stalls, how exactly does Mainland “pay” for the necessary parking garage?

---

Let’s review.

River View was supposed to benefit the community by creating a residential ownership society, which would “trickle back” benefits to downtown, justifying a $15 million publicly financed parking garage.

Now, in order to approach this goal, Mainland must create not condos, but retail, and on a scale unseen in downtown New Albany since the 1960’s.

Next, it must build on the retail upsurge by adding rental apartment housing, which already inundates the city.

Then, and only then, Mainland will be able to proceed with the condo ownership society, which from the very beginning was the confidently predicted benefit to the community, one worth a $15 million publicly financed parking garage to achieve.

To some, this revised plan for River View will appear sensible. It is difficult to see how. Speaking personally, I’ve nothing against any of the project’s originators or its acolytes, but I’m as yet unconvinced. It’s sad, because it’s such a nice dream, but River View has no clothes. Wishing won’t make it otherwise, and its time for the city to move on by addressing existing infrastructure needs downtown.

(In 2011 at NAC: Highlights & Lowlights: Picking and rewarding the River View winners)

You may go to Facebook and "like" New Albany First -- and that's not a request.

2012-01-22T23:59:00.000-05:00

"New Albany First is the only Independent Business Alliance that exists solely to support and promote independent business owners and to educate community members about the importance of buying locally in New Albany and Floyd County."

NA First's page at Facebook is frequently updated. You are encouraged to "like" it, and to participate in the ongoing discussion. If you are an independent small business person doing business locally, NA First is food you should be thinking.

The November election is over. Aren't the yard signs supposed to come down?

2012-01-22T20:51:00.000-05:00

There oughta be an ordinance ...

Yo, Democrats: Anyone except England against Clere, please.

2012-01-22T09:26:00.000-05:00

For too many years, New Albany’s three-term former mayor, Doug England, thought of himself as the heir-presumptive to the Indiana House sinecure occupied for so many decades by Bill Cochran.

Unfortunately for Hizzoner, time chose not to wait. A Floyd County Democratic Party unable to devise coherent tactics for succession stuck with Cochran for one election too long, and buoyed by thick wads of the GOP’s out-of-state PAC cash, newcomer Ed Clere unseated the incumbent in 2008. England was forced to settle for a third, curiously underachieving term as mayor.

Clere, now comfortably ensconced in the House at least in part because of the local Democratic Party’s serial disorganization, is seeking a third term, and yet again England – who was unable to best Shirley Baird in the recent at-large city council race – is assuring all and sundry that he’s the anointed challenger.

Let's hope it's a dream, and Bobby Ewing comes bounding out of the shower.

Although not without intrinsic entertainment value far transcending even our degraded local political norm, an England candidacy for the House would be a tragically doomed waste of an election cycle for the Democrats. The only way such a run even remotely approaches making sense is as an act of calculated political cynicism.

"After all, it's finally his turn, so let him raise some money and run, and maybe he'll bloody Clere a bit and give us more time to plan."

But this notion implies a depth of strategic acumen seldom witnessed in local Democratic circles. Time to plan? Plan for what? A fourth consecutive Clere win in 2014? Isn’t allotting candidacies by seniority what brought us Walter Mondale’s bold capture of Minnesota (1 down, 49 to go) in 1984?

If our local Democrats wish to arrest the party’s headlong descent into irrelevance – and in fact there are few signs that any of them have any clear ideas how to do so – they’ll surely have to do better than England as "next" against Clere. Barring better, which in itself is a staggering admission of core impotence, they must at least find someone younger.

Rep. Clere is young chronologically, which plays well to the cadres of the Clere Youth brigades, among whom he functions as a matinee idol. Clere’s youth is artfully balanced by the Falangist proclivities of a man at least twice his age; he began his political career by trumpeting a pragmatic centrism, and then once elected, openly bragged of a headlong rush to the right-wing fringe, exciting Floyd County’s geriatric antediluvians, whether Republican or nominally Democratic.

Having previously fumbled away the opportunity to hold Cochran’s once secure seat, and coming gratifyingly close with Shane Gibson last time around, the Democrats must opt for a fresh face, preferably with sensible, progressive, 21st-century grassroots credentials. There might yet occur that rarest of local phenomena, a contest of ideas.

By contrast, an England candidacy would be an exercise in old school down and dirty, with the respective party PACS slugging it out over mailers of extended skeleton hands, boudoir allegations and the occasional graphic designer’s depiction of collegiate moon shots. It would be hilarious, and futile. England has more personal and political baggage than containers filled with plastic trinkets on the deck of a Chinese ship bound for Wal-Mart. The GOP slimings would be vicious, and impossible to refute.

There may be nothing the Democrats can do about Clere’s ongoing incumbency, but the very least the party can do in the interim is give its apparatus a good scrubbing, begin thinking in a future tense, and offer the community a viable alternative. Anyone except England against Clere, please.

Clere Channel Network fails to rig Georgetown town hall meeting, so forced to consider genuine public opinion; ah, the humanity.

2012-01-22T08:37:00.000-05:00

It must be an election year, because over at Rep. Ed Clere's Facebook site, most comments on right-to-work expressing opposition to the Parson's own ideology are being permitted to survive, sans the censorship of previous eras. Those of us who were scourged by deletion are deeply appreciative.

As for the town meeting described below by the C-J's Esarey (can't you just see Ron Grooms flailing ineffectually?), NAC's Jeff Gillenwater says it best, and I concur:

Yes, Ed, this is par for the course. Your constituents telling you one thing and you representing the chamber of commerce instead. Tolls, right to work, education... what's next?

---

Legislators get an earful from right to work opponents ... Legislators hold town hall meeting, by Jenna Esarey, (Special to the Courier-Journal)

A town hall meeting in Georgetown on Saturday gave three Republican Indiana legislators a chance to hear the thoughts of their constituents — almost exclusively about the contentious right-to-work bill.

State Sen. Ron Grooms and Rep. Ed Clere said before the meeting at Georgetown Elementary School that they hoped to be able to discuss a number of issues facing the General Assembly, including a statewide smoking ban and a law on human trafficking.

Grooms, Clere and state Rep. Rhonda Rhoads were accompanied by Dale Chu, an assistant superintendent of the Indiana Department of Education, who answered a few questions about education.

But most of the crowd of 75 at the session was there to voice opposition to the right-to-work bill, which would stop any requirements that employees pay fees to unions they don’t join.

“Indiana doesn’t need it,” Jeffboat employee Jim Kincaid, a member of Teamsters Local 89, said of the bill. “Any state it goes to it’s destroyed the economy. It’s just union busting.”

“We’ve got to stop the right-to-work stuff,” agreed Georgetown resident Bill Miller, also a member of Local 89. “It’s plain old simple union busting. They can wrap it up however they want.”

After opening remarks, the panel took questions from the crowd written on index cards before opening the microphone for further comments at the end of the session. While the first few questions read dealt with other pending legislation or teachers’ issues, the majority addressed the right-to-work bill.

The legislation has been hotly debated in the General Assembly, with some House Democrats staging a boycott over the issue.

Several in the crowd asked why the issue could not be put to a referendum, allowing voters to decide the issue. “There is a constitutional question on whether we could have a statewide referendum,” Clere said.

Emotions ran high in the room as quiet mutterings grew into vocal outbursts from some in the crowd.

When Grooms said the legislation was all about creating jobs, one audience member shouted, “Move to China.”

“I’m not going to tell you that right to work will be the cure-all for the state of Indiana,” Clere said. “We need to do everything we can to make Indiana attractive for job creation.”

Of the 11 people who spoke at the meeting, all addressed right to work. Several suggested that the best way to deal with the issue was to elect different people the next time around.

Kincaid drew enthusiastic applause near the end as he told the panel, “Do what you’ve got to do. But remember in November we’ll be there.”

At one point, Clere spoke briefly about jobs that could be created if his House Bill 1111, the Historic Preservation Tax Credit, were passed. It would raise the cap on statewide credits for the preservation or rehabilitation of historic properties that have been vacant for at least a year.

But people on hand were focused on the right-to-work issue.

“This is par for the course,” Clere said. “This is what we encounter at the Statehouse every day.”

Shea Van Hoy's missing commentary is right here.

2012-01-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

It's a funny thing.

I read Shea Van Hoy's commentary this morning on my iPhone, but it doesn't seem to be there any longer after looking for it on the laptop. Of course, the URL might have changed for any number of good reasons, so I searched using the newspaper's perennially woeful search engine, and there's nothing there, either.

(Here's the correct link; it went back up later in the day. Perhaps one day I'll be able to trust these people again. Right now, I don't):

http://newsandtribune.com/opinion/x1296862975/VAN-HOY-There-s-a-lot-of-talk-out-there

And here's the text of the commentary, via iPhone. Just in case. Shea even mentions yours truly, because after all, I'm one of the columnists terminated.

Still awaiting that explanation, you know.

---

VAN HOY: There’s a lot of talk out there

SOUTHERN INDIANA — I wrote a column published in Wednesday’s paper noting that the News and Tribune plans to increase the number of editorials and columns from staff members in the coming year. I thought it was fairly straightforward, and still hope the public looks forward from hearing the voice of the newspaper more often.

What I didn’t expect was for the conversation on our website comments to immediately turn to a subject that has been discussed on this page before — our policy for columns from people running for elected office. Specifically, this relates to the former regular column from State Rep. Ed Clere, which was removed after Clere told me he was going to again seek office starting with the May primary, and also held a fundraiser for his campaign. As I have written previously in this space, I appreciate and respect the fact Clere told me this news in person.

What I can’t understand is the vitriol from some readers for the newspaper adhering to a policy that has been in place for years. It’s a policy that has been applied to other candidates who previously wrote regular columns — Roger Baylor and Kelley Curran, who both sought city council positions last year.

Let me restate the policy: If a regular columnist for the News and Tribune decides to run for office in the next election cycle — via filing, holding a fundraiser or simply saying he or she will run — they forfeit their regular space in the newspaper. Continuing publishing the column would be unfair to opponents of that candidate, whether they have declared or not.

I also want to answer claims via web comments on my column that people outside the newsroom had any influence on the removal of Clere’s column. That is untrue. It was a decision made by myself and Bill Hanson, our publisher. It was a very easy decision, actually, as we were simply following our established guidelines.

Our regular columnists make a commitment to write weekly or every other week, and that is much more difficult a task than many realize. If you don’t think so, ask Lindon Dodd, who has written for more than a decade, or even Baylor, who spent far less time as a columnist but told me once that after a while, column ideas can be hard to come by.

That dedication is appreciated by myself and our readers, but column space in the paper is not a right. It’s an agreement that either side can terminate at any time. My goal is to keep the Opinions page as free and open to public comment as possible, but fairness has to be considered when politics are involved.

The final concern from those making comments is a desire to keep up with doings at the Indiana Statehouse. That is important, I agree.

To that end, the News and Tribune has reporter Maureen Hayden at the Statehouse in Indianapolis every day reporting on what’s happening there. That’s not an easy task, either, but Maureen does a fantastic job. We also publish Statehouse stories from The Associated Press and other Indiana newspapers.

