"Historic preservation, in practice, is not about preserving history. It is about preserving the lifestyle of an affluent urban elite."

I remain broadly in favor of historic preservation, although probably not with the same level of enthusiasm as before. This might have to do with the zealousness of others leading to Reisz-like outcomes for the local ruling elites, although perhaps it's a function of curmudgeonly attainment.

But solar panels? As the story mentions, there was a bit of a rollback after the bad publicity started coming in.

When Historic Preservation Hurts Cities, by Binyamin Appelbaum (New York Times)

The madness of prohibiting solar panels on the rooftops of historic buildings illustrates how preservation culture has run amok.

I live in a historic neighborhood in the heart of Washington, D.C. It’s not historic in the sense that anything especially important happened here — certainly not in the modest rowhouses that make up the bulk of the neighborhood. What “historic” means, here and in cities across the country, is that this is a neighborhood where buildings are not supposed to change.

The law says window frames on Capitol Hill must be wooden, or something that looks very much like wood. If a front door has two parts and opens down the middle, it cannot be replaced by a single door that swings open from the side. If the house was built two stories tall, it must remain two stories tall — unless the addition can’t be seen from the street.

Humans don’t like change, so it’s not surprising that historic preservation laws have become quite popular. There are now more than 2,300 local historic districts across the United States, and I know many people who would like to have their own neighborhood frozen in time.

But historic preservation comes at a cost: It obstructs change for the better. And while that price is generally invisible, it is now on public display because of the city’s efforts to prevent Washington homeowners in historic neighborhoods from installing visible rooftop solar panels ...

Buttigieg, housing and homelessness? This Twitter thread by Luke Savage is a must-read.

Luke Savage writes for Jacobin.

"This week I did some research on Mayor Pete Buttigieg's administration and South Bend. There's a lot more work I need to do on his policies overall, but specifically I looked into his approaches to housing and homelessness - both of which I think both deserve sharp criticism."

Read the whole thread here. I was struck by this tweet.

Hmm, where have I heard the name of Barnes & Thornburg? Was it in a Marx Brothers movie?

Charlestown residents to John Neace (and Bob Hall): "We ask you now: please abandon your plans to raze and replace our homes in Pleasant Ridge."

Are Deaf Gahan's ears burning yet?

Your desire to bulldoze our entire neighborhood is neither just nor transparent. It is unjust to tell us–after decades of pouring care and love into our homes and being responsible homeowners, who have every right to keep what we’ve worked so hard to own–that we have to give everything up so you can make money.

And when you work out a backdoor deal with Mayor Hall, designed to drive our property values down so that eminent domain will be cheap and easy–that’s just immoral.

We love our homes. Your properties may be rotting around us, but we’re not going anywhere.

The web site address is here: DearJohnNeace.com

Timing of anti-Pleasant Ridge development banner removal questioned, by Danielle Grady (Tom May the Hard Way)

CHARLESTOWN — For around two weeks, the truck with an illegal banner sat on Harold Goodlett’s property.

“John Neace: Stop destroying our neighborhood,” it read, underneath an even larger address for a website telling the story of the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood.

But it wasn’t until the truck and banner were moved to a prominent location along Charlestown’s Founder’s Day parade route that a property owner received a call from the city, requesting that the sign be removed lest a citation be issued.

The city is calling the timing a coincidence, a sudden realization by the building commissioner that the sign violated the city’s zoning ordinance, brought upon by research on a separate, but similar violation. The Pleasant Ridge Neighborhood Association doesn’t think that’s the real impetus.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Vandals strike Asheville brewery: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

My initial thought upon reading about "anti-brewery vandalism" in Asheville was something on the order of: "Just their luck the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is still alive and kicking."

Indeed, the prohibitionists remain extant, drastically weakened but forever persistent. However, it's doubtful the WCTU is taking the war to Demon Craft Beer at night, clad in dark attire, masked and with spray paint in hand.

Here's the story.

Asheville’s One World Brewing Responds to Anti-Brewery Vandalism, by Jess Baker (Craft Beer Dot Com)

It’s been a frustrating week for One World Brewing, a small and independent craft brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. The brewery, which originally opened four years ago in downtown Asheville, was busy prepping to open its new location in the West Asheville district when vandals hit the brewery as well as surrounding local businesses.

The vandals scrawled messages in black spray paint on the front of the brewery’s white brick building at 520 Haywood Road: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

The vandals’ anti-brewery messages are stinging words for the Asheville beer community, a city where independent breweries are considered a major driver for tourism.

“We will not be deterred from doing what’s best for our employees and our community,” One World Brewing wrote on its Facebook and Instagram pages Thursday. “We are a homegrown, local, independently owned brewery that does so much more than just brew beer. We use beer as a platform to support so many other aspects of life that we are passionate about.”

The Asheville brewery, like many local breweries, is invested in supporting its employees as well as the community. The brewery used the incident to flip the script and talk about their strong bond with Asheville ...

Beer writer Bryan Roth, who shared the preceding link at Twitter, commented.

"anti-brewery messages" is a new one to me.

Not for Richard Florida, who mentioned the "g" word (gentrification) in a CityLab piece late last year -- or Athena Hobson, from London, two years ago.

During a shameless binge watch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I couldn’t help but notice all the references to gentrification (or in simpler terms – places becoming more trendy and modernised, which drives up the costs of living in that area, meaning poorer residents may be forced to relocate).

Hobson expands on her thought.

Don’t Blame The Brewers: Craft Beer And Gentrification, by Athena Hobson (Cultured Vultures)

First-time business owners are taking advantage of run down areas to set up shop and driving up the cost of living for local residents.

Understandably, it is gentrification that is largely responsible for provoking a deep hatred of the craft beer trend, but to what extent can we actually blame the brewers? Had it not been about beer, it may have been bubble tea cafés or ‘soul cycle’ studios. The aforementioned Cereal Killer Café has been under attack of petty vandalism as well as keyboard warriors since word spread of its opening – but would they be so successful if we weren’t so willing to buy into what they’re selling? After all, what is business but seeing a need and providing the product or service?

When you hand over your money to a company, however much or little that may be, you are funding their objectives ...

Regular blog readers residing in New Albany hardly need this reminder, but it's always better to be explicit, so kindly note that Mayor Jeff Gahan's 2017 seizure of public housing, with a stated objective of reducing the number of units by half, is an exercise in socio-economic cleansing -- and this displacement is not being conducted in a conceptual vacuum.

In fact, Gahan's war against the working poor is the logical consequence of our "success" in resuscitating downtown. It's part and parcel of gentrification, and as a "Democrat," the mayor illustrates that callous measures directed against the most vulnerable cannot always be blamed on right-wingers. 

Thanks in large part to food and drink businesses like my own brewery, with which I'm no longer involved, the historic core of the city has experienced a decade of substantive reinvestment.

The result has been an increase in "upscale" thinking, as opposed to those cross-cultural core retail stores operating downtown long ago prior to suburbanization and white flight.

As a corollary, the local political dialogue continues to narrow; either we explore ways to expand the "upscale" developments already in progress, or we do nothing at all. The ensuing shock waves are hitting those community members least able to cope economically, in part because the powers that be in New Albany view gentrification as a social phenomenon of unqualified and unquestioned good.

Few wish to contemplate the consequences, and most are willing to encourage even more of it with measures that gradually have crept beyond those designed somewhat modestly to encourage investment (as with loosened alcoholic beverage licensing in riverfront development areas), to ones like the public housing putsch that actively push social engineering, or the recent proposal (likely inevitable) to spend $8.5 million on local government wants (a new city hall) rather than affordable housing needs for a growing segment of the populace.

Back to the point. Why would someone vandalize a small brewery?

Probably for the same reason that residents of my city greet the news of another new bar or restaurant ...

The former Comfy Cow location will become a bar, but we have no further details.

Downtown NA restaurant and bar scorecard: one new location, two openings and four coming soon.

... with predictable but perfectly plausible questions like these.

Seriously, another bar?

How many downtown restaurants and bars are enough?

Will we be able to afford to eat at these latest and greatest places?

These questions have short-term answers: yes, it's too early to tell, and it's complicated.

Alcohol licensing exists to regulate drinking for the ostensible purpose of societal good, although maximum tax harvesting comes closer to the truth.

Indiana's riverfront development area mechanism is a legal construct expressly designed to "open" a delineated geographical area to licensing with fewer restrictions.

Riverfront permits have the effect of making a demarcated area slightly more free than before, because it provides a framework for licensing outside the customary allocation. It greatly reduces the overall cost of a permit, and opens the market to more participants.

As long as there is available money, and entrepreneurs are eager to spend it, there'll be contestants entering the game. We'll know when there are too many bars and restaurants when more establishments are closing than opening.

As for the pricing, this is a difficult topic somewhat outside the scope of these thoughts. I'll add only that there are fewer disparities in pricing than might appear to be the case among independent and chain/franchise when their menus are comparable, and while I'd never suggest that operators don't look for ways to squeeze a few cents more from any mark-up, it's hard to base a business model on $3 burgers and $6 beers.

