"Chalfant Industries plans to turn two properties on Main Street, as well as a Bank Street lot into condominiums and retail space."

The Green Mouse says Dan Coffey's already pestering Matt Chalfant about using the condo building's ground-floor garage to park cars and raise money for the household electricity bill at Harvest Homecoming in 2019.

I had the good fortune to chat with Matt a few weeks back and hear of his plans for this development. He already owned the Main Street frontage. The redevelopment commission process was honored (perhaps with Duggins gone, we won't have to append "in the breach" any longer to sentences like this), and the "donation" of the remaining property seems a proper incentive. Most importantly, these empty spaces will be going back on the tax rolls.

Let's be clear about something. I dislike the incentives awarded Flaherty and Collins for its Break Wind Lofts and Duggins Flats, and when the mayor first started babbling about "the business of residency" I was looking for an available bucket in which to deposit my opinion of his sloganeering skills.

But filling these dead zones with places for people to live downtown is absolutely imperative. Are you reading and listening, Mark Seabrook?

Perhaps its best not to wait until 2019 to divulge your plan for infill residency.

Since we already screwed up the potential of the Farmers Market site, where a building like Chalfant's eventually would be constructed, other vacant lots nearby need to be maximized -- and as Chalfant has proven again and again, if the idea is good, the arm's-length list of giveaways can be avoided.

C'mon, GOP delegation. What would YOU do? 

New Albany donates land for $3.2 million condo, commercial development, by Danielle Grady (It Happened in Jeffersonville)

Chalfant Industries plans to turn two properties on Main Street, as well as a Bank Street lot into condominiums and retail space.

NEW ALBANY — The city of New Albany and a developer hope to bring new housing options to downtown New Albany by transforming a vacant Bank Street property into condominiums and commercial space.

Chalfant Industries, Inc., owned by Matt Chalfant, has plans to turn the grassy lawn of 32 Bank St. into 13 condominiums starting at around $200,000 with two spaces for businesses on the first floor.

The land, which until one month ago was owned by the city of New Albany, will join two properties Chalfant has owned for two years on Main Street right next to the Bank Street lot, allowing Chalfant’s project to face the busier downtown street.

Those drab "luxury" condos and apartments? "Policymakers, pretty much across the board, don't value design."

I'm just trying to figure out why The Breakwater Lofts at Duggins Flats gets an exemption from the street spam ordinance.

Those 'Luxury' Condos Look A Little Drab (WBUR)

In cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver and Charlotte, new "luxury" condos and apartment buildings are going up to meet demand for new housing. But many of these buildings look like simple, plain boxes.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with architecture critic and author Sarah Williams Goldhagen (@SarahWGoldhagen) about what makes these buildings "poor," "boring" architecture, and how monotonous architecture actually negatively affects us.

On why there are so many of these kinds of buildings being built

"There are a lot of different reasons for it. If you separate it out into supply and demand, one is that that's what's being built, so that's what's cheap to build, because the wheels are greased for that kind of architecture. Buy in bulk. That's what the market has been giving and so it's easy to give that. The second reason is that there's a general point of view, both among real estate developers, who are building these buildings, and among clients who are buying these buildings, that good design ... is an unaffordable luxury. And we know two things now: one, it's not unaffordable. It costs just as much to build a well-designed building as a poorly designed building. And neither is it a luxury because the research is clearly showing that people actually respond very poorly to those bad buildings.

Dunman: "Development without preservation isn’t a risk worth taking."

If Louisville is ranked the 11th-poorest city in the country, what does it say about a place like New Albany, which for decades has happily agreed to be the low-rent whipping boy of the Louisville metro area in exchange for reliable slumlord campaign contributions and extractive heavy industry "development" models?

(An aside: As I write, the city council is about to trumpet the "reform" of our building codes, a revision that will not include rental property registration, with both major parties evidently agreeing that it would be far too expensive to raise the bar, when a lowered bar affords so many practical campaign donations)

Back to Dunman's essay. It's like we said during the time of Mainland's River View project: Who's going to buy the pricey condos?

Couldn't the same money be spread out between historic rehabs and selected infill, and achieve better results?

Wouldn't the millennials be more likely to live in more affordably priced properties in neighborhoods near downtown?

Of course, they'd be more inclined to do so if we put the genuine clamp on slumlords and made our streets walkable and bikeable -- but 79-year-olds like Irv Stumler, extractors like Tiger Trucking and rental property owners like mayoral candidate Kevin Zurschmiede) stand in the way of rationality ... don't they?

So, why do we tolerate them?

Joe Dunman: Development without preservation isn’t a risk worth taking, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

... Louisville is not a rich city, after all. In fact, it was recently ranked the 11th-poorest city in the country. Its young professionals are few in number and aren’t, as a group, paid very handsomely. And housing is not so limited or overpriced that quality apartments, condos, and even single-family homes can’t be found for affordable prices very close to a downtown that remains mostly a daytime destination for white-collar commuters.

New residential developments like the proposed condo building in Butchertown are risky endeavors. And without preservation restrictions, there is a danger that historic structures will be lost to new projects that end up vacant or underutilized if demand for pricey condos and studio apartments fails to fully materialize.

Downtown Louisville condo dividends.

It's a brief piece offering the case for downtown Louisville residency in general, and condo living in particular, but the number that strikes me is 86 (see below).

How many condo units were in that original River View plan?

Downtown Dividends, by Tara Anderson (Insider Louisville)

Bob Holt, a 47-year-old lifelong South End resident, has picked out his new 700-square-foot studio condo at the Mercantile Gallery Lofts on Market Street, and it’s just a matter of paperwork before he can move in ...

... According to the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors, 86 units sold in downtown last year for an average price of $135,035. A decade ago, so few condos were sold or for sale in downtown Louisville that they were grouped with Old Louisville, Shively, Butchertown and the West End. “I work in the early stages of the construction industry, so we see more product going out, and that tells us things are starting to pick up some,” Holt says. “I’m getting in incredibly cheap. Five years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a 15 to 20 percent increase in value.”
And, of course, he can spend his weekends doing something besides mowing the lawn.