We hope you continue to read those reports and stay informed. As always, feel free to contact me if you have questions or concerns

— Shea Van Hoy is editor of the News and Tribune. Reach him at shea.vanhoy@newsandtribune.com or by phone at 812-786-5593.

River View an example of why "urban redevelopment projects should put local businesses first."

2012-01-21T11:18:00.003-05:00

In River View Version 2.0, the project's retail component now must be the first to succeed, before construction of any condominiums, which were the originally stated aim of the development. Retail build-out also must preface rental housing units, which were not in the previous plan. Of course, for any of these phases to begin, the city's required commitment, a TIF-enabled parking garage, must be completed.

Insofar as the anchor retail tenant is concerned, will realtor Mike Kopp be seeking local, or chain? Let's hope both Kopp and Mainland consider this link, because if their for-profit entity must utilize TIF money to even begin, doesn't the comminity have a very real stake in the type of retail being pursued?

Urban Redevelopment Projects Should Put Local Businesses First

Make Local Business the Anchor Tenant at Canal Side (Opinion), by Sarah Bishop of Buffalo First

We don't need $35 million in public money used to lure another big box store to Canal Side. However, we could always use a boost to our local economy, and great publicity for our local businesses and city. "Buffalo needs to start investing in itself. Putting anchor tenants at Canal Side that are Buffalo community members themselves helps the local economy," said Maria Fox, one of the nearly 100 signatories to date in support of local business as the "anchor" at Canal Side.

Dirty little minds.

2012-01-21T10:34:00.000-05:00

NABC Bonfire of the Valkyries: Now out and about.

2012-01-20T19:47:00.001-05:00

NABC’s signature Black Lager is on tap at both Bank Street Brewhouse and the Pizzeria & Public House for consumption in-house, or carry-out sales in growlers and bottles. The first 22-oz bomber shipments have gone out to wholesalers in Indiana and Kentucky. A very limited amount of draft will be made available to outside accounts.

Bonfire of the Valkyries is NABC's full-bodied and clean Black Lager with medium smokiness. It is the ideal accompaniment to all smoked meats, oysters on the half shell, cabbage soup, kielbasa and freshwater trout. Or, just have a few glasses while you’re burning away the hours until Ragnarok.

It won't last long, so get some.

Matt, Bob and Sammy: "There's only one way to rock."

2012-01-20T07:51:00.000-05:00

Quite possibly, this is Matt's finest column ever. You should consider reading it in its entirety, and that's ... no joke.

NASH: Thanks for the idea, Bob, at the OSIN 'Bama Pop-Up Generator

... After a news report in the News and Tribune about a New Albany City Council meeting, and an exchange between a city council member and a member of the administration, I have found a new way to make my expectations clear.

Mainland Properties releases video detailing new River View development plan.

2012-01-20T07:28:00.000-05:00

Dazzled by the Kay Jewelers retail anchor at River View, council acts to enlarge the Bicentennial Commission.

2012-01-19T21:40:00.000-05:00

Following the work session, the council convened its regular meeting.

By my count, amazingly there were seven 2011 election "losers" among tonight's peanut gallery attendees: Bagshaw, Bledsoe, Burks, Rutherford, Stumler, Wilkinson and your humble correspondent.

Happily or otherwise, we're all staying involved. Just like King Larry, Erika's man of the year, who declined to show up tonight.

During city official speaking time, Greg Phipps of the 3rd asked whether there had been any follow up to ordinance G-11-30, which was passed in October, 2011, addressing CHAPTER 130: OFFENSES AGAINST MUNICIPAL REGULATIONS (it appears that 2011 updates to the on-line code have yet to be made). This initiative would seem to have originated with the Board of Works in May, 2011.

All I can tell you for sure is the ordinance addresses illegal signage (street spam), and apparently mentions the possibility of citizen appointees or council persons themselves doing the job of uprooting illegal signage. When asked, Kevin Zurschmiede admitted that no, nothing about the ordinance had been pursued any further, and he appealed to city attorney Stan Robison to follow up. Robison agreed to do so.

Street spam sharks everywhere, including me, began salivating. At long last, we get to start pulling down signs with a seal of approval. I simply can't wait.

The only other significant order of business tonight was this ordinance:

G-12-02
Ordinance Amending the City of New Albany Ordinance G-09-06 Concerning the Bicentennial Commission Membership, Zurschmiede 1st & 2nd readings

The measure passed unanimously on its first two readings. Although no one knows exactly who serves on it now, the Bicentennial Commission (known colloquially as the Flying Crutchfield Circus) will be enlarged by up to four members if the 3rd reading is successful. Zurschmiede pointed out that after canvassing all and sundry, "There is a need to expand this body,” to get new warm bodies and help "energize" this group and "move it forward."

I was sure he intended to "reach out," but gratefully, it didn't come to that.

The current self-appointed arbiter of all things Bicentennially Ours, council person Bob "CeeSaw" Caesar, said that he was down with all of it, before adding that no matter who makes the selection, mayor or council, David Barksdale should be appointed to the commission.

Caesar inexplicably failed to add, "That's not a request," although I'm confident he was thinking it. Maybe he needs to reach out more often.

(3) Council work session: River View alterations and photos.

2012-01-19T18:50:00.001-05:00

To repeat: River View is now being presented as a three-phase project, with parking first, retail second, apartments third, and condos only at the very end.

Mike Kopp now takes the floor to sell the preceding. He merged Blue Sun with Remax so he could take advantage of the latter's commercial strength, precisely to tie into River View.

Kopp likes the new plans quite a lot. He sketches an optimistic scenario in which every projection being made succeeds, with no hitches and no glitches.

Jon Anderson from Indy explains how the three-step development process was necessary because of resistance from banks. PNC is interested, and Stockyards, BB & T, maybe Main Source and Your Community. Consistent message now is that the scale was too large to ensure financing. However, the city is being relied upon to be perfectly consistent in its TIF commitment.

Jack Bobo really thinks there WILL be interest when marketing packages and loan packages go out. The need a large retail tenant (read: chain), but they'll forge ahead even if they don't get such a commitment.

(2) Council work session: River View project now to come in three phases, parking first, condos last.

2012-01-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

Resident parking now separated from general parking. All residential units current have balconies and a river view. Retail also somewhat separated from the residential component.

Also: Despite interest, some people couldn't imagine the financing being gotten, and given the position of banks, now there'll be a phased-in approach.

Businesses being moved to the Main Street quadrant, now the plan is for Retail Phase 1. Now they can begin with the retail , and only phase the residential in slowly over time ... which directly contradicts Mr. Bobo's assertion that the sole reason for the River View project is bringing residential to downtown. Includes all parking, which will be done FIRST.

Phase 2: Apartments, because the market is better for rentals.

Phase 3: Only then, in two or three years, the condo phase is launched. He emphasizes that this phased approach now helps all aspects of the plan, because it "builds on itself."

Which is to say: We can't get all the money at one time. This is a very big change over previous plans.

(to be continued)

(1) Council work session: River View project status report.

2012-01-19T18:28:00.002-05:00

All the River View project principle players are here in the comfortable (well, half the room, anyway) confines for a status report.

Jack Bobo starts at point guard. He explains the history of the project and what happened last year.

"What have we been doing?"

In terms of money, he explains that banks are not going into lending again. Condo projects are not popular right now.

“What can we do to make this project more financially appealing to banks and investors?”

Answer: New design that could “really meet the needs” of the project. Yet to be explained what this means.

Mose Putney is out. New architectural firm is Studio A, or QK4, or both. New architect introduces himself, but in the absence of audio, little can be heard. Louisville firm, office in NA. Slick video presentation.

There now is an arch over the plaza area, which makes it look even more like the Ostrava-Poruba socialist realist project I mentioned yesterday. Stone and masonry on ground floors, different bricks on upper floors and stone accent. Rises to five and six stories from three or four toward the center (away from smaller existing buildings).

"Private space, also intended to be a public space." Buildings facing Main Street much less grandiose, scaled to surroundings.

(to be continued)

Greetings from 'Bama.

2012-01-19T11:27:00.000-05:00

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

2012-01-19T10:41:00.000-05:00

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

All our sidewalks might be rebuilt, and even the occasional bike lane striped, but unless New Albany is prepared to classify systemic discrimination against the urban zone’s persecuted walkers and bicyclists as part and parcel of a fully funded enforcement mechanism, under the auspices of a human rights commission, things won’t get any better around here.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, though only slightly.

The older I get, the greater the imperative to redress the ridiculous societal imbalance between man and machine. We might as well commence the social engineering right here in the Open Air Museum, where minuscule comprehension levels guarantee a clean slate.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the array of venom spewed by motorists with respect to their fellow motorists, all of whom might be conveniently grouped into an omnibus category termed Innate Incompetence Compounded by Willful Distraction, or minus the obscenities: “Who taught you to drive, anyway?’

Probably no one, and also everyone.

But if you think it’s bad when both of you are in your armor-clad Hummers cursing, shaking fists and flashing middle fingers, then I recommend attempting a pleasurable stroll or casual bike ride. I’m confident you’ll soon echo my own sentiments, as freely borrowed from Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and modified, hometown-style:

“I love cars. It’s drivers I hate.”

---

While unlikely, it is conceivable that a handful of local drivers well into their eighties might recall the admonition to look both ways before entering any intersection. However, fifty years of New Albany’s one-way downtown street grid has ensured that drivers generally look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and seldom the other way, where a pedestrian just might be interested in crossing the street.

There’s also the quaint institution of those crosswalk guides painted on the street, with the obvious intent of connecting one sidewalk to the next, so as to assist pedestrians in navigating in a straight line. In theory, drivers are compelled to heed the stop sign short of these areas, without blocking pedestrian crossways.

I tested this theory yesterday while out walking, and on five separate occasions when I reached the corner at the same time as a car arrived at the stop sign (i.e., where the auto is supposed to stop), each time, without exception, the driver (a) did not look to see if anyone was there, and then (b) straddled the crosswalk line, easing as far out into the street as possible, presumably to save precious seconds in route to the dollar menu at Rally’s, where he or she could enter the drive-thru lane without moving a muscle (if any exist), before devouring the contents of the sack while in the very act of driving to the next fast food joint for dessert, then tossing all the wrappings onto the street, thus ensuring that my judgment of my fellow Americans remains fully enabled.\

Fat, dumb and fundamentalist is no way to go through life, and being an obnoxious, crappy driver makes it far, far worse.

---

When I was a boy, Georgetown truly was the countryside. The amenities – store, café, barber shop, school – were there, roughly two miles away, and so naturally we always drove to get to them. By contrast, we generally walked down to the barn and back to feed the cows.

Not everyone in our extended rural neighborhood had an automobile. Roughly a half-mile away, in the direction of Lanesville, was a collection of shacks inhabited by a group of the less well off. They were kinfolk, and yet the word “family” doesn’t quite describe the arrangement. Among them were two or three brothers, their sister, a brother-in-law, and perhaps other women, coming and going at various times.

There were plenty of cars parked on their property, the main problem being that these jalopies tended not to work. It was closer to Georgetown than Lanesville, but in those days the former was bone dry Baptist and about as humorless, while the latter remained wonderfully Catholic, with a handful of taverns for liquid grocery shopping. When it came time, they’d head south on foot.

Wine duly obtained, they would start the homeward trudge, although famously, there were those times when they’d have to turn around and stumble back to Lanesville for more fuel, then try again, before ending the day asleep in one of the intervening cornfields.

If we had cars to drive, we drove everywhere, and yes, that’s the American way and all that, but it’s just that driving never was something I genuinely enjoyed doing. It was a job, not an adventure. As a typically ignorant and parochial American in the sticks, I could not begin to discern any conceivable alternative, at least until I was able to travel, and then finally, after a few years of living and roaming, I began to know myself better.

Given my father’s proclivities for nature and the outdoors, it was perhaps inevitable that I would develop an interest in urban life, and so I did. Traveling to Europe to experience the continent’s cities, revelations were quick in coming: One needn’t drive to the amenities when the amenities were nearby, when walking or bicycling would suffice, and where there were public transport options to provide a reliable and relatively inexpensive mobility solution.

During more than 30 trips to Europe over a period of a quarter century, I’ve rented a car exactly once. To be sure, my posterior has been placed in passenger cars quite a few times, and there have been taxis aplenty for shorter distances, and yet these account for a very small percentage of the total when it comes to how I’ve gotten around. After all this time, my preference remains walking, cycling, or whichever trains, trams or busses exist in a particular place.

---

Back here in downtown New Albany, we’ve embarked upon a great and surely futile debate about parking spaces. I use the word “futile” because the unquestioned assumption currently being heard from virtually every participant in the discussion is that if typical American customers are forced to walk more than an urban block to reach a destination, they’ll leave in disgust and loathing, never to return.

Well, perhaps New Albany should post way-finding signs to help the clueless locate Veteran’s Parkway, to experience the orgasmic thrill of the cookie-cutter.

While there may be a grain of truth to it as pertains to those lost causes enamored of hopping in their gas guzzlers for a quick cruise to the foot of a driveway to claim their snail mail, it strikes me as yet another example of older folks utterly failing to understand a dawning age, and the beauty of this new way of thinking about mobility is that it’s both old and proven.

The city was built for walking, and even if we’ve spent decades deconstructing the grid, it’s never too late to start all over again. This country boy managed to learn better. You can, too.

Time for another ideological invocation.

2012-01-19T01:18:00.000-05:00

The light 'n' easy council agenda this evening is outlined here.

Daniel Suddeath's preview: New Albany City Council to consider bicentennial commission appointments (at the Alabama Pop-Up Digest)

Exciting revised sketches reveal River View's new clothes.

2012-01-18T12:09:00.001-05:00

Oops -- my bad. It's the book I recently finished, not the new drawings of River View.

However, at Tuesday morning's Merchant Mixer meeting, Mike Kopp showed them to attendees, with the comment that the previous architect never properly finished illustrating the exteriors, which led to some people (even politicians, those most reliable arbiters of taste) having a bad impression of the project.

Mike also showed us the floor plan of the 4,800-sq. ft., top-of-the-line condo, priced at $1.2 million. He reported that within days, fresh information and visuals will be released to the public, and that all systems are go for the developers to begin accepting letters of commitment and deposits.

Indiana-American Water, utility monopolies, street despoiling and why Robespierre was right.

2012-01-18T08:06:00.000-05:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

NAC is in complete agreement with any elected official, unelected official, ordinary citizen or random footloose Chia pet who wishes to eliminate any and all loopholes permitting those unsupervised rat bastards at Indiana-American Water to run roughshod over taste, decency and recently paved streets. That's because you really can trust IN-AWC -- trust the water monopoly to screw you every single time.

Previously at NAC: At home or at work, Indiana-American Water Company just doesn't give a damn. Hint: Few monopolies do.

Having repeated this, I'm just curious: Why is the city's point man for housing initiatives speaking at the Board of Works about the water issue?

New Albany OKs street cut for Scribner; Council still considering changes to utility excavation program, by Daniel Suddeath at the Alabama Pensioner Pop-Up Paper.

Carl Malysz, director of community housing initiatives for the city, said administration officials conferred with Indiana American Water last week about the proposed changes. Malysz asked the board to OK the Scribner Drive project — which is expected to impact traffic from Main Street to Spring Street — but hold off on approval for three other street cuts the utility has requested.

"The more downtown merchants and restaurateurs insist that customers need not walk past other storefronts, the less they benefit from each other’s customers."

2012-01-17T08:12:00.001-05:00

Once again, kindly permit me to boost a comment to the marquee. Reader Dan Chandler posted the following in response to last evening's "What are 23 parking spaces worth?" I have only one observation: During the discussions of the past few days, we seem to see the emergence of differing theories of consumer behavior. Which are to be fluffed, and which to remain unfluffed?

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Go to any mall such as Oxmoor, St. Matthews or Green Tree. The stores with the highest foot traffic are those along the main corridor, furthest from the parking. Space by the mall entrances, closest to parking, attracts fewer shoppers. The whole point of a mall is that each store get cross traffic from other stores’ customers. Enclosed mall space commands higher rents than strip mall space because customers walk past stores they otherwise would not have considered visiting, but visit they do. If each mall store had its own parking spaces, there would be no cross traffic customers.

The same principle works downtown. The more downtown merchants and restaurateurs insist that customers need not walk past other storefronts, the less they benefit from each other’s customers. Most downtown businesses will benefit by thinking of themselves as part of a shopping and entertainment district instead of cluster of unrelated businesses whose customers never cross.

Cross traffic is highest when the walking experience is most enjoyable. Historically, the mall had an advantage; part of the walk was past attractive storefronts. Downtown, much of the walk was past weed filled lots and boarded up buildings. The more pleasant the walkway, the more cross traffic will walk there. Mall operators know the importance of continuous attractive storefronts. Most mall leases contain a “lights out” clause that basically terminates the lease if the tenant closes the store, even though they continue to pay rent. If it’s not a pleasing environment, all tenants are hurt by reduced cross traffic.

So no, easy parking and foot traffic are not inextricably linked. Downtown has seen a business boom in the last five years despite no new parking. I don’t think this is coincidence. If you want isolated stores, you can get that anywhere; if you want a district, downtown NA offers something not found anywhere else in metro Louisville. Customers don’t like walking past places that are dirty, unattractive, loud or dangerous. So merchants, instead of making each other’s customers walk past bare concrete lots to get to your storefront, make sure your neighbor’s customers have an enticing trail to your storefront. Attractive facades do this. Attractive landscaping does this. Safe sidewalks do this. And calm, slow, quiet, two-way streets do this. These make places customers enjoy on foot.

Who even knew North Dakota has nightlife?

2012-01-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

"Sickening" seems a bit harsh, doesn't it? Perhaps the numbers don't match, but if you ask me, there's a reason why people go out at night, and if a city or state has the amenities to please them ... well, isn't that what it's all about? Unless, of course, the idea is to be a religious gulag, and for some, it is.

North Dakota tourism director: Ad wasn't meant to be racy, by Dale Wetzel (Associated Press)

What are 23 parking spaces worth?

2012-01-16T19:36:00.000-05:00

C'mon, seriously: Are those 23 spaces crucial to the future of downtown?

I never knew such a holy place was right there on Spring Street ...

2012-01-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

... so how come there's no fork painted in front of it?

Legacy Square? Nah, pie are round, cornbread are square.

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's post ...

When the prime legacy is that of a demolished building, you need to think very carefully.

... generated a brief and thoughtful discussion about the corner lot bounded by Spring and Pearl, where the post office once grandly stood before being rendered into a vacant lot by a previous generation of maladjusted community "pillars", and which only recently was tabbed by the outgoing England administration to be transformed into the city's bicentennial park.

One reason for repeating yesterday's comments today is that they're fully worthy of consideration on their own merits. More importantly, the questions and thoughts therein are precisely (and predictably) the ones not asked of the public during Mayor England's final, nepotismal, executive-writ ruling phase.

I was told one week ago by a high ranking member of the incoming Gahan administration that apparently no concrete plans exist for the vacant space, apart from an England team whim that the Horseshoe Foundation might match the city's purchase price with a grant, a feint evidently repelled.

At least John Neace made a buck.

Jeff Gillenwater said...
A square a day keeps the people at bay. But seriously, when is anyone at least going to acknowledge that it's not a square in shape or function? And, more importantly, is there room for the Emery's auxiliary building up on blocks?
10:57 AM

w&la said...
leg·a·cy: anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.

Perhaps the "park" is aptly named after all. There are so many empty lots in New Albany, where the city's "legacy" has been wiped clean.

The very notion of naming and celebrating an empty lot as a city's bicentennial "legacy"...
1:47 PM

Iamhoosier said...
Sorry, I just don't see the awfulness in the name. I can think of a lot worse, even serious ones. Scribner Square or Place or Park or whatever to name just one. That would limit to just one part of the history of New Albany.
4:23 PM

Ryan Rogers said...
Squares are great and all, though I'm not necessarily keen on the name, but what's the big picture? Is a square going to attract more people to downtown New Albany? No; is it more visually appealing than a parking lot? Sure, but is it the fastest way and most financially sound way to move downtown New Albany from point a to b?

It seems to me that downtown New Albany already has some nice and possibly under-used green spaces (riverfront); so how could that space be utilized in a way that would actually create a legacy of revitalization?

Possibly renting/gifting the space to a local university (IUS, UL, Bellarmine) for use as a satellite campus, labs, or dorms, which would bring more young people and ultimately more money downtown.

Maybe some low-rent commercial art galleries?

Or even better city sponsored commercial art galleries/performance spaces where the city and the artist benefit from the sale of the art. This could host a yearly street art show (a la St. James Art Fair).

It should be noted I am not anti parks and green spaces, I just think the space could be utilized in a more beneficial way.
7:33 PM

RememberCharlemagne said...
Mr. Roger, you’re not the only one who thinks it could be better utilized.

To me, it appears that there was only one reason that the England Administration located the park on that corner and that reason had nothing to do with utilization of space, but more with personal connections.

The worst part of it is the parking spaces are needed.

It would be better if the city bought the lot for additional public parking. The city could re-landscape the lot and add additional parking spaces to the ones currently there.

I personally would like to see the empty lots near Market and the fire station used as a public park than the current location.
And if you like the idea of a college doing activities downtown New Albany still might have a chance of locating a college downtown. The England Administration had an opportunity, but didn’t pursue it. Another big missed step.
9:20 PM

w&la said...
And I'm reminded once again of what often happens in New Albany. The name of the park aren't the real questions.

Who owned the lot, how much was paid for the lot - and wasn't it purchased mere days before the change in administrations?
10:19 PM

Jeff Gillenwater said...
The England administration paid $162,857 for the lot. They bought it from BAM Investments, aka John Neace, a major real estate (cough) investor.

For tax purposes, the last record I could find showed an assessment of $97,200.

The sale date shows as 9/16/2011.

Turning it into parking is a horrible idea. The downtown area has far more parking than it knows what to do with.
11:35 PM

Merchant Mixer meeting coming this Tuesday morning.

2012-01-15T23:46:00.000-05:00

A reminder from Curt Peters.

Please remember to come to the Merchants Mixer on Tuesday morning at 8:30 at Strandz & Threadz on Vincennes. The coffee pot will be on, and this is always a good time to catch up on what is happening downtown and to voice any concerns or compliments. Please pass this along to other merchants and encourage them to come. - Curt Peters

When the prime legacy is that of a demolished building, you need to think very carefully.

2012-01-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

The city of New Albany purchased the land from whichever entity inherited it after those nasty slumlords finally crashed, and it was made known that the plot would be transformed into a park for the approaching Bicentennial in 2013.

Naturally, we cannot afford to restore the corner to its appearance before the old post office was demolished to make room for a half-century of barrenness, although as a Bicentennial fundraising event, wouldn't it be clever to hold fictionalized show trials of New Albany's 1960's-era redevelopment cadres?

The obvious problem with the proposed name of Legacy Square is that it sounds far more like a senior assisted living complex than a commemorative Bicentennial park. I'd like to see the name changed to "Keep Rowing, Scribners Square" or "Nepotismal Square." For a more European touch, it might be "Free Needles and Condoms Square." But perhaps Councilman CeeSaw has other ideas:

Kudos to CM Phipps for making the Human Rights Commission's revival a priority.

2012-01-15T00:37:00.000-05:00

Somewhere amid Bob "CeeSaw" Caesar's throwing down of the gauntlet to Clint Eastwood impersonators everywhere ("That's not a request," he hissed), and perhaps the most predictable appointment in city council history (Mrs. Baird to sip the Kool-Aid with Develop New Albany), there was a glimmer of genuine principle leaping from the newspaper's pages, thanks to incoming council person Greg Phipps.

But it was a committee that wasn’t mentioned that caught the attention of Councilman Greg Phipps. He requested to be placed on the Human Rights Commission if the body convenes.

“It was established back in the [1970s] and it hasn’t been utilized in the past 10 years or so,” Phipps said.

Benedetti agreed to place Phipps on the commission, which Councilman John Gonder said is intended to be a nine-member body. Council members said it’s the mayor’s responsibility to convene the board.

Mayor Jeff Gahan acknowledged Phipps’ concern to have the commission re-established, though a time frame on when the board may assemble wasn’t confirmed.

Thanks very much, CM Phipps. This simple act places you eight years ahead of your predecessor's vacuous consciousness -- and the 2012 council calendar isn't even two meetings old.

Meanwhile, it's been five years or more since I addressed the issue of the Human Rights Commission in this space, and later a newspaper column came of it, too. It was published in the pre-merger Tribune on April 16, 2009, and is reprinted here.

---

Human rights in New Albany?

To my delight, last week the Iowa Supreme Court defied the American theocratic establishment by affirming a non-discriminatory definition of marriage as a secular institution, existing concurrent with organized religion, but not dependent on its supernatural sanction for validity.

By doing so, the court did its own little bit to reclaim genuinely salvageable culture, correctly espousing the rule of law and exposing the fraudulence of those whose vision of America as a “Christian nation” forever requires depriving fellow Americans of basic human rights clearly enunciated during the founding. Moreover, I’m reminded of this passage written by H. L. Mencken more than 75 years ago:

“The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking … Since the earliest days the church, as an organization, has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.”

Coincidentally, my wife and I, who were married in 2004 by the city clerk, recently had the chance to watch “Milk,” the acclaimed biopic of gay activist, politician and martyr Harvey Milk. Sean Penn, the finest actor of his generation, stars in a riveting, Oscar-winning performance as the title character. Drop what you’re doing, rent the DVD of “Milk,” and prepare to be challenged, rewarded and enriched.

While the real Harvey Milk’s principled political activism in the diverse milieu of 1970’s San Francisco specifically espoused gay rights, his focal point is inseparable from the broader context of human rights and freedoms, providing the basis for a question I won’t stop asking until some semblance of a coherent answer is provided:

Precisely which aspects of the past are organizations like Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK) seeking to reclaim?

---

Buried deep within New Albany’s terminally neglected Code of Ordinances is a 1974 law mandating a Human Rights Commission. It existed for a time, and then was unceremoniously discarded, so today I’m embracing a custodial public service duty by reminding the community that there is statutory authority to re-energize and staff a new Human Right Commission. We should do so immediately.

The administration of Mayor James Garner displayed a keen private grasp of the moribund commission’s potential importance, but nothing happened, and if you’re looking for a nutshell summary of the Garner era, this is as good a place as any to begin. Excellent intentions were accompanied by a supreme mastery of detail, but an inexplicable absence of political acumen and simple stick-to-it-ive-ness resulted in stasis.

No matter. That was then, and this is now. I support a rehabilitated Human Rights Commission simply because I always try to put myself in others’ shoes, imagining how it must feel to do as I’ve done by publicly promoting civic improvements and espousing reforms in an effort to make the city itself a more livable and civilized place, while recognizing that even these hard-fought gains may not provide protection from discrimination and harassment owing to race, gender or sexual orientation.

For instance, consider the fundamental human act of walking.

I walk New Albany’s streets on a daily basis, and do so at all hours, seldom giving the notion a second thought. Then again, I’m a white male standing well over six feet, and weighing 270 lbs. at last reading. Naturally, in a world filled to the brim with firearms, physical stature alone neither precludes violent acts nor negates harassment … but it does have a way of reducing problems.

Even so, occasionally a passing dullard finds it amusing to bait a man my size. Imagine going out for a walk as a more vulnerable potential target: Female, or gay, or an ethnic minority, or handicapped, or all four together, perhaps leading one to forsake activities and pursuits taken for granted by others, thanks to social and cultural primitivism that extends well beyond familiar urban woes like drugs and impoverishment, into public racism, overt homophobia and violence.

Just as speeding is not an enforcement issue, but a design issue, so goes an active daily consideration of human rights. A tweaked and reconstituted Human Rights Commission, even if chronically underfunded in the sad New Albanian tradition of penny wise, pound foolish, might provide an effective bully pulpit for making this city a place that welcomes diversity and its accompanying benefits, and not views “different” as opportunities for abuse and exploitation.

Now is the time. Is there the will?

A Human Rights Commission is sorely needed in a place where topics like basic rights, diversity, and fundamental human dignity are regularly the targets of gleeful disparagement and outright malice on the part of those of dominant white, male culture, who've obviously never suffered institutionalized deprivation.

Furthermore, thinking back to its conceptual origins in housing discrimination, a functional Human Rights Commission might be a component of solutions to the city’s rental housing problems. Tenant rights and human rights are cut from the same bolt, aren’t they?

Are any members of our local political establishment willing to go on record as supporting the revival of New Albany’s Human Rights Commission?

Or: Are any of them willing to go on record as supporting anything?

Community Gardening meeting at the Ritter House on Tuesday, January 24

2012-01-14T13:02:00.003-05:00

(From Michele Finn ... rescheduled from late 2011 ... video link provided by Michele)

Hello All!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are on your way to a prosperous New Year! There are so many possibilities all through out New Albany to beautify add function into otherwise unsightly or unused spaces. New Albany is great and we can make it our dream city with some focus, direction and re-invention of our unused spaces.

I know many of you have great ideas that we haven't been able to discuss yet and I would love to hear them. A meeting will be held at The Cardinal Ritter House Tuesday, January 24th at 7pm. The address for the Cardinal Ritter House is 1218 E Oak Street. If you are familiar with the S Ellen Jones Elementary School, it is facing the playground and the entrance is in the back. Ideas and concerns are welcomed.

Invite your neighbors, invite your friends, any one you can think of that would benefit from a greener New Albany! If you would like to bring drinks, snacks or desserts to share please respond to this email and let me know what you are bringing. I would love to make this an evening of community discussion and camaraderie that enables us to focus on the future and possibilities coming up this spring. It's amazing what people can create and what a few plants can do for our neighborhoods.

Please do not feel like you can not participate if you can not or do not wish to attend this meeting. Stay in touch through the phone, email or you can even send me snail mail if you wish and I will be happy to share your ideas and give you credit.

To add a little fun please bring your current seed catalogs. I would love to see what you are planning and where you get your seeds.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you all!

Michele Finn
Grass Roots Organizer and Keep New Albany Clean & Green

Old Lightning Rod Day is Sunday, January 15, at Bank Street Brewhouse.

2012-01-14T11:57:00.000-05:00

Old Lightning Rod

Let thy discontents be thy secrets

An annual January release commemorating the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, Old Lightning Rod is a throwback strong ale from Colonial American times, incorporating “triangular” molasses as an adjunct, and encapsulating Franklin’s sly founding wisdom.

This year, we've moved the celebration back to proximity with Benjamin Franklin's actual birth date of January 17 (in 1706), and changed the day to Sunday. It will be the first chance to get a feel for the new enclosed/former patio, which is finished except for the new roof, and now can be heated properly.

In addition to Bank Street Brewhouse's normal offerings on Sunday, January 15 -- including Brewhouse Brunch from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m., our build-your-own Bloody Mary Bar and the normal menu of food -- there'll also be a special Old Lightning Rod Day Menu.

Polska Kielbasa ... slow smoked in Old Lightning Rod, grill seared, and served on a toasted Tribeca Hero Roll, topped with House Pickled Onion and
Apple Relish and House Honey Mustard.

Northern Bean Soup ... with Smoked Virginia Ham.

Either with a brunch item or one of these two special culinary offerings, we recommend pairing with an Old Lightning Rod, and be sure to bring your growlers for an OLR fill. Wear something remotely Colonial, and win an OLR poster signed by the brew team.

Beginning around noon or thereabouts, there'll be music on the heated patio provided by the Ragged Arse Tinkers from Madison, Indiana.

Benjamin Franklin was a multi-talented Colonial-era creative legend who brewed beer and drank beer. In his writings, Franklin referred to various types of ale and concluded that its consumption was healthy in moderation – an observation with which modern medical science concurs. What did these ales of old taste like? Six years ago, as part of a nationwide promotion on the occasion of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, NABC’s brewers tweaked a Colonial-era recipe provided to members of the Brewer Association, and the result was our first ever batch of Old Lightning Rod. We've repeated the experiment every year since, and the ale keeps tasting better and better.

"Chop you down like an old dead tree."

2012-01-14T11:23:00.000-05:00

This mid-seventies edition of the Dubliners was without its departed founder Ronnie Drew, who would later return to the fold, and Ciarán Bourke, who had been crippled by an aneurysm. But this is the beloved singer Luke Kelly's personal version, anyway. Ewan MacColl wrote the song, and a cover by the Pogues is better known to younger listeners.

This morning in New Albany, I'm singing "Dirty Old Town" along with Luke.

Breathtaking symbolism, courtesy of the Floyd County Democratic Party.