There are other questions and answers, but I have no glib conclusions to offer about any of these potential digressions. I've agonized over them for years, and will continue to do so.

At the same time, there is another complementary Pandora's Box to be broached, this being the junction of morals, wages, costs and benefits pertaining to "craft" breweries as workplaces.

I've referenced work by Dave Infante on a couple of past occasions, and he's at peak provocation here.

Infante's piece raised a tremendous din in the usual beer discussion portals. About all I can do is shrug and say two things: Welcome to capitalism ... and I'm happy not to be tormented by these considerations any longer. The economics at a bar stand to be much simpler than those at a brewery.

Craft Beer’s Moral High Ground Doesn't Apply to Its Workers, by Dave Infante (Splinter News)

Scott Timms is taking a break from brewing beer. At 35, he’s been at it for 13 years, most recently having worked at Falling Sky Brewing, a popular brewpub in Eugene, OR, that regularly appears on “best of” lists in the state.

Brewing beer commercially can be hard, thankless work. “It’s a back-breaking job, lifting a hundred 50-pound bags” of ingredients and carrying them up stairs to be added to the mash, Timms says. And it can be dangerous: “You’re dealing with boiling liquids and pretty harsh chemicals that can definitely injury you…It’s not a safe job by any means.” At small breweries, where OSHA visits are unusual and procedures are unstandardized, the “outlook towards safety” can be “laissez-faire” verging on “lackadaisical,” he says.

For his work as a production manager at Falling Sky overseeing a team of brewers and working up to 65 hours a week, Timms made what came out to a little over $40,000 a year. Frustrated, he quit his brewing job in early 2018, convinced that craft brewers were getting shorted across the U.S. beer industry. “There are people making money here,” he says, “but it’s not us.”

In 2017, Lauren Michele Jackson wrote in Eater about the rise of “craft culture,” a food and beverage market that “fetishizes the authentic, the traditionally produced, and the specific [and] loathes the engineered, the mass-produced, and the originless.” Craft beer—made by brewers like Timms at more than 6,000 small, independent breweries across the country—has been a standard-bearer for this progressively infected, anti-commodity eating and drinking movement for more than two decades. Its staggering economic success has spurred an explosion of products in other food and drink categories marketed to like-minded customers. Walk the aisles of your closest Whole Foods and craft culture surrounds you.

But even as sales of craft-culture products steadily rise, the conditions for workers that make and serve those products vary widely. The labor is often physically demanding. Specialized workers are asked to “wear different hats” to make up for understaffing, and gladly answer calls for extra hours because they genuinely care about the products they’re making. Owners, either unwilling or unable to spend on quality executives, take on management responsibilities for which they have no training. The workforces are often small, giving rise to a much-touted familial intimacy that in turn can bring a distinctly familial dysfunction of favoritism and manipulation. Wages and benefits are inconsistent across industries and even within individual companies.

But craft culture is growing, and it’s bringing in a lot of money ...

Choices, choices: Will the GOP's new "Opportunity Zones" further incentivize the gentrification Deaf Gahan encourages as a DemoDisneyDixiecrat?

A breathless tout of a press release ran under the radar at the end of last week owing to fireworks mania, and it reads every bit as dismally as if it had been submitted to the understaffed and hapless News & Tribune by One Southern Indiana itself.

Actually, since Wendy Dant Chesser is prominently featured, it probably was, and you can hear the advice from the 1Si break room: heck, just send it to the 'Bune -- they'll print anything.

Note the euphoria over mere nominations to an awards program as yet largely undefined. There may be no winners to date, but the decision is coming soon, and the same old SoIn economic dishevelment grandees want you to know they're on the scent of trickle-down, not to mention tinkle-over.

Five SoIN areas nominated for federal incentives program

SOUTHERN INDIANA — Five areas in Clark and Floyd counties have been nominated as Opportunity Zones, a federal program that provides tax incentives to attract private sector investment to low-income urban and rural communities. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Thursday that he submitted a total of 156 census tracts from 58 counties to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury for the program.

• Clarksville tract 18019050401 - The approximate 1400-acre tract is bordered by Browns Station Way to the north, the Ohio River to the south, Jeffersonville to the east, and New Albany to the west.
• Jeffersonville tract 18019050199 - The heart of downtown Jeffersonville with the Ohio River to its south, across from downtown Louisville.
• Charlestown tract 18019050903 - This tract is located adjacent to River Ridge Commerce Center (RRCC), the premier industrial park with 6,000 prime acres under development in the Midwest’s top-ranked business environment.
• New Albany tracts 18043070400 and 18043070500 – Central to the City of New Albany’s recent reinvention and rise as a destination for traveling foodies, shoppers and residents alike, this census tract is ripe with opportunities for future growth.

