Grassroots redevelopers buy "the worst house on the worst block." How's a self-respecting mayor to wet his beak on THAT?

We have a Strong Towns article featuring Gill Holland in Portland (Louisville) and Jim Fraser in Rochester NY, both of whom sense a degree of push-back from their respective city halls, primarily because their grassroots plans don't lead directly to (a) mayors or council persons seizing a share of the credit, and (b) campaign finance fattening, like we perused yesterday:

Gahan Money Machine 2017: Tens of thousands from corporate outsiders, who by sheer serendipity get lots and lots of work here.

Mayor Jeff Gahan's campaign donations for 2017 -- a non-municipal election year -- came to $56,175.

That's right: $56,175.

That's a buck and a half for every man, woman and child in New Albany -- and precious little of it actually coming from inside the city proper. This is in addition to what Gahan's campaign had left over from 2011-2016, and what's to come in 2018 and 2019.

You know, like Lancaster Lofts, being proposed by Progressive Land Development.

Where have I seen Paul Barber's name before? He popped up on the Gahan donor list back in 2014, when apparently he worked for Kemp Title Agency.

With $500 more from the boss man to re-elect the Serene Presence.

So far, we've only looked at Jeff Gahan's 2017 omnibus campaign finance report. Neither Barber nor Progressive Land Development are on it, but PLD tossed Jason Applegate a C-note for the primary.

Lancaster Lofts passed muster at the Redevelopment Commission in late April. I'm betting Gahan's 2018 donor statistics show some gritty greenback love passing from PLD to DL (Dear Leader). If not, it probably means that the same old shakedown hasn't yet been perfected by whichever bag man replaced David Duggins.

Meanwhile, back to the guys doing it the grassroots way.

"URBAN ACUPUNCTURE" OFFERS STRUGGLING NEIGHBORHOODS A BETTER FUTURE, by Dan Reed (Strong Towns)

Dan Reed is an urban planner and writer sharing today's guest article on strategic investment to uplift low-income neighborhoods. For more stories and resources on small scale development, visit this page.

"Most of Portland is shotgun house, shotgun house, shotgun house," Gill Holland says of his home base.

It’s a riverfront community on the far west side of Louisville, Kentucky that may have the nation's largest collection of these 19th century, one-room-wide houses outside of New Orleans. For over two centuries, the neighborhood — once its own city — was a port of call for Americans traveling west: Lewis and Clark stopped there, as did Abraham Lincoln, Aaron Burr, and Henry Clay. Holland’s office is in a converted Boys and Girls Club where Muhammad Ali used to play.

It was a working-class community, whose residents walked to work at warehouses along the water, but after two catastrophic floods in 1937 and 1945, people and investment sought higher ground. Today, the area has some 1,400 abandoned buildings, many of which are shotgun houses.

So far, Holland's Portland Investment Initiative (Pii) has renovated 80 abandoned shotgun houses, which he’s renting out as affordable housing. He's also working with locally renowned architects to build new shotgun houses nearby.

“I talk a lot about urban acupuncture,” Holland says. “The one strategic investment that takes away the negative effect and adds a positive ripple effect.”

The typical urban redevelopment story goes like this: the city decides it wants to "revitalize" a downtrodden neighborhood; assembles a massive piece of land, sometimes by displacing existing residents or businesses; and invites an equally large user to put something there like a sports stadium, a convention center, or a shopping mall.

But in cities and towns around the United States, investors big and small are taking a different path: one house, one block at a time, in neighborhoods where banks won't venture but residents are willing to put in time and effort to bring these places back. The stakes may seem lower, but the end result is a stronger, more resilient community and local economy.

Fraser couldn't convince the city's own bureaucrats to part with a vacant building.

But the city owned the building, and local representatives weren't receptive to Fraser's plans to bring it back to life. "We're still fighting a top-down mindset from City Hall today," he says. "The City keeps coming up with stuff it wants to come into our neighborhood and do, and it's not letting us drive it."

Holland sees wasted infrastructure.

Holland thinks that local governments are missing out on a huge opportunity to work with private sector individuals to leverage the huge public investments they've already made. "We own the water company, we own the sewer company, we've already invested tens of millions of dollars to service 8,000 vacant properties," he says.

Now for a new feature: Gahan's Greatest Hits (2015 edition, featuring the police chief and four public housing demolition appointees).

A true renaissance (anywhere) "must be sparked by the empowerment of existing residents."

Fundamentally better NA.

Gill Holland made a few good points during his talk last week at the Green Building in NuLu. Given New Albany's recent experience with capital-intensive, gleaming facade and plaque-ready projects, this part struck me hardest.

Gill Holland, Steve Poe talk development in West Louisville, what to do if Humana is sold, by Chris Otts (WDRB)

Government is good at spending a lot of money in one place, like $135 million for the new Omni Hotel downtown. But 135 separate investments of $1 million in west Louisville would transform the area, he said.

Ah, but it would depend on campaign finance opportunities and voting patterns in those 135 areas, wouldn't it?

Joe Dunman recognizes the positives in the chat by Holland and Steve Poe, but he also sees "important differences between NuLu and Portland that ... often get lost in the hype." In several ways, these differences are both significant and relevant to New Albany's position.

I'm not doing Dunman's essay justice by reducing it to a mere paragraph -- and the conclusion, at that. Go to IL and read.

A true Portland renaissance must be sparked by the empowerment of existing residents, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

... If Portland and the rest of the West End are to enjoy a true renaissance, it must be sparked by the empowerment of existing residents. It can’t be imposed by a few outsiders buying up cheap lots and flipping them, displacing locals in the process. It requires a collective effort with government leadership. Speculators can invest and enjoy returns, but if the city is to improve as a whole, everyone must reap the benefits of neighborhood revitalization.

Allegiance is a two-way street.

To be clear, this is bluegill, not the New Albanian, but...

Given this:

and this:

 

and this:

I keep seeing this...

in Portland.

If it's in the water, we need all the Gills we can get.

I've occasionally joked that local film and music producer, Gill Holland, with whom I've only chatted casually a few times at art events, is my new best friend; it's just that he doesn't know it yet.

Eventually, metro area leaders will figure out that our economic future depends largely on how successful we are in attracting people who think like Gill.

Let's hope that occurs before we spend $4.1 billion making ourselves look like head-in-the-sand ignoramuses with a national spotlight on our upturned backsides.


Printed verbatim from Gill's letter to the C-J's editors:

I agree with Ed Glasscock and Cary Stemler that the future of Louisville relies on solving transportation issues, but I don't think completing the Ohio River Bridges Project as it was approved six years ago is the solution. A lot has happened in six years: Gas prices went to $4 with an ensuing decrease in driving and increase in interest in smaller and electric cars; and the economy collapsed and has drastically affected companies like UPS, Ford and Toyota that are specifically mentioned on the Build the Bridges Web site as "crucial to our economy."

Green-lighting and financing an old plan today does not make sense without reviewing it in light of these factors. We should update the plan and then go back to the same Kentucky and Indiana state transportation agencies and the Federal Highway Administration who approved the initial plan. Taking the time to do so is in our interest, and in the interest of our children and grandchildren, before we expand highways and bridges and overpasses in our booming and increasingly vibrant downtown area.

Downtowns should be for people, not overpasses and highways. I don't want to look out my window and see a four-story highway overpass in downtown obscuring and towering over the church steeples. We already breathe in too much exhaust from flow-through traffic that finds Louisville a convenient place to drive through on the way to somewhere else. Let's first build the East End Bridge and see how much of this through-traffic can be re-routed. This will be a sacrifice on the part of many land-owners in that area, including my family, but it will benefit us all long-term.

If we are trying to solve transportation issues and get off our addiction to oil, how is increasing the drive-ability of commuters by adding more bridges and lanes going to decrease traffic and pollution? Where is the incentive not to drive?

Without getting into details of the bridges project per se and without discussing financials for the time being (though TARC's 2003 budget for the FTA-recommended project of 25 light-rail stations and 17 miles of track came in at $748 million, much less than the four billion being discussed for the Ohio Rivers Project), here are some blue-sky, out-of-the-box ideas for discussion. Let's picture the perfect city that we all know Louisville can be and then see how and if we can get there. It may take years, but I don't plan on going anywhere.

It is possible that the future of Louisville is dependent not on being the "pinch point" for transportation (as it is described on www.buildthebridges.com) but on having the coolest downtown in the United States, with increased density, downtown living and walk-ability. More businesses, more retail, more restaurants, and more downtown life would attract more entrepreneurs to start more companies, creating more jobs and increasing the tax base. If more folks lived downtown and there were more companies downtown, there would be fewer commuters.

Before spending $4 billion dollars, maybe we should do a study on the effects of closing (yes, you read that correctly) the downtown bridge to vehicles and converting it to a light-rail shuttle. How about another maybe crazy idea: a ban on all passenger car traffic downtown between 1st and 8th streets and Main and Broadway and turning it into a "Green Zone" with a tax incentive program for entrepreneurs and new businesses? I am just trying to think outside the box and stimulate discussion; obviously, lots of work would need to be done to validate any of these far-fetched ideas.

We could then add a light-rail loop around this Green Zone, or use the existing trolley busses that always look empty. This loop could be connected to all the major suburbs by other light-rail lines with parking hubs at the end stations. Think of the benefits if we freed up all the present parking towers and parking lots in downtown to be converted into office buildings with store-front retail and residences. With a loop of public transportation, no one would be more than five blocks from the office. Right now, even with the $4 gallon gas fading from our memories, we are all "Toads"; we love our cars just as much as that great character in The Wind in the Willows. So a drastic change in behavior would be needed to pull this off, but maybe it is worth thinking about it.

Louisville already seems fragmented into neighborhoods divided by highways and overpasses. If we came together and redefined our common downtown, we could also discover a renewed sense of community.

GILL HOLLAND