2012-01-14T10:52:00.001-05:00

The Floyd County Democratic Party held a Precinct Committee caucus this morning at the Knights of Columbus, and Matt Nash reports that former mayor Doug England has been chosen to replace Sam Locke as treasurer.

DMattnash Matt Nash

Former mayor Doug England named treasurer of Floyd County Democratic Party

25 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

That's an incredible message the Democrats are sending: The man who proposed handing the mayor's office to Irv "Lifelong GOP" Stumler, and whose reign of nepotism during the past two years poisoned the revitalization well, now is rewarded with a position as party apparatchik.

File it under "local Democratic Party death rattles," and ponder the what-ifs should the Republicans ever choose a competent party chairman.

That's not a request, mind you.

2012-01-13T13:45:00.001-05:00

Council person Bob Caesar is to poorly-conceived, ill-timed utterances what Steve Price was to Nazis uprooting video poker machines at the VFW. His latest classic is hash-tagged-and-sampled in this Matt Nash tweet.

DMattnash Matt Nash

Bob don't forget the city council is required to redistrict this year #thatsnotarequest

1 hour ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

Here's mine:

newalbanian Roger A. Baylor

Bob, in 2012, it's time to get those two-way street conversions started #thatsnotarequest

now Favorite Reply Delete

What about you? Channel your inner Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian, or pretend you're Clint Eastwood, and tell us what's not a request in your world.

That gladiator costume becomes him, and vice versa.

2012-01-13T09:10:00.000-05:00

“I — Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian, the Protector of Pearl, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates – have embarked on a valiant campaign against the invading barbarian hordes, who would select local authors to write books, change the streets to accommodate humans and not their cars, and go tearing stuff up right during key business cycles … by the way, have I introduced you to my chambermaid? I appointed her, you know.”

It is encouraging that council person Bob Caesar’s interest in economic localism is growing by leaps and bounds. Readers will recall that in the summer of 2011, he took a keen interest in preserving his block-long Pearl Street fiefdom from the ravages of two-way traffic, imperiously thundering to an assembly of business people, “Pearl Street will NOT be two-way!”

Now he’s at it again. Just imagine if his concern for small, independent business might be extended beyond the padlocks on his own front door:

Councilman Bob Caesar — who owns J.O. Endris & Son Jewelers along Pearl Street — asked Thompson if the (Indiana American Water) project was scheduled to start before Feb. 14, which is Valentine’s Day.

Caesar said the permit shouldn’t be approved before Feb. 14, and while Thompson was still at the podium, added “that wasn’t a request.”

But seriously, folks, here’s a topic upon which CM CeeSaw and the senior editor concur. I detest those rat bastards at Indiana American Water, who through their nonchalant incompetence once cost MY OWN small independent business a $10K payday. You go, boy – clamp down on those giggling monopolist water delivery ninnies every chance you get.

Here's the pop-up-laden link: Benedetti names New Albany committee, board members; No action taken on council attorney contract, by Daniel Suddeath (OSIN)

Columnist Nash surveys the Ohio River Greenway's progress.

2012-01-13T08:46:00.000-05:00

Kudos to Matt Nash for using Shaunna Graf's standout council presentation last week as the starting point for a column about the Ohio River Greenway. Last fall, I surveyed the same terrain as Matt:

Greenway, 18th St. to Loop Island: Part One.
Greenway, 18th St. to Loop Island: Part Two.
Loop Island/trestle segment

Another reference point comes with John Gonder's recent consideration of the K & I Bridge, and where Horseshoe Foundation money better spent might go.

NASH: Greenway project in full swing

... About 30 minutes into the meeting it looked like it was about time to adjourn and everyone would get to go home early. That’s when Shaunna Graf, project coordinator for The Ohio River Greenway Development Commission, got up and gave her annual update on the progress of the Greenway.

The 25-minute presentation was a look at the history, progress and the future plans of the project.

At The Urbanophile: "Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 4 – A Better Plan."

2012-01-13T08:26:00.002-05:00

Aaron M. Renn's series concludes with the fourth installment, and suggestions for a better Ohio River Bridges Project plan.

Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 4 – A Better Plan, by Aaron M. Renn, at The Urbanophile.

In the first three parts of this series, I discussed how Indiana so badly botched its negotiation with Kentucky on the Louisville bridges project that its share of the project went up by $200 million at the same time the total project declined in cost by $1.5 billion, how this will result in $432 million being drained out of regular highway funds to cover a resulting tolling gap, how tolling likely results in Indiana paying even more, and the significant risks Indiana has taken on by agreeing to build a tunnel in Kentucky. Amazing as it sounds, Indiana’s biggest road project is now a $795 million, 1.4 mile highway in the state of Kentucky.

But just because I believe this deal is bad doesn’t mean I think the project itself is all bad. Indeed, I’m a strong supporter of the East End bridge, which is a generational investment for that part of the state. I also think the $1.5 billion in savings identified so far are great and a good start at getting costs under control on this project. But there’s still more we can do. So with that in mind, I’ll outline the changes I’d make to move the project forward:

#1 – Kill the Drumanard Tunnel
#2 – Adopt 8664
#3 – Revisit the Cost and Toll Revenue Allocations

At The Urbanophile: "Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 3 – INDOT’s Mini-Big Dig."

2012-01-12T10:19:00.000-05:00

Links to the first two parts of the series are included, so click through to The Urbanophile, and join Renn in asking: Does INDOT really know what it’s getting into with this tunnel and this project segment?

Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 3 – INDOT’s Mini-Big Dig, by Aaron M. Renn (The Urbanophile)

In previous installments in this series I highlighted how Indiana managed to increase its share of the Louisville bridges project by $200 million even as it bragged that the total price tag had gone down by $1.5 billion, how this led directly to Indiana having to allocate $432 million in regular highway funds to the project, and how tolling puts Indiana at significant risk of paying an even greater share of the project.

Today I’ll highlight how Indiana is stepping into a potential quagmire by agreeing to take responsibility for building a high-risk mini-Big Dig tunnel under a portion of Louisville’s most affluent community.

ON THE AVENUES: Spies.

2012-01-12T09:57:00.001-05:00

ON THE AVENUES: Spies.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

The Cold War ended … when?

Was it 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Warsaw Pact dominoes finally fell? Or perhaps 1991, when the USSR belatedly went belly up? Did it begin anew with Putin?

Irrespective of the precise ending date, the Cold War’s late-1940’s origins long predated my own, and until somewhere around the age of 30 -- give or take a year – my perceptions of prevailing geopolitical reality on the planet duly revolved around the received wisdom of two heavily armed camps, with occasional hand-me-downs (guns, butter, trade agreements and news coverage) thrown to the non-aligned “Third” World to secure cooperation amid the attrition.

Naturally, few of the world’s more impoverished sectors actually enjoyed genuine neutrality amid the pre-eminence of the essential struggle between capitalism and communism. They played their required roles as toadies, and the wheels were greased. When necessary, there were assassinations and wars, and thousands of foreigners died in places Americans scarcely knew existed.

Then, seemingly overnight, this dualistic milieu was gone, and the global stage was cleared. Before we even had time to begin planning the end of history, the next holy crusade commenced, this time against Terrorism, Inc. The new reality was replete with outrages, annoyances and enemies of various stripes, capable of being conveniently grouped as Muslim, a fact that proved convenient for those Christians in America feeling a need to lash out against persecution to prove their creationism, and to suggest with no discernable irony that homegrown fascism was necessary to combat the threat posed by fascism from afar.

This post-Cold War model of terrorism was different than its predecessor. It was scattered and decentralized, arguably centered on multi-cultural, resource-based petroleum politics rather than the previous ideologies of bearded white folks. 9-11 and smaller scale attacks in Europe showed they were capable of hitting us at home.

Things were so much cleaner and simpler before.

---

I’ve remained fascinated by the Cold War period, the more so after traveling in the East Bloc during the 1980’s. Given this, it is perhaps peculiar for me to make today’s confession: At no time when the war was still cold did I have the slightest interest in the genre of espionage/spy thriller, of which the British writer (and former real-life practitioner) John le Carré is the acknowledged master.

Consequently, I cannot comment on his twenty-plus novels. However, last weekend we attended a screening of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, the most recent film adaptation of le Carré’s 1974 work of the same name, and found it quite brilliant.

You’ll be spared a lengthy review, apart from the observation that establishing a proper Cold War mood is critical to the movie’s success. Much of the action takes place in murky English interiors, and outdoors, the sun almost never shines amid clouds, rain and gloom. Accordingly, the cinematography is grainy and dated.

The pasty characters smoke and drink to excess. They generally appear to be exhausted, as befits those who, by their own contention, are bearing the weight of the free world’s future, and standing as bulwarks against the likelihood of World War Three. As one, the recall WWII with affection as being the time when all of the UK stood together, as opposed to the uncertain present, when one of them is a mole.

While the actual physical battlefields of the Cold War were located in those unfortunate Third World countries used as weapons testing grounds, the primary belligerents and their allies (sycophants?) fought a parallel war almost akin to what we’d now refer to as “virtual.” Certainly it was not bloodless, and the pieces (the players) were real, but much of the action was waged in and against human minds, in a game often likened to three-dimensional chess.

Literally and figuratively, the chess pieces are the central characters in Le Carré’s novels and the new film.

In America, the Red Scare was vastly overstated during the 1950’s, exacerbated by the dipsomaniacal tendencies of Joe McCarthy and his Ponzi scheme of traitor production. The Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss aside, most of the targeted Americans remained loyal to the red, white and blue. Concurrently, the British seemed to suffer the misfortune of harboring a higher per capita percentage of genuine turncoats, emblemized by the villainy of the so-called Cambridge Five.

---

In 1988, I’d just started my job abstracting periodicals at the long-defunct Data-Courier in Louisville when the British arch-defector Kim Philby died in Moscow.

I knew this because Philby’s demise was being fervently discussed in all the publications we received from the UK: The Economist, The Spectator, New Statesman and even Punch. In turn, these were the magazines increasingly shunted onto my stack of work by fellow staffers after it became known that the new guy rather enjoyed reading them, and more importantly, wasn’t troubled by the English essayist’s habit of hiding the topic sentence somewhere other than the opening paragraph. We had quotas, you know.

Philby was the most infamous of the Cambridge Five, alongside Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross, although an argument can be made that Burgess was more fundamentally nasty. He’d had the good sense to die young, whereas Philby drank himself to death over a longer period of time, and seemed to absorb the remainder of the accumulated opprobrium.

An American might try to imagine some of David Halberstam’s best and brightest, those highly educated, hyper-patriotic young stalwarts standing in the front line of the far rear echelon during America’s war in Vietnam, eventually revealed as members of a spy ring under the spell of the enemy, and espousing Marxist rhetoric while exposing contacts and double agents to sure death.

There is no evidence to suggest that any of them turned. At the same time, their stewardship of the war in Southeast Asia was faulty, and the war was a failure – or was it?

Back in the good old days, pre-Osama, it would have been handled, right?

Kentucky Colonels of the ABA, and Chinese billionaires in the NBA?

2012-01-11T10:52:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Confidential purchased the book for me as a Christmas present, and I'm slated to start reading soon.

Kentucky Colonels Event!

On Saturday, January 21 at 4 PM, Carmichael's is thrilled to host Gary P. West and Lloyd "Pink" Gardner, authors of the book Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association: The Real Story of a Team Left Behind. Come hear the inside story of the Kentucky Colonels basketball team as only these two authors can tell it. Lloyd Gardner was trainer for the Colonels and Gary West a sportswriter and color commentator. They tell a fascinating story featuring dozens of colorful characters including owners, agents, and players associated with this legendary championship team. This event is free and open to all.

Note also this interesting post: Woah, Is This A J. Bruce Miller NBA Meltdown?, at The 'Ville Voice blog.

Malysz survives, and will continue overseeing.

2012-01-11T10:27:00.000-05:00

Somehow I'm reminded of a famous incident from high school, when a class officer said the invocation at an assembly, asking the Lord to overlook us in the coming year.

That said, we learned last week that David Duggins would become New Albany's Director of Economic Development. Now, it is revealed that Carl Malysz will remain on the city's payroll. Sometimes, you pick the wrong horse and still manage to win, but don't ask the deposed Chief Bailey to explain that particular dynamic.

I suppose there's a primary question to be answered: Is overseeing the NSP different from being its program manager?

That sigh of relief you hear is coming from the Elsby Building ...

Malysz gets new job; Part of Duggins’ salary will come from EDIT money, by Daniel Suddeath (OSIN Pop-Up Generator)

NEW ALBANY — Carl Malysz has been hired by New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan to serve as director of community housing initiatives for the city.

Malysz most recently served as deputy mayor and director of community development for Mayor Doug England from 2008 to 2011 ...

... According to a statement released Tuesday, Malysz will oversee existing community housing projects like the Midtown Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Linden Meadows redevelopment ...

... Part of Duggins’ $60,000 annual salary will be paid from Economic Development Income Tax money, with the remainder coming through tax abatement funds.

Full text of the Feast BBQ press release.

2012-01-10T12:59:00.001-05:00

The Feast BBQ press release has been excerpted elsewhere, but I thought it might be convenient for you to read all of it. Native New Albanians, or anyone who has lived in the city for any length of time, should take note. Ryan might have chosen to situate his start-up in Louisville, but chose New Albany instead. Several on-line accounts I've seen today actually used the term "restaurant row" to describe downtown NA. Believe it, people.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: R. Ryan Rogers
Tel.: (502) 296-8325
Email: bbq@feastbbq.com

BBQ TO JOIN DOWNTOWN NEW ALBANY'S RESTAURANT ROW

Feast BBQ scheduled for Spring opening

New Albany, IN ( January 10, 2012) Chef Ryan Rogers announces the opening of his first restaurant – Feast BBQ - in the Spring of 2012 at 116 West Main Street in downtown New Albany, Indiana. Feast BBQ will be focused on great BBQ, Bourbon, and Craft Beer.

Chef-owner Rogers is excited to be a part of the burgeoning food scene in Downtown New Albany and is eager to contribute the BBQ recipes, techniques, and sauces he has been crafting. “Low and slow is an understatement. At Feast we will take the time needed to treat the BBQ with the utmost care and attention”, states Rogers. “ While extremely labor intensive, the results are worth the efforts”. The menu will include traditional BBQ such as pulled pork, baby back ribs, brisket, & chicken along with house-made sides, and a variety of appetizers and desserts.

In addition to BBQ, Chef Rogers plans to offer New Albany’s largest selection of bourbons with over 50 brands, as well as a wide variety of beers where he will maintain a focus on locally- brewed and craft beers.

Chef Rogers is a graduate of the renowned French Culinary Institute. His past kitchens include Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York (where Chef David Chang was named 2007 Chef of the Year by both Bon Appetit and GQ's), The Oakroom (Kentucky’s only 5 Diamond Restaurant), Zanzabar (where as head chef he received 3 Stars from The Courier Journal), and the Anchorage Café where, along with Andy Myers, he was called one of, “The Brightest New Chefs in Town” by LEO Weekly.

Feast BBQ will be located at 116 West Main Street across from the YMCA. The building was built in the Italianate style and served as various New Albany saloons from the 1880’s until the mid-1980’s when it was vacated. Renovations are currently underway for the Spring 2012 opening. The original brick walls have been uncovered and will showcase a series of photographs chronicling the building's history and revival.

You can follow the construction and launch of Feast BBQ on Facebook and Twitter at facebook.com/FeastBBQ and twitter.com/FeastBBQ

At The Urbanophile: "Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 2: Hoosiers to Pay Even More With Tolling."

2012-01-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

Here's the link to the second part of The Urbanophile series, with a key excerpt. Wonder if Ed Clere and Ron Grooms are reading?

Indiana’s Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 2: Hoosiers to Pay Even More With Tolling

... Given that, one would think that a few questions would be of paramount importance to answer. First, what is the breakdown of projected cross-river traffic on the bridges in terms of Hoosiers vs. Kentuckians vs. those from neither state?

I have spent a lot of time searching the internet for the answer of that question, including looking at the documents on the web site of the Kentucky-Indiana Bridges Authority (a bi-state commission looking at financing) and asking various people I know in the Louisville area. I was unable to find any answer to this question.

I find it very surprising that this isn’t front and center. Because if tolling is supposed to fund the bridge, then who is paying those tolls is really the primary determinant of which state is paying the for the bridge.

Perhaps there’s a reason for that. As I Southern Indiana resident, I can tell you anecdotally that far more Hoosiers drive back and forth across the bridges than Kentuckians ...

At The Urbanophile: "Indiana's Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 1: A Financial Fiasco."

2012-01-10T08:59:00.000-05:00

Me thinks this series by Aaron M. Renn in The Urbanophile will be required reading these next few days.

Indiana's Bridge Deal Boondoggle, Part 1: A Financial Fiasco

- Indiana gives away $1.7 billion to Kentucky -

- Indiana’s costs up by $200 million while total project costs decline by $1.5 billion -

- $432 million diverted from other projects to close funding gap recreated by Indiana’s botched negotiators -

- Tolling likely to mean Indiana pays well over half the project –

- Indiana potentially exposed to major risk by agreeing to build a tunnel in Kentucky through Louisville’s most affluent suburb that the state has no expertise to construct -

We have doors.

2012-01-09T16:52:00.004-05:00

REPRISE: Stop "reaching out" before I tear your arm off.

2012-01-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

Seeing as the year just got under way, a reminder is warranted.

At work, I receive sales solicitations on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. Many of them are advertising pitches, which are annoying in the best of times. However, many others are for a wide array of worthy causes, to which I generally respond by donating one of my personal, guided tasting certificates. These tend to do quite well in silent auction formats.

Admittedly, I'm finding it a bit tedious to be asked to donate multiple kegs of beer for your fundraisers, but that's a different topic, for another time.

Recently I received an e-mail; names and organizations have been removed to protect those about to be harshly berated.

My name is ( ... ) and I am emailing you on behalf of ( ... ). I wanted to reach out and give you an opportunity to participate in our first annual fundraiser to be held ...

Pay attention, world, and observe these words carefully:

I wanted to reach out ...

That's what I thought you wrote.

Note that I DETEST THIS CONTEMPTIBLE, LAZY, TRENDY USAGE!

You can request, ask, demand, beg, implore or connive, and there's a good chance I will finish reading your words, or listening to you speak your piece.

But, henceforth, any solicitation I receive that bears any trace of this lingustic "reach out" repugnance will be unceremoniously trashed.

You have been warned. Carry on. Sorry we can't do business. Not really.

Trailer: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."

2012-01-08T11:56:00.000-05:00

For more, stay tuned for On THE AVENUES this Thursday.

Sunday reading: Parking lots and work weeks.

2012-01-08T11:26:00.000-05:00

Have you ever heard of the Pensacola Parking Syndrome?

Paved, but Still Alive, by Michael Kimmelman (New York Times)

As the critic Lewis Mumford wrote half a century ago, “The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.” Yet we continue to produce parking lots, in cities as well as in suburbs, in the same way we consume all those billions of plastic bottles of water and disposable diapers.

What to do?

Meanwhile, I was under the impression that the 40-hour work week was ascribed on one of Moses' tablets? Or was that Santorum's?

Cut the working week to a maximum of 20 hours, urge top economists; Job sharing and increased leisure are the answer to rising unemployment, claims thinktank, by Heather Stewart (The Guardian/The Observer)

... A thinktank, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), which has organised the event with the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, argues that if everyone worked fewer hours – say, 20 or so a week – there would be more jobs to go round, employees could spend more time with their families and energy-hungry excess consumption would be curbed. Anna Coote, of NEF, said: "There's a great disequilibrium between people who have got too much paid work, and those who have got too little or none."

Ed Clere, Mitch Daniels, Gary Oldman and ...

2012-01-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

Really, all I was doing was looking for movie reviews at the on-line New York Times, and suddenly, there was my state representative's face situated right above Gary Oldman's.

That's some serious Kismet. The link leads here: Stand Up for Hoosiers, which I'm sure is a front for some leftist pinko Obama-ist union group.

Messer is right: The new council must make redistricting a priority.

2012-01-07T10:06:00.001-05:00

You could forgive Jack Messer for saying, “Eight (years) is enough,” but the former two-term city council person attended last Thursday evening’s 2012 council kickoff and sat through the entire meeting for his chance to offer a non-agenda item comment about the importance of timely redistricting.

Most readers already know that I was a plaintiff in the lawsuit mentioned below in Daniel Suddeath’s excerpted news account. Through no fault of Messer’s, two previous council configurations have botched this imperative. Here’s to the hope that in 2012, history won’t repeat itself.

... Former Councilman Jack Messer, who lost his seat after an unsuccessful run for mayor last year, addressed the body on a very familiar topic.

He reminded the council they must redistrict voting boundaries, which the body hasn’t done since the 2010 U.S. Census was released. Cities are constitutionally mandated to redistrict following a census, and the issue led to a lawsuit in New Albany in 2006 as plaintiffs were upset with how the council handled the process.

The plaintiffs eventually agreed to settle, though some were angered by the 2007 council ordinance that was eventually accepted as the redistricting guideline.

The boundaries were set in 2009, nearly a decade after the latest Census at the time which was calculated in 2000.

Speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting, Messer urged the council to make redistricting a priority. Messer was an at-large councilman when he was selected in 2008 to serve on a redistricting committee that included some of the lawsuit plaintiffs.

The redistricting plan that was hatched and approved by the committee was spurned by the council also in 2008.

“I’m just bringing it to your attention that this needs to be looked at and put in committee,” Messer told the council Thursday.

Reunited, and it feels so good.

2012-01-06T08:48:00.000-05:00

(Photo composite elements cribbed from Alabama pensioners, sorry.)

My, my ... how the times have changed.

The Gang of Four – Dan Coffey, “King Larry” Kochert, Steve Price and Bill Schmidt – has passed mercifully into ancient history, with the only remaining component of the infamous obstructionist quartet being Coffey, who nowadays often makes quite good sense.

At last night’s first council meeting of 2012, a new variable was introduced into the city’s legislative equation.

Meet Lucy and Desi, folks.

They’re New Albany’s newest Undynamic Duo, with Diane Benedetti in the vintner's seat and Bob Caesar playing Geppetto, stage left.

Think of it as Armageddi and CeeSaw in ascendance, with the latter serving notice that from now on, his interminable drone will fill the aural gap recently vacated by Price. So what if Ernest T. Bass has left the building?

Say hello to Howard Sprague instead. How’s that for (dare we say it aloud) innovation?

A question from the gallery: Why did the council member re-elected to her seat by the slimmest margin of any returnee become city council president?

Answer: Because the body’s returning arbiter of culture, the newly garrulous Caesar, was in a glowing, tumescent, deal-making mood, and perfectly willing to swap boring old 2012 for his rightful seat at the head of the table in 2013, the Bicentennial Book Year. Even the earthworms beneath the tragically dubbed Legacy Square are turning at the thought.

However, apart from the usual hijinks by the same congenital practitioners, there is reason for guarded optimism.

Overall, the council’s collective aptitude surely has risen. Veterans Gonder, McLaughlin and Zurschmiede said little or nothing, and newcomers Baird, Blair and Phipps embarked upon their learning curves in relative silence.

Even Coffey was reticent, perhaps mimicking Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” strategy against George Foreman in far-off Zaire: If Benedetti and Caesar talk this much, this early, surely they’ll be exhausted and completely out of words by June, and then it will be time to pounce.

By the way, did she ever actually visit the Muhammad Ali Center?

Shouldn’t such a learning experience be a pre-requisite for membership in the local Democratic Party?

Daniel Suddeath's OSIN account is here.

See if you can find the Price in this picture.

2012-01-06T08:05:00.002-05:00

That's the beauty of it. You cannot.

I can't see the eateries for the forks.

2012-01-06T03:42:00.000-05:00

Giddiness envelops us: It's city council meeting night!

2012-01-05T13:11:00.001-05:00

Who will be selected as officers?

Who'll be appointed to the committees?

How will the council members adapt to their plush new digs?

How will citizen speakers adapt to the new podium?

Can I make it through the excitement without recourse to strong drink?

We'll find out soon enough.

Your continuing beer education: "Here's to Beer" and "Even More to Beer" non-credit IUS courses return in January, March 2012.

2012-01-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

My "Here's to Beer" Indiana University Southeast non-credit course returns on Wednesdays in January. Enrollment is underway now. Relatively speaking, "Here's to Beer" is designed for "beginners" just coming to the sunny side of beer enthusiasm. Don't fear the dark, consider attending, and note that "Here's to Beer" is the prerequisite for the advanced course: "Even More to Beer," which will follow in March.

Yes, you must be 21. Classes take place in the Prost room at the NABC Pizzeria & Public House at 3312 Plaza Drive (just off Grant Line Road) in New Albany. For the money, you get four class sessions, generous beer samples, and a mode of presentation that hasn't yet devolved to power point. It's oral beer history, sometimes incisive, other times rambling. No two class presentations are the same, and I hope that's a recommendation.

Get on board by visiting Indiana University Southeast’s web site via the links below, and for more, read this IUS Horizon newspaper article from spring, 2010: "Non-credit course educates students on history of beer."

Here’s to Beer! (101)
January 18, 25 and February 1, 8

Even More to Beer (202)
March 7, 14, 21 and April 4*

*Note that while the course description has the last of four classes taking place on March 28, this is Spring Break week at the university, and so we'll delay until April 4

ON THE AVENUES: Trash talking.

2012-01-05T09:38:00.002-05:00

ON THE AVENUES: Trash talking.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Political fliers from all parties -- except the Libertarians, who couldn’t afford them.

Empty styrofoam polar pops, portions of cardboard boxes, ATM receipts, fast food containers, and cigarette packs.

Broken glass from whiskey, beer and wine bottles. Soiled tissues, abandoned articles of clothing and used diapers.

Defunct lottery tickets, rusted auto parts, enough nails and screws to build a house, and abandoned plastic children’s toys.

No, I haven’t been hanging out at the landfill with the rag pickers. What I’ve noticed while walking around town over the holidaze is that the landfill’s intended contents (not to mention non-recycled recyclables) are failing to arrive at their final resting place.

The streets are filled with an inordinate amount of garbage, even by New Albany’s traditionally slovenly standards.

Those of a certain age will remember the television advertisement ending with a sad tear rolling down the cheek of a Native American, as he surveys the ugly, polluted landscape. If he were around these days, eying downtown New Albany, he’d be bawling salty buckets – and then tossing them on the ground for someone else to tidy.

---

I have both a clarification and a confession to make.

First, I direct this rant not so much to the general public, whom I know to be serial litterbugs and utterly beyond reform, but to my fellow business owners, primarily in the historic downtown business district. Let’s face it. This is New Albany, not Oslo. Local government is not going to clean the streets and sidewalks for us. We must do it ourselves, for no other reason than it being better for business.

Second: Rest assured, I will make no excuses in a doomed effort to absolve myself and my own businesses from their share of responsibility. We’re as guilty as anyone else of tolerating the mess, and I admit it.

Since late November, there has been a pile of leaves near the NABC Public House front door. The same leaf pile appears yearly, in the same spot, and at the same time. Our building is situated such that when the leaves start falling, the gusts swirl them around, and you can watch as the pile materializes. Then it rains. The leaves get wet, and after that, they’re stationary.

Each year, I watch as the pile grows, waiting to see if any employee, manager or fellow owner will address it. As I write, the leaf pile is still there, but with a twist.

It’s the first fall/winter since we declared our building smoke free. All year long the customers (and sometimes employees, even though they shouldn’t) have congregated by the front door to smoke. Scan the perimeter of any smoking area designated for human beings, as opposed to cats, butterflies or Vulcans, and you’ll notice that irrespective of available receptacles placed to collect spent cigarette butts, it’s no better than a 50/50 proposition that they’ll ever come to rest inside one.

Verily, I’d be a wealthy man living alongside George Clooney at a villa on Lake Como if a had a quarter for every time I’ve watched a smoker glance in the direction of an ashcan, then toss the smoldering cigarette to the ground. Accordingly, the yearly leaf pile now is abundantly speckled with cigarette butts.

Naturally, the people smoking don’t care. They’re customers, and we’re obliged to clean up after them; it’s part of the deal. Unless commanded to pay attention, employees won’t police the area, either. Then again, the employees regularly walk past, over and through other parking lot trash without noticing it, while every time I show up at the Public House, I stagger inside with freshly snagged garbage filling both hands.

What can a poor boy do, ‘cept to reflect his damned upbringing? Later today, if the pile’s still there, I’ll grab trash can, broom and snow shovel, and liquidate it, along with the other 12,765 butts that aren’t in an ashcan and haven’t been touched for the past six months – since the last time I did it.

I know, I know. There’s an absence of management skill on display here. Beyond that, perhaps tolerance for squalor owes to nurture vs. nature, or the way slave capitalism degrades. Right wingers may choose to blame it on Obama. All I’m saying is that in 2012, I’m publicly resolving that NABC will do better, because it’s the only way I can scream at the rest of you without being a hypocrite.

---

Earlier this week, I was walking through New Albany’s reviving downtown business district, admiring the many wonderful gains. It was fine, as long as I didn’t look down. A business owner and his landlord were chatting. Yards away on the sidewalk, there was a mound of leaves and garbage the size of a child’s wading pool. It was there the following day, too. Yesterday, it was gone – evidently shifted from sidewalk, over curb, and into street, so it could be ignored by the street department we no longer possess.

Shall we hand out garbage bags downtown, the way they give away condoms and clean needles in Switzerland?

I still remember the shopkeepers in Greece and Turkey, in front of their stores before opening, collecting the debris, sweeping up, and then dousing the remaining dust with water from tin cans and pails. It would be an otherwise squalid district, but the storefronts would fairly gleam, and the sidewalks would be spotless.

My fond wish is that all the small, independent business owners in New Albany would join me in resolving to be pro-active about tidiness and first impressions. However, all I can do is vow improvement in 2012 as an individual, and as owner of two business locations, and to spend more time with my own people, educating and supervising, trying to instill the necessary pride and eye for detail.

Maybe I haven’t worked hard enough. Maybe we should all work harder. But something must be done. Please?

Swank penthouse to crown 8th & Emery’s development.

2012-01-05T01:35:00.000-05:00

The latest design for the bold new 8th & Emery’s historical reclamation condo project was unveiled yesterday at an ice cream social held in broad daylight atop the recently resurfaced Culbertson Street.

Retired mayor Doug England, who said he still expects the UEA to pay “or else,” was joined by former city hall twin Carl Malysz, as well as various landmarks and preservation dignitaries.

“This kills several birds with one stone,” noted Malysz. “The historically significant ice cream shop gets hoisted up there to be an uppity penthouse on blocks, attracting the same champagne-sipping demographic as River View, and the UEA gets bankrupted in the process. It’s a win-win for the city.”

“Even though I’m not still mayor,” added England, “It doesn’t mean the UEA still isn’t the city’s goddamned ATM. You punch in the numbers, the money comes out, and someone else takes credit.”

“Ideal,” agreed Malysz.

Those in attendance lauded the innovative building plan devised by the Dudgeon architectural firm, which solved the problem of access to the new penthouse by means of old-school technology: A basket and pulley system once mentioned in a halftime pep talk by the über-sexy college football coach Howard Schnellenberger, who once visited the monasteries of Meteora during the Carter years while on a recruiting visit to central Greece, and saw linebackers being hoisted from the valley floor to waiting orthodox monks.

In the photo above, State Representative Ed Clere, a staunch proponent of spending the UEA’s money if it means not having to ask Uncle Mitch for more gas money, is seen crossing Culbertson in the facsimile prayer basket. “This is a come-to basket, and it will put Hoosiers back to work,” said Clere about the conveyance.

"I also hear they're hiring at Chick-fil-A," added Clere.

A spokesperson for Develop New Albany promised that the penthouse alone would sell for $350,000, non-remunerable to “those assholes at the UEA,” but instead to be used to finance administrative costs at the S. Ellen Jones NSP. Although the delineated area of the NSP does not include the 8th & Emery’s structure, “It’s close enough, and I need the cash.”

They're not the only ones. According to the Sawhorse Foundation, “If you see Mike Ladd, can you tell him we need that check, ASAP?”

Fetter: "Are the recent changes to the Ohio River Bridges Project good for Southern Indiana?"

2012-01-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

Whatever happened to Benny Breeze, anyway?

Thoughts on Ohio River Bridges reductions, a letter to the editor by Paul Fetter

Are the recent changes to the Ohio River Bridges Project good for Southern Indiana?

That is yet to be seen.

There is much speculation out there as to whether the recent dividing of the project’s financing is the first step into splitting the project. Anything is possible.

Is splitting the project good for Southern Indiana? If the project is split, the east-end bridge is built and Kentucky does not come to agreement on building the downtown bridge, then yes.

However, next month if the Kentucky General Assembly comes to agreement on funding its portion the project with tolling being used for its deficiency, this project in its current form is what we will get. That will include tolling on Interstate 65 (not on Spaghetti Junction).

This is unfair. Hoosier commuters will be paying tolls on bridges. Many Louisville commuters will use Spaghetti Junction (new infrastructure), but not the bridges; thus, they will not pay any tolls. Hoosier tolls collected on I-65 will be paying for Spaghetti Junction, while Kentucky residents will be using it for free.

This is also not good for Southern Indiana retail and tourism businesses. These industries will incur additional expense to do business in Southern Indiana, and will also have less consumer dollars traveling to the Sunny Side.

It is important to keep in mind when hearing the “pro-project” leaders talking about $1 tolls that the low rate is one way and only applies to frequent users. A frequent user is someone that uses the bridges 50 times in 45 days.

The nonfrequent users will pay about twice the amount. Both will pay other costs and administration charges, which are never mentioned. There is an annual renewal for toll collectors of about $50. There will be administration charges added to billings. The amount is yet to be determined, but nationally the average is more than $5.

The administration of collection and other costs of tolling will be more expensive than the actual toll. When you divide the cost of the toll collector per use and add administration charges, a round trip for a nonfrequent user will cost between $5 and $10.

Anyone in retail or travel business from Southern Indiana knows the difficulties in attracting Kentucky consumer dollars here. If the toll rate was zero locally, but participating in a process to make it free was required, Southern Indiana would still be avoided by many Kentucky consumers because of this simple added hurdle.

No2bridgetolls.org is pro-bridges. We expect a project that can be built with the committed money from Indiana and Kentucky, and if necessary minimal tolls on the east-end bridge only. This can be accomplished. The approach on the Kentucky side of the east-end bridge is still a quarter of a billion dollars more than the east-end bridge and the Indiana approach combined. This needs serious reductions.

This new plan still needs work. It is up to our leaders to look out for the best interest of Southern Indiana residents and businesses. It is up to you to tell them to do so, and let them know you will remember at election time if they do not. Participate in the process, we will show you how. Go to No2bridgetolls.org and sign up.

— Paul Fetter, Clarksville

Holy &#*!, Mayor Gahan, you forgot to hire someone to feed the hippo! Run for the Knobs!

2012-01-04T08:40:00.000-05:00

Masthead emptiness: The King is gone, now call it something other than Legacy Square, please.

2012-01-04T03:42:00.000-05:00

He'll be remembered for instituting a culture of stultified creative nepotism than ultimately did far more harm than good, and for failing to honor his campaign promise of two-way street conversions. Y'all can debate over the remainder of the Legacy Square, in a round hole.

POLITICAL NATURE: Doug England reflects on his time in office, by Daniel Suddeath (One South Alabama Newspaper)

Despite the loss, England said he’s proud of what his administration accomplished over the past four years.

England touted the commercial growth of downtown during a slow economy, the completion of construction projects such as Daisy Lane and the ability of his staff to deal with budget shortfalls without laying off public safety workers as some of the greatest achievements of his administration. Under England’s watch, the city gained a new riverfront amphitheater, a $6.7 million federal grant to address home foreclosures in the S. Ellen Jones neighborhood and the design for a downtown bicentennial park that is slated to be dubbed Legacy Square.

If you're a people, you can speak tonight about stormwater at Mr. Coffey's public meeting.

2012-01-04T00:35:00.000-05:00

The obvious source of the West End's stormwater drainage problems is the gigantic earthwork supporting the Interstate highway. Take out the Interstate, and replace it with a Galligan canal, and -- voila!

$6 million bond, drainage topic of public forum in New Albany; Coffey pushing for more west end improvements, board says work based on plan, by Daniel Suddeath

NEW ALBANY — Residents will be given the opportunity to speak about drainage and a proposed $6 million loan for New Albany stormwater projects during a public meeting Wednesday.

New Albany City Councilman Dan Coffey — who has been outspoken in his criticism of the stormwater master plan that is being used to determine the projects — said he’s hosting the forum so residents can have input before a vote is taken on the bond.

“There’s real questions about the way the stormwater [utility] has operated, and also their supposed engineering study, and I want the people to have a chance to speak,” Coffey said Friday.

He pledged to host three public meetings in the coming weeks across the city, as the first one will begin at 6 p.m. in the Strassweg Auditorium of the New Albany-Floyd County Library.

Rubber Room Chronicles: Pat Robertson's been talking with God again.

2012-01-03T21:08:00.000-05:00

No word on whether the Broncos have a chance in the playoffs. Anyone seen my butterfly net?

Serious mobility solution questions for Bridges Authority member Jerry Finn.

2012-01-03T09:57:00.000-05:00

In this morning's Courier-Journal, we learn that Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, a consistent advocate of the Ohio River Bridges Project's oligarchy enrichment and bridge tolling mobility solution, is "not inclined" to pursue eminent domain -- a resolution long contemplated -- to wrest the K & I Bridge from Norfolk Southern's leaden, obstructionist hands and open it for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.

In political terms, Fischer's a complete wuss, and the Republican would have been better elected. How many times do you hear me say that?

But Jerry, here's the question: If the bridges project is supposed to be about "mobility solutions," and if we'll have to pay an unfair tax (i.e., tolls) to cross the new ones in cars, then why wasn't the K & I part of the planned "mobility solution" from the very start? Shouldn't using it be on the ORBP's front burner, along with the remainder of the new construction projects? If it's all about mobility, then shouldn't all mobility be on the table?

While I'm at it, what ever happened to that Hoosier small business economic impact study, anyway?

(And they wonder why we write the things we write ... discussion at Facebook, too)

Act now, and we'll double your Crutchfield!

2012-01-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

"It would be such a relief to walk in somewhere and have some disinterested college-age kid take my order without even making eye contact."

2012-01-02T18:42:00.001-05:00

One might link to The Onion every single day, and usually I'm able to resist the temptation to do so, but this one is just too funny -- or, too truthful?

After all, a cookie-cutter Panera Bread is rumored to be coming to State Street soon. I saw on Facebook that Ron Grooms calls it a wonderful stroke of job creation; I suppose that's one opinion, albeit a badly informed one.

A great many other locals, if polled, surely would not react as those in The Onion's satirical piece, because they'd simply have no notion of what a Panera Bread is at all.

Neighborhood Kind Of Hoping Panera Bread Shows Up And Plows Over Charming Local Bakery, at The Onion

"I don't want to think about how someone at Callahan's woke up at 3 a.m. to make all the pastries from scratch," said April Frye, 53, claiming the owners' heartbreakingly sincere utterances of "thank you" and "please come again" never fail to make her feel guilty. "I'd like to be able to buy a cappuccino and not have to worry about whether I'm being grateful enough for all the hard work they obviously put into it. You have no idea how many unwanted loaves of bread I've bought simply because I felt compelled to support a local business."

Weekend reading update: College sports reform, J. Edgar Hoover and hypocrisy.

2012-01-02T08:32:00.001-05:00

Nocera's eloquent essay summarizes the themes I've been espousing for years (the players are the source of the cash cow, and are not remunerated properly), and also offers a workable solution. Still, the first requirement for the meaningful reform of a core-rotten edifice is for its devotees to acknowledge the prevailing hypocrisy. Before you can be helped, you must want to get better, but don't take my word for it (again). Read the article, please.

Let’s Start Paying College Athletes, by Joe Nocera in the New York Times.

The hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away. College football and men’s basketball have become such huge commercial enterprises that together they generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, more than the National Basketball Association. A top college coach can make as much or more than a professional coach; Ohio State just agreed to pay Urban Meyer $24 million over six years. Powerful conferences like the S.E.C. and the Pac 12 have signed lucrative TV deals, while the Big 10 and the University of Texas have created their own sports networks. Companies like Coors and Chick-fil-A eagerly toss millions in marketing dollars at college sports. Last year, Turner Broadcasting and CBS signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal for the television rights to the N.C.A.A.’s men’s basketball national championship tournament (a k a “March Madness”). And what does the labor force that makes it possible for coaches to earn millions, and causes marketers to spend billions, get? Nothing. The workers are supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college. Any student athlete who accepts an unapproved, free hamburger from a coach, or even a fan, is in violation of N.C.A.A. rules.

Meanwhile, hypocrisy of another form is charted by Summers: The malevolent career of J. Edgar Hoover. Where were anarchists like Leon Czolgosz when we really needed them?

The secret life of J Edgar Hoover, by Anthony Summers in The Guardian/The Observer.

J Edgar Hoover was a phenomenon. The first Director of the FBI, he remained in office for 48 years, from his appointment after the First World War to his death in 1972, achieving fame and extraordinary power. For public consumption when he died, President Richard Nixon eulogised him as: "One of the giants… a national symbol of courage, patriotism and granite-like honesty and integrity." He ordered flags to fly at half-mast and that Hoover's body lie in state in the Capitol.

In private, on hearing that he had died, Nixon had responded merely: "Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!" Months earlier, closeted with key advisers, he had held forth on the need to persuade the elderly Hoover to resign. "We have on our hands here a man who will pull down the temple with him, including me."

"Get over it. Get used to it."

2012-01-01T14:42:00.000-05:00

Given the overly familiar, often overbearing cast of characters, it's no surprise that some of the folks involved with the Bicentennial Commission are struggling when it comes to making traditional forms relevant in a modern world. Thankfully, a younger, more knowledgeable set is doing it just fine with an urgency and grace long missing from their better-known elders. It's theirs and similar names that will ultimately matter as we move into the post-historic now.

Paying attention to them? The sooner the better.

Toledo Bend:

Houndmouth:

A bold opening strike against nepot ... uh, well, never mind.

2012-01-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

Those leaden footsteps, low mumbles and soiled snot rags you're hearing are the detritus of Occupy Jeff Gahan, because what will New Albany's serial troglodytes do if the incoming mayor does not offer the ritual sacrifice of Malysz? Will they turn on Gahan before he has had time to boot up his computer? And what of the future of the Dual NSP/DNA sinecure that went so far toward abjectly poisoning the civic well in 2011?

Gahan makes hire for New Albany controller slot; Prestigiacomo to take place of Kay Garry, by Daniel Suddeath (OSIN Pop Up and Roll Over Bot)

New Albany Mayor-elect Jeff Gahan announced Friday Mary Ann Prestigiacomo will serve as city controller. It is expected to be the last appointment before he takes office Sunday.

... Most administrative positions have now been filled by Gahan, though there has been no official announcement on the future of current Deputy Mayor Carl Malysz, who also serves as director of community development.

Gahan stated during the campaign he would not employ a deputy mayor. But as of Friday, Gahan hadn’t appointed a leader of the city’s redevelopment or community development departments.

Boy, that sure felt good.

2011-12-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

Watch out for that door (SMACK). Hmm, that could be a nasty bruise.

2011-12-31T23:55:00.000-05:00