A detailed map showing all 156 nominations

Let's try to unearth a semblance of context. Whatever it is, this sorta/kinda/maybe "opportunity zone" covers vast tracts of SoIn near the banks of the Ohio, and it's something to do with the GOP's purported tax cuts and the pressing need for the rich to become even wealthier.

Opportunity Zones In Indiana

Public Law 115-97, also known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, allows the Governor of each state to nominate certain census tracts as "Opportunity Zones".

This seems important: "low-income communities." Is there smoke from third-floor windows yet?

OPPORTUNITY ZONES: A NEW INCENTIVE FOR INVESTING IN LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES

The Opportunity Zones program is designed to incentivize patient capital investments in low-income communities nationwide. All of the underlying incentives relate to the tax treatment of capital gains, and
all are tied to the longevity of an investor’s stake in a qualified Opportunity Fund, providing the most upside to those who hold their investment for 10 years or more.

Spoiler alert: there also are dissenters, and some of them aren't socialists like me.

Will Opportunity Zones help distressed residents or be a tax cut for gentrification? by Adam Looney (Brookings)

... There is no evidence that the design of Opportunity Zones will be as effective as Empowerment Zones or other redevelopment efforts, particularly when it comes to benefits to local residents. Moreover, the theoretical effect of the Zone tax subsidies on local residents is ambiguous. It’s a subsidy based on capital appreciation, not on employment or local services, and includes no provisions intended to retain local residents or promote inclusive housing.

I'm both repelled and fascinated for reasons of local propaganda and politics.

Imagine you're Deaf Gahan (insert anguished scream here). Deaf's a good DNC center-right Democrat, one presumably opposed to the GOP's tax cuts even if he supports escalating the enrichment of capital accumulators, so long as they donate to Gahan4Life.

Now a Republican governor sitting atop a solidly Republican state apparatus has embraced a Republican-driven tax cut for wealthy investors, and that's all hunky-dory, except by doing so, he has simultaneously declared Gahan's anchor-laden Giddy Giddy City to be a Potemkin pretend-facade.

Actually, says Holcomb, downtown's a low-income wasteland in need of rescue by wealthy, GOP-suckling hoarders -- and of course, Dant Chesser nods vigorously in approval.

But downtown is Gahan's triumph, isn't it?

He says so all the time. From the moment Deaf was sworn into office, he's been taking credit for single-handedly rescuing downtown from all those Democratic predecessors, whose names appear seldom in the victorious and increasingly Orwellian narrative centering on Gahan's personality cult.

From Trump through Holcomb, and including Dant Chesser and other groveling functionaries, Gahan's pride and joy has been pinpointed as an area of economic devastation meriting alms from the rich, effectively yanking a plank of the re-election platform out from under the mayor's bunker-sore feet.

If downtown is so rosy that affordable housing units can be destroyed at will (see "Duggins Does the NAHA," weekly in this space), then how can it be that the GOP is free to declare it a disaster?

It gets even trickier.

If Gahan fights against the GOP's Opportunity Zone program, he'll be depicted as rejecting worthwhile potential cash infusions; at the same time, seeing as one of many progressive cases against the zones involves potential gentrification, well, gentrification is exactly what Team Gahan's been seeking all along.

Is Dear Leader for or against "opportunity zones"?

We may need a theologian to help unravel this pretzel, and fortunately, the nullpaper currently has two of them writing each Sunday. As for me, it's perilously close to beer-thirty ... and our overall problem hasn't changed.

Craig Ladwig ravages Bob Hall over Pleasant Ridge as Jeff "Me Too" Gahan pouts.

Don't worry, because Shane is here to help.

pluterperfect

Adjective
(comparative more pluterperfect, superlative most pluterperfect)

More than perfect

Usage notes: Seems to appear only in James Joyce's "Ulysses"

And now, also in Ladwig's column, although if Bob Hall is more than perfect, where does that leave Jeff Gahan?

Ladwig's going to need an excellent new word when he gets around to analyzing NA.

LADWIG: About Pleasant Ridge, by Craig Ladwig (N & T)

 ... We used to joke here about the occasional politician who seemed to wish that he commanded a better class of citizenry, that he could replace them with a more sophisticated bunch. Today, too many Indiana mayors and councils adopt that very attitude. In doing so, they thumb their noses at the true driver of community development — respect for individuals and property.

The pluterperfect bad example is Bob Hall, mayor of Charlestown. Mayor Hall told a judge the other day, “I know it’s not politically correct to say this, but when you have a low-rent district, it invites people who are not contributing to society.”

