ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART ONE: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART ONE: Yellow lines, and what comes due.
ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART TWO: You actually can get something for nothing.
ON THE AVENUES REWