GREEN MOUSE SAYS: It turns out the "G" in Form G stands for "Groper."

Image credit: WAVE 3 News.

Earlier today the Green Mouse was roused from a raging three-week-long bender to consider Form G's "redevelopment" vaporware at the vacant Centenary church in downtown New Albany.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Not so fast on Form G's Centenary church PR vaporware.

But it gets even better. As the Mouse po(u)red over old notes, he found one of his own e-mail links from last September, which apparently got lost in the pre-election scrum.

Man in spotlight for TV kiss is local real estate executive, by Marty Finley (Louisville Business First)

Eric Goodman, founder and CEO of Form G Companies, has apologized for kissing a WAVE-TV news reporter on live television. The incident has made national headlines.

The man in the middle of controversy and facing criticism after he kissed a WAVE-TV reporter on the cheek on live television last weekend during the Bourbon & Beyond festival is a local real estate developer.

Eric Goodman, 42, of Jeffersonville, Ind., was charged with harassment, a misdemeanor, by the Jefferson County Attorney after he interrupted WAVE reporter Sara Rivest during a live broadcast on the music festival, which was held at the Kentucky Exposition Center.

Goodman is the founder and CEO of Jeffersonville’s Form G Cos. LLC, a full-service commercial real estate firm. He was profiled in Louisville Business First in March.

He has since apologized for the incident ...

You have to hand it to Team Gahan's choices for public-private parts partnerships.

ON THE AVENUES: Could that be David Duggins paddling across Jeff Gahan's putrid cesspool? On second thought, I'll take the blindfold.

The Green Mouse concludes: "I can't wait for the Mayor Jeff Gahan Presents the Lofts at Centenary Slap and Tickle."

Disclosure: This post complies with the parameters of Roger's sabbatical from local political involvement, having required fewer than 30 minutes to write.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Not so fast on Form G's Centenary church PR vaporware.

The Green Mouse enjoys learning new words.

va·por·ware
/ˈvāpərˌwer/
noun INFORMAL•COMPUTING
Software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written or designed.

This morning there was a triumphant announcement at the Jeffersonville newspaper.

New residential project in the works at former New Albany church, by John Boyle (News&Bune)

NEW ALBANY — To join the several new amenities recently popping up in downtown, New Albany will soon become home to another major residential project.

The site is a familiar one in the city grid. For nearly two centuries, Centenary United Methodist Church played a role in the faiths of many in the area.

Now that the congregation has moved, the idle building will see new life as an apartment complex. Representatives of Form G, the development company behind the project, said the company has been trying to invest in downtown New Albany for “quite some time,” and is excited to finally have the opportunity to do so.

“This property came up, and it’d been sitting for a while on the market, about a year or so,” president and CEO Eric Goodman said. “Once we got into the details of the historical and preservation components of it, we realized that we could make it a project.”

But the Green Mouse has learned that it's probably all vaporware. He believes Form G's option to purchase Centenary expired in December (it may have been renewed as non-refundable payment toward the purchase price) with no offer having been made.

According to Elevate, the church property has not changed hands.

And what does Form G's "G" stand for, anyway? The Mouse says: "Gahan." As noted in this post from November 14, 2019, some of Form G's principals have been priming the mayoral pump for the inevitable municipal incentives.

Maybe they should buy the property first?

That's generally how it's done in capitalism, right?

Pay first, propagandize later?

---

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Vacant Centenary United Methodist buildings to renovated into market rate apartments by a Gahan campaign donor.

The Green Mouse reports that the vacated Centenary United Methodist Church property at 309 E. Spring Street is slated for reuse as multi-family residential (specifically, market rate apartments).

The mouse was told the permitting process is underway but not yet completed.

Among the improvements slated for completion by the contractor, Form G Companies LLC (Jeffersonville):

• Interior renovations to convert vacant space into apartments
• Window replacement
• Painting of exterior brick
• Adding architectural details
• Ingress/egress "improvements" 
• Parking lot repair (recoating, restriping)

Interestingly available real estate records show no change in ownership of the property.

And now for the Jeopardy! answer in the popular category Pay to Play:

"Form G Companies became one in 2019."

Alex, what is a first-time Gahan campaign finance donor?

Does anyone know whether Form G still intends to purchase the property? And why hasn't the word "luxury" been attached to the project? It's Big Daddy G's favorite concept, after all.