The mayor was referring to Pleasant Ridge, an older section of town whose residents say he is conspiring with a private developer to raze their homes. Their attorney has presented evidence that the city is secretly attempting to lower property values there using selective enforcement of city codes to force those “low rent” residents out and make way for the more aesthetically pleasing.

Municipal policy throughout Indiana increasingly is directed toward punitive zoning, tax breaks for politically favored developers and subsidies for “quality of place” projects such as upscale subdivisions, classy downtown apartments, sports facilities, jogging trails and other recreational and entertainment amenities.

These supposedly will attract that better class of citizen through national corporations and the young professionals they bring with them. Does it work? More specifically, does it work for the people who actually call your town home?

Not unless you are in a small circle of insiders and political operatives — and then only for a limited time until bonding and tax revenue is exhausted. The strategy ignores how wealth is created or how Indiana towns have historically prospered.

Dr. Berry Keating and Dr. Maryann O. Keating want you to consider another approach. They will present a white paper at the Dec. 2 meeting of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation comparing the sense of well-being of various Indiana cities.

It suggests that the cities that do best are those whose governments addresses the basic needs of actual residents rather than the aspirations of prospective ones.

Gentrification and the art of the restaurant review.

The review is worth it for the preface about gentrification. Just yesterday, I saw a comment elsewhere to this effect: "Working class people can't always afford to eat at local restaurants."

I have no glib reply, but there's a discussion waiting to happen.

Plot, London: restaurant review, by Jay Rayner (The Guardian)

As the gentrification wave reaches Tooting in south London, a new diner makes itself at home in the local market

It would be a mistake to write about Plot, a sliver of a restaurant serving terrible cocktails and great food in one of south London’s traditional covered markets, without first rehearsing the arguments around gentrification. It demands that context. We know where the G-word starts: with a bunch of self-serving fiscal policies which attract oligarchs and other non-doms up to their nipples in filthy cash into London. They buy up all the property, forcing the merely well-off out to the inner suburbs, who in turn force up prices. Each socio-economic group goes further and further out of the centre.

Those on lower, but still good incomes, come in search of cheaper property, and with them come businesses to service their needs. High streets which were once full of shops selling things that people actually need become infested by men with beards making pulled pork. Suddenly there are artisanal coffee shops, and clashing food concepts fusing the traditional dishes of Cambodia with, say, those of Wales.

Caricature aside, there have generally been only two ways to view this. Either all economic activity is good and to be applauded. Yay, for pulled pork and so on. Or gentrification makes everyday life prohibitively expensive for the traditional populations of these areas, who are on lower incomes and deserve better. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. What matters is an enlightened approach by landlords and local councils to managing the high-street economy. Get it wrong and a neighbourhood really can disappear up its own gilded fundament. Get it right and there’s more money for the council to run its services.

Tooting High Road is going through the process right now and, for the most part, it seems to be working ...

Means-testing in New Gahania? It's highly doubtful that neighborhoods can be revitalized without gentrification.

Can you so much as imagine Jeff Gahan leading the Floyd County Democratic Party in a discussion of Community Land Trusts, when CLTs wouldn't benefit the same old suspects?

After all, New Gahania has strict principles of means testing.

A means test is a determination of whether a for-profit development is eligible for government assistance, based upon whether the developer or corporate entity possesses the means to donate to a local politician's re-election campaign.

Cooperative, schmo-operative. They simply don't wet sufficient beaks.

Can Neighborhoods Be Revitalized Without Gentrifying Them? by Michelle Chen (The Nation)

Baltimore’s new housing plan could provide a form of neighborhood uplift that benefits communities, not developers.

 ... Under the CLT’s cooperative ownership structure, the resident owns the property, while the community retains the land. The resident pays an annual leasing fee, plus other mortgage and maintenance expenses. When the property is sold, price is controlled through a prearranged agreement with a community authority, with representation from neighbors and “public stakeholders” such as local officials or community-development organizations. The homeowner can share in any appreciation of the sales value.

When these community controls are leveraged against market forces, neighborhoods can ensure a communally managed recycling of ownership, and avoid the frenzied churn of renters and developers commonly associated with boom-bust speculation and gentrification.

The model could also be applied to commercial properties, including self-sustaining small businesses in struggling neighborhoods. Or it could help establish community space, as East Baltimore’s Amazing Grace Lutheran Church has already done by stewarding a recreational green space known as the “sacred commons.”

Pleasant Ridge in the NYT: All that nice outside money waiting to be invested, and all those low-income people refusing to get out of the way.

If you live in New Albany, you're advised to pay close attention to the ongoing saga of Pleasant Ridge, a neighborhood in Charlestown, which has been covered in some depth by both the News and Tribune (links below) and the Courier-Journal. On February 11, the story reached the New York Times.

Many of these same themes are playing out right here as Jeff Gahan seeks to remove affordable public housing -- and many of you are looking the other way, quietly pleased that someone finally is "cleaning up The Project" without stopping to consider the nature of the tactics, and without realizing that these tactics, once deemed acceptable, needn't stop with public housing residents who are in the way of big money.

Gahan considers himself a model Democrat (Clintonian sub-species), while Charlestown's mayor Bob Hall at least dispenses with Gahan's hypocrisy by embracing his inner Republican. Apart for disdain for the poor, apparently they have one other signal trait in common.

"Mr. Hall did not respond to requests for an interview."

Familiar, isn't it?

The NYT article is broken into three "teaser" sections.

Where a City Sees Decay, Neighbors Fight to Save a Community, by Monica Davey (New York Times)

 On Friday, residents who hope to save Pleasant Ridge filed a request for a preliminary injunction in state court, aided by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that sees what is happening here as a troubling new way for a city, in essence, to clear land.

“What’s very unusual about this is using code enforcement to circumvent eminent domain law,” said Jeff Rowes, a lawyer in the case, which asks a judge to stop the city. “And we’re worried about this becoming a model — the model for how to replace housing for people of modest means in states everywhere that have passed limits on the powers of eminent domain.”

SNIP

Michael Gillenwater, the city attorney, says what is happening in Pleasant Ridge, where a private developer has begun accumulating lots, is all about safety, not wealth ... “We’re not going to ever make a dime on this,” Mr. Gillenwater said. “It’s a matter of helping out the city and the people in the long run. All we’re doing is trying to have safe housing.”

“This is not about rich and poor,” Mr. Gillenwater continued. “When you’ve got the crime, the drugs, animals running about, this is about life and death.”

SNIP

“There’s no question that there are problems,” said Josh Craven, who lives here and is president of a homeowners association that has grown out of this fight. “But the city let this happen over all these years. They allowed the slumlords to come in, to not live up to the property maintenance code. They’ve let this go on so long that you can’t come in now and say, ‘Oh, you have to repair everything now or we’re going to fine you thousands of dollars every day so that you just have to sell to get out from under the debt.’”

February 9
Pleasant Ridge residents pursue court action to stop building code fines from the city of Charlestown, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)
Neighborhood Association filed lawsuit in January

January 11
Pleasant Ridge Neighborhood Association sues city of Charlestown over building fines, by Elizabeth Beilman (News and Tribune)
Lawsuit claims several Constitutional rights violated

"Gentrification has a much bigger effect and poses far bigger risks for renters."

New Albany is gentrifying, at least in comparative terms.

Taking into consideration the Gahan administration's emphasis on scattered pockets of heavily subsidized "luxury," the mayor's concurrent war on public housing -- which in reality is far less "welfare" than affordable housing for the working poor -- and his failure to fully mobilize rental property inspections, it's clear that the risk of displacement described by Florida will be borne (yet again) by those New Albanians least able to cope.

Gentrification Has Virtually No Effect on Homeowners; The risk of displacement falls largely on renters, by Richard Florida (CityLab)

Gentrification is the hottest of hot-button urban issues. Many activists and critics see it as essentially a process by which more affluent and educated white newcomers displace poorer, working-class black residents. But those who have studied the subject closely, like Columbia University urban planner Lance Freeman, believe that the issue of displacement is more myth than reality. In fact, Freeman’s detailed empirical research has found that the probability of a family being displaced by gentrification in New York City was a mere 1.3 percent.

Now a recent study by Isaac William Martin and Kevin Beck in Urban Affairs Review helps deepen our understanding of the issue of displacement. It’s the first study I’ve come across that separates out the effects of gentrification on renters versus homeowners. Previous research, including Freeman’s landmark research, grouped renters and owners together ...

(ALL THE SUPPORTING EVIDENCE IS HERE IN THIS GAP)

... The big takeaway is that gentrification has a much bigger effect and poses far bigger risks for renters, who tend to have lower incomes, are subject to rising rents, and can be evicted from their apartments. For many today, the solution to today’s urban housing affordability problem is to deregulate land use and build more housing. But this is likely to help more advantaged homeowners, who already benefit from the substantial subsidy that comes from their ability to deduct the interest paid on their mortgages. It’s time for housing policy to focus on lower-income renters who face the highest housing burdens—and the biggest risk of being displaced by gentrification.

Long read: "How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood."

The good, the bad and the ugly. But: Brewery District.

How Cincinnati Salvaged the Nation’s Most Dangerous Neighborhood, by Colin Woodard (Politico Magazine)

... It’s a transformation that’s happened in a blink of an eye, turning a neighborhood that in 2009 topped Compton in Los Angeles for the “most dangerous” title into something that looks and feels like Greenwich Village. And it didn’t happen by accident. Virtually everything that’s occurred in Over-the-Rhine—from the placement of the trees in the park to the curation of ground floor businesses—has been meticulously planned and engineered by a single, corporate-funded and decidedly non-governmental entity.

Community wealth: Seven strikes and Break Wind's out.

That embarrassing moment when you realize ...

7 Paths to Development That Bring Neighborhoods Wealth, Not Gentrification, by Marjorie Kelly and Sarah McKinley (Yes! Magazine)

In cities across the nation, a few enjoy rising affluence while many struggle to get by.

An August 2015 study by The Century Foundation reported that—after a dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000—poverty has since reconcentrated. Nationwide, the number of people living in high-poverty ghettos and slums has nearly doubled since 2000. This situation is created in part by the practices of traditional economic development, which prioritize corporate subsidy after corporate subsidy over the needs of the local economy. Current trends threaten to worsen, unless we can answer the design challenge before us.

Can we create an economic system—beginning at the local level—that builds the wealth and prosperity of everyone?

 ... that in New Albany, we're nowhere close to any of these seven paths, because ...

1. Place
2. Ownership
3. Multipliers
4. Collaboration
5. Inclusion
6. Workforce
7. System

 ... taking them -- even considering such directional heresies -- would devolve control away from the big fish in their little ponds. Still, the article is recommended. They have their Disney fetish, and I have hopeful things like this.

"Why Indianapolis is a test case for a fairer form of gentrification."

That word again -- not gentrification, but "fairer." It isn't always used in this context.

Why Indianapolis is a test case for a fairer form of gentrification, by Cara Courage (The Guardian)

“I helped change one neighbourhood into a hipster place, and then we got priced out of there.” Artist Jim Walker is describing the shift in fortunes of the Fountain Square district of Indianapolis, where his Big Car arts collective was born a decade ago – and of the artists and residents who have been forced to move on by the neighbourhood’s gentrification.

Walker’s experience is an increasingly familiar story in cities around the world – a tale of urban pioneers who play a central role in the redevelopment of a downtown area, only to find themselves unable to afford to stay there. Is there a more equitable way? That’s just what Walker is trying to find out with his latest arts-led Indianapolis project.

The twist is a "land trust."

While some lower-rent properties are still available in Fountain Square, the change led Walker to look at other areas in the city that could offer the vacant space Big Car’s operation requires. But this time, Walker wanted to do it differently – pushing for a model of regeneration that places the arts in control of the development process; a model that keeps artists and locals at the centre of the change, and should prevent residents from getting priced out.

His Big Car collective is now busy in Garfield Park, a disinvested area on the south side of Indianapolis, having located a new home on one of the city’s arterial routes, Shelby Street, which is lined by a small parade of service stores, a secondhand bookshop and a cafe.

Thanks to city government and philanthropic help as well as its own funds, Big Car has bought a “land trust”, as Walker calls it, “for the artists working hard with neighbours to improve the area”. The development includes two former factories now repurposed as studios, exhibition and performance spaces, and the Listen Hear sound-art gallery and radio station – located in what used to be a laundromat. Vacant houses are being renovated into affordable homes for artists; Big Car is also a key partner in a community-led safer streets programme, and in talks to bring Indianapolis’s rapid transit to the area.

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.

Zirin: "Gentrification Is the Real Scandal Surrounding Jackie Robinson West."

In wintertime, daily life in the Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition and Backwardness often revolves around sports. Last week, it was a debate about the politics of Little League.

... Little League Baseball confirmed the news on Wednesday, forcing Illinois' All-Stars (Jackie Robinson West) to vacate its U.S. Championship over Nevada and Great Lakes Valley Regional victory over Indiana. The announcement also declared New Albany a Great Lakes Valley champion, the town's first such honor.

Fulfilling my duty as resident civic contrarian, let's pole-vault past the cacophonous blather about scandalous adult cheating, childhood heartache, overdue victory parades and selective exurban zoning. Rather, let's look at a different side of the story.

Gentrification Is the Real Scandal Surrounding Jackie Robinson West, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

 ... As for the decision itself, ironies abound. Jackie Robinson West was the first entirely black team to represent the United States in the Little League World Series. And yes, waiting until Black History Month to strip JRW of their title is at best tin-eared. But that insult shouldn’t blind us to the greater injury. Recall their damnable offense: Jackie Robinson West didn’t use 16-year-old ringers or cork their bats. They had players suit up who lived “beyond their geographical boundary.” The fact that the adults in charge of JRW felt the need to breach this rule perhaps has something to do with the fact that today’s urban landscape supports baseball about as well as concrete makes proper soil for orchids. A plurality of Major Leaguers is made up of people from either the US suburbs or the baseball factories of the Dominican Republic. Many of the few African-American players on Major League rosters actually come from the suburbs. This is because twenty-first-century neoliberal cities have gentrified urban black baseball to death. Boys and Girls Clubs have become bistros. Baseball fields are condos and in many cities, Little League is non-existent. The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate. That’s what made JRW such a profound anomaly. In Chicago particularly, which under Mayor Rahm Emanuel has seen school closures and brutal cuts to physical education programs, their success made people believe that—with apologies to Tupac—flowers could in fact grow in concrete.

Creeping gentrification, international brands, a "criminal loss of patrimony" ... and Barcelona.

If the business of business is of such significance, then why aren't these small businesses eligible for the Unesco World Heritage List?

Historic Loss May Follow Rise of Rents in Barcelona, by Raphael Minder (NYT)

In the center of Barcelona’s scenic old city, a once-historic bookshop is being turned into a store for Mango, the giant clothing retailer. A maker of combs, founded in 1922, is now a big-name bag store. And a toy store, owned by the same family since the Spanish Civil War, has been converted into an outlet for Geox, the Italian footwear company.

The changes are more than the result of the kind of creeping gentrification that has reshaped so many cities worldwide. Here, and across Spain, historic districts are being transformed as tens of thousands of small, often family-run shops face the end of decades of rent controls this year.

It is not that the establishments did not know the changes were coming — they had 20 years’ warning. But slowly, now suddenly, that time has arrived, provoking 11th-hour resistance as small shops are pushed from historic districts by an inundation of international brands, which are virtually the only ones that can afford the staggering spike in rents.

The rapid turnover has spurred soul-searching and debate about just how far the city should go to protect its distinctive character in the face of the homogenization that accompanies the arrival of multinational chain stores.

The removal of traditional stores from the old city center, known as the Gothic Quarter, is “a criminal loss of patrimony in a city that is getting drowned by big money and international brands and is losing all sense of history, order and proper urban planning,” said Josep Maria Roig, the owner of La Colmena, a pastry shop founded in 1872.

Gentrification is a thorny matter.

File under "topics seldom broached at city council meetings," or for that matter, anywhere else in town. It's a lengthy essay, and one worth reading

The thorny matter of gentrification, by Kaid Benfield (SWiTCHBOARD)

A few days ago, I made a presentation to a group of thoughtful and accomplished philanthropists on sustainable land development. I made a strong pitch for urban revitalization and was countered with a question about gentrification, the messy phenomenon that occurs if longtime residents of older neighborhoods find themselves priced out of their own communities as those neighborhoods become more sought-after and valuable. To be honest, I don’t think I handled the question particularly well.

I never do, really, even though it comes up a lot. The issue is just too thorny on all sides and, in most cases, racially charged, because minority populations are the ones who feel squeezed when more affluent, generally white, residents rediscover cities and move in. I have a lot of sympathy for long-timers who fear losing control of their neighborhoods and, in too many cases, their very homes as rents and property taxes go up with increased value brought on by increased demand. But, on the other hand, the environmental, fiscal and, yes, social benefits of revitalization and repopulation of our older, frequently distressed neighborhoods are so substantial that I believe strongly that they must continue.

"Can you have revitalization, reinvestment, renewal without some level of gentrification?"

Shared streets, shared neighborhoods. Food for thought.

Moving On From Gentrification to 'Shared Neighborhoods', by Brent Toderian (HuffPost blog)

As the renaissance of cities and urban areas in North America continues, more and more neighborhoods are struggling with the challenges of change. Although the market's rediscovery of inner-city, walkable, mixed-use communities is an excellent thing in many ways, the word "gentrification" inevitably comes up in almost every discussion. But one person's gentrification is another person's revitalization, so the debate is always complex and heated.

Can you have revitalization, reinvestment, renewal without some level of gentrification? Probably not, as any perceived improvement in the eyes of the marketplace changes the economics. I do though, continue to believe that in planning for community change, there are reasonable levels of gentrification, that gentrification can be strategically managed, and that we can have "revitalization without displacement." In fact, this phrase has been the vision for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) for years.