---

Disclosure: This post complies with the parameters of Roger's sabbatical from local political involvement, having required fewer than 30 minutes to write.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Vacant Centenary United Methodist buildings to renovated into market rate apartments by a Gahan campaign donor.

The Green Mouse reports that the vacated Centenary United Methodist Church property at 309 E. Spring Street is slated for reuse as multi-family residential (specifically, market rate apartments).

The mouse was told the permitting process is underway but not yet completed.

Among the improvements slated for completion by the contractor, Form G Companies LLC (Jeffersonville):

• Interior renovations to convert vacant space into apartments
• Window replacement
• Painting of exterior brick
• Adding architectural details
• Ingress/egress "improvements" 
• Parking lot repair (recoating, restriping)

Interestingly available real estate records show no change in ownership of the property.

And now for the Jeopardy! answer in the popular category Pay to Play:

"Form G Companies became one in 2019."

Alex, what is a first-time Gahan campaign finance donor?

Does anyone know whether Form G still intends to purchase the property? And why hasn't the word "luxury" been attached to the project? It's Big Daddy G's favorite concept, after all.

The Tell-Tale Fart: This peachy "apartments at Steinert's" project may seem to be free-market capitalism, but the deal's a lot more tangled than it first appeared.

I'd gently argue Steinert's was the building suited to be described as iconic in a way mere "used to be there" vacant lots cannot ever be, but this would be picking nits. It is noteworthy that in a distinctly post-election way, as soon as the campaign was over and the mayor safely re-enthroned, suddenly he has "elected" to refrain from interjecting his dull mug into every announcement.

The reality speaks differently.

Our Shopping Cart Napoleon already had this Steinert's fix quite firmly into place. Before linking to the local chain newspaper's story, let's have a look at the interconnected participants.

Here's Vitor Bueno.

TSI Construction was the contractor for the sewer overflow project by St. Mary's Cemetery at Charlestown Road and Silver Street, during which equipment and materials were being stored in ... a big vacant lot where Steinert's once stood.

TSI was purchased in 2016 by an "investment firm" -- 3 Crown Capital, the leadership of which all formerly worked for Neace Ventures.

The former Steinert's site is owned by a Neace offshoot (son).

And NB Develop, which will build apartments on the Steinert's site, stands for Neace Bueno.

Oh, and the Neace/Bueno has a connection with a newly elected at-large councilman.

Extol Magazine now operating under Neace Ventures.

(November, 2016)

John Neace was the first person to support our dream of starting Extol by becoming our initial investor. He and Vitor Bueno both jumped on ship as minority owners in this venture that was started by Sales Director/Managing Partner Jason Applegate and his wife Angie Fenton, Extol's editor in chief. We are so grateful for this opportunity to grow and further our mission.

Yes, and by the way ...

John Neace is Jeff Gahan's 5th-largest career campaign finance donor.

There was quite a lot left unsaid in the newspaper account, wasn't there?

Development coming to former Steinert's site in New Albany, by John Boyle (Bill Hanson's Jeffersonville First)

NEW ALBANY — An iconic New Albany property could soon see new life.

Steinert's Grill and Pub, located near the intersection of Silver Street and Charlestown Road, was a local landmark and watering hole for decades, with the building having been there since 1877. All of that history was lost over a decade ago, when the structure was destroyed in a 2008 fire.

In the years since, the property at 2239 Charlestown Road has sat vacant, with nothing but the Steinert's sign standing as a remnant among the empty asphalt. Now, developers have plans to fill the void with a $3.5 million, three-story apartment building.

Vitor Bueno said NB Develop set its eyes on the property in part due to its well-known former occupant.

"Steinert's has been a place that a lot of people have come through and have a lot of family memories at," he said. "I think that's a nice part of the site. With it being on top of a hill in a three-story building, people can have a nice view of New Albany."

Plans call for 24 units, half of which will have two bedrooms and two bathrooms and the other half having one bedroom and one bathroom. Units will range in size from 754 square feet to 1,131 square feet ...

Spongebuild Squareparts: "I think accountants are designing these buildings.”

It is a recurring question.

Why do all new apartment buildings look the same? by Patrick Sisson (Curbed)

The bland, boxy apartment boom is a design issue, and a housing policy problem

A wave of sameness has washed over new residential architecture. U.S. cities are filled with apartment buildings sporting boxy designs and somewhat bland facades, often made with colored panels and flat windows.

Due to an Amazon-fueled apartment construction boom over the last decade, Seattle has been an epicenter of this new school of structural simulacra. But Seattle is not alone. Nearly every city, from Charlotte to Minneapolis, has seen a proliferation of homogenous apartments as construction has increased again in the wake of the financial recession.

This is hilarious.

A Twitter query seeking to name this ubiquitous style was a goldmine. Some suggestions seemed inspired by the uniformity of design in computer programs and games: Simcityism, SketchUp contemporary, Minecraftsman, or Revittecture. Some took potshots at the way these buildings looked value-engineered to maximize profit: Developer modern, McUrbanism, or fast-casual architecture. Then there are the aesthetic judgement calls: contemporary contempt, blandmarks, LoMo (low modern), and Spongebuild Squareparts.

Getting down to the particle board of the matter:

Good architecture should always respond to the local context. In the case of these buildings, the local economic context just happens to be the same in just about every major U.S. city.

“Critics don’t understand what we’re working with, the parameters and the financial constraints,” says Black. “It’s like any other business: If you’re selling autos or selling widgets, there are certain costs, and a certain profit you need to make to do business in the future.”

Breakwater fire revisited: Exactly what are the potential dangers of "Toothpick Construction" techniques?

And we criticized Soviet designs?

As most readers know, The Breakwater is New Albany's ballyhooed "luxury" apartment complex, a titled possession of the Flaherty & Collins behemoth in Indianapolis, but also municipally subsidized -- to be frank, to an obscene extent.

One of the two buildings at The Breakwater caught fire on February 24, and New Albany firefighters spent most of the next day fighting the blaze. Fortunately the building was unoccupied (there were minor firefighter injuries), but because it hadn't yet been finished, the sprinkler system was not activated.

According to a subsequent investigation, contractor error was responsible. The rubble since has been cleared, the insurance companies are haggling, and reconstruction will resume.

You can read the official conclusion of the Breakwater fire investigation in a previous post. Included are complete story links.

Fast forwarding a month, articles published just this week at Fire Engineering and The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) are hard-hitting, indeed.

In the first, we learn that in the aftermath of a catastrophic fire of similar circumstances in Raleigh, questions about building methods and materials are being raised.

In Raleigh building fire, a warning about construction standards, by the editorial board (The News & Observer)

As growth in Raleigh booms, buildings rise quickly. Perhaps, too quickly.

The spectacular fire that consumed a 241-unit apartment building under construction near downtown Raleigh last Thursday night has raised questions about the type and quality of building methods and materials being used in new buildings.

The fire that reduced The Metropolitan, an unfinished, five-story building at the corner of West Jones and Harrington Street, was apparently fueled by the extensive use of wood in the upper floors. Wood allows for faster and less expensive construction than using concrete and steel, but it’s vulnerable to fire, especially when the building is unfinished and sprinklers have not yet been installed ...

I highly recommend reading in its entirety this piece by Jack J. Murphy about large lightweight toothpick construction buildings. He's a fire service veteran, and appends his essay with voluminous references. Why aren't we listening?

Note: In the first paragraph of Murphy's article, it is my view that he intended to use the word "reservations" rather than "justifications." As we have observed so many times before, spell check doesn't help when the wrong word is spelled correctly.

Toothpick Construction: Enough Is Enough, by Jack J. Murphy (Fire Engineering)
03/21/2017

The fire service has ample justifications about large lightweight toothpick construction buildings (LLW/TPC) long before the recent Raleigh (NC) five-alarm ‘Toothpick Construction’ fire.

So why is the construction industry and insurance companies not paying heed when it comes to better fire protection features? This can be effected either via the code development process or the industry stepping up and creating ‘best practices’ for an enhanced balance of fire protection systems, namely a full building suppression system and more robust passive fire protection for draft-stopping and fire walls (masonry) that extend through the roof within these residential complexes.

Over the years, the fire service has advocated a balance of fire protection that has fallen on deaf ears. A new fire service tactic to consider before a municipal council hearing and/or state legislation is how LLW/TPC building complex fires (whether these structures are under construction or occupied) are overwhelming local fire department response. For many communities, a fire response must go way beyond the municipality border lines to get a sustainable fighting force to help prevent such an enormous fire from becoming a much larger community conflagration.

In the February 2017, a LLW/TPC building under construction fire occurred in Maplewood, New Jersey. This fire quickly spread to the exposure building of similar construction; this building was approximately a few weeks away from being occupied. This building did, however, have masonry fire walls, although they are not yet required by code; they played a key role in saving the structure ...

As an aside, in Kansas yet another fire broke out prior to the activation of sprinklers and destroyed an apartment building.

Official says welder sparked massive Kansas apartment fire (AP, via Fire Engineering)

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A fire that leveled a multi-million dollar apartment building under construction and spread to about two dozen homes in suburban Kansas City started when a welder accidentally ignited wooden building materials, fire officials said.

More than 100 firefighters battled the blaze at the CityPlace development in Overland Park on Monday and three were treated for minor injuries. The fire destroyed the four-story apartment building, heavily burned a second and rained burning debris onto a nearby neighborhood, damaging at least 22 other homes.

Overland Park Fire Chief Bryan Dehner said the building where the fire started was "most vulnerable" when the fire happened because it was so early in the construction process that it lacked fire deterrents such as a sprinkler system.

This makes three fires in three different places in a month's span of time, all quite similar. Are any local news outlets planning on following up on these themes and how they pertain to our area?

I'm looking at you, Susan Duncan.

Fascinating photographs show the "unrealized potential" of the apartment building.

Singapore, from the article.

I highly recommend clocking through to the photographs.

LIVING THE HIGH LIFE (The Economist's 1843 Magazine)

Too many modern flats are samey and soulless. A new book celebrates the architects coming up with creative solutions for our overcrowded cities

Unsurprisingly, (architecture and design critic Michael) Webb is a strong advocate for flat-dwelling. In the introduction to his new book, “Building Community: New Apartment Architecture”, published by Thames and Hudson, he speaks of an “urgent need to build many more apartments” to relieve housing shortages in our cities, to use land more economically and to avoid long commutes to suburbia – which he describes as a “wasteful delusion”.

Sadly, he explains, most modern apartments are terrible. Risk-averse, profit-hungry developers conspire to produce blocks and towers packed with “claustrophobic cells [that] open off double-loaded corridors. Light and air come from one side only, and balconies are usually vestigial.” A brief survey of the finest modernist and brutalist schemes – from the Isokon building in Hampstead to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille – is a depressing reminder of our current paucity of imagination.

In an attempt to demonstrate the “unrealised potential” of the apartment building, Webb has gathered together 30 examples of recent developments from around the world.

Coyle site TIF abuse: "Because subsidizing wealthy, out of town developers is the only thing our economic development director knows how to do with our tax money."

Hint: Those little white nodules are the unregulated rental properties.

I'm going to borrow Randy's introduction to what became a well-populated Facebook discussion.

On Thursday, the New Albany city council is set to approve $4.9 million in redevelopment borrowing for site prep and infrastructure upgrades to the Coyle site on Spring Street. 190 units of what are being called luxury apartments plus 2,000 s.f. of commercial space are to be built there by Flaherty Collins of Indianapolis. What do you think?

There were many replies, which I'll purposefully restrict to a sampling only because I've bigger fish to fry.

• My opinion on this is to look who comes out after voting on this with full pockets.
• Is Spring Street going to be made into a 2-way street? If not, think about the difficulty accessing the apartments? 
• How far to the nearest grocery store?
• Rentals or condos, doesn't really matter to me. To draw the clientele they want to attract, there needs to be more in downtown. 
• A good grant researcher/writer would go a L-O-N-G way.
• I don't know if luxury is the right term. The last I heard the units were being targeted towards young professionals, who I absolutely believe would want to live in this neighborhood. I don't necessarily agree with the path being taken to build something like this but that doesn't mean I think it's not needed or won't work.

Randy addressed the political aspect.

Since this is our money, I think that makes it political. I can't just write a check every six months and then not care how it's spent. And yes, it's TIF money. That's our money, too. The certifier must work with an enormous multiplier to believe that the new taxes we get far in the future make this a good investment. 

Jeff Gillenwater promptly began driving nails.

Because our Democratically controlled city council will likely rubber stamp it without so much as a passing reference to the now decades long failure of trickle down economics?

Because the public will be on the hook for millions in entirely private luxury to which they'll have no access?

I at least hope the district's councilman will vote against it.

We could easily reconfigure the downtown/midtown street grid for less and see a higher rate of return in both private investment and public well being. That would be a worthy TIF goal. This is TIF abuse.

I subsequently noted the obvious, or at least what should be obvious to those without Kool Aid stains on their suit jackets.

Currently a half-dozen developers are rehabbing downtown properties into residential space. They're doing it almost entirely on their own dimes, gradually and sustainably, sans breathless incentives. I simply find it appalling that we're forever willing to provide breaks to entities of a certain size that don't need them, while allowing small and independent business to spin the wheel.

To which Jeff replied (emphasis mine):

And you can bet that if all those local players hadn't already invested millions of their own, this developer wouldn't be looking at New Albany at all. Using TIF properly to improve shared infrastructure rewards those local investors, induces further investment, and helps level the playing field. Using it this way does the exact opposite across the board.

I added a final thought of my own.

Lest we forget, hoping that our councilman Greg Phipps is reading: Everything we're discussing here has been summarized by David Duggins with one special word: "Boilerplate."

Just another day with the same usual suspects, and their same customary cash flow. Indie businesses often refer to recirculation of money through local economies. What we see here is the recirculation of political wheel-greasing slush.

To conclude, Jeff summarized two major themes in magisterial fashion. First, how to do it right. Next, how the current City Hall occupant continues doing it wrong.

The only thing we have to do in the oldest parts of our city to attract young folks, old folks, and in-between folks is to allow them to function as they were designed. We already have an enviable collection of assets and plenty of smarts not represented in local decision making. Return the infrastructure to a safer, multi-modal pattern with a few modern updates, make sure stuff is accessible and works, and then largely get the hell out of the way. Some will want to live in it, some will want to live near it, and others will visit regularly. It's cheap, it's easy, it's the primary function of local government, it's the only part private parties can't do on their own, and the pattern is right in front of us. All the $750,000 pocket parks, $3 million single streets, $9 million aquatic centers, multi-million developer subsidies, and other largely irrelevant schemes in the world don't change that.

We keep electing people who want to be the absentee dad who shows up on random weekends to take the kids to the amusement park and buy them ice cream.

What we need is a mom during the week.

I can't recall it being said any better, and Jeff already knows that I'll be borrowing that last line.

As new attitudes have fed the Indianapolis area's apartment boom, old attitudes doom New Albany's.

Here in New Albany, we spend much time over beer, coffee and various illicit pharmaceuticals discussing the perennial disconnect between theory and practice.

For instance, just about everyone taking a position on the future of downtown acknowledges that more people need to live there. Granted, our Slumlord Empowerment Districts (i.e., historic neighborhoods) lie only a short distance from downtown, but after a decade spent trying to make the point that ideas like walkability and complete streets apply to these neighborhoods just as much as free federal stabilization monies when it comes to effectively connecting them with downtown, the powers that be still look at messengers like us as though we were extras populating the cantina scene in Star Wars.

The only downtown housing solution ever advanced during the past decade of muddle was the catastrophic Mainland Properties proposal to use a $15 million parking garage as collateral to find the money its backers didn't possess, perhaps leading eventually to habitation at DC-level prices. Meanwhile, empty buildings still sit, unused and rotting, and there hasn't been a new building erected downtown since the Redmen's Club (later Steinert's) ... which remains vacant.

Perhaps, in the end, our perennial disconnect reflects our enduring contempt for education. If one persists in thinking that an empty-nester is someone who didn't get lucky last night at the Road House, and a millennial is a flower that returns to bloom each spring, then it's hard to picture this city ever turning the corner on downtown housing.

After all, valuable corners are meant to be sacrificed for a farmers market, not for thinking outside self-imposed boxes. And so we stumble, dully, into the future.

New attitudes have fed Indianapolis area's apartment boom, by Chris Sikich (Indy Star)

 ... Changing attitudes and lifestyles have boosted the apartment industry even as the new home market has emerged from the recession, said Drew Klacik, senior policy analyst at the Indiana University Public Policy Institute.

• Millennials, he said, are interested in living in an urban environment without the long-term binds of mortgages. Millennials are a key demographic, expected to grow from 36 percent of the workforce today to 50 percent by the end of the decade, according to Denver-based Progressive Urban Management Associates.

• Empty-nesters, he said, are ready to downsize and give up the maintenance headaches associated with home ownership. The first wave of baby boomers reached 65 in 2011, and the last will turn 65 in 2029.

"Millennials and empty-nesters want walkable new urban neighborhoods," Klacik said. "The stuff Carmel and Westfield are doing is a really big deal, and that really is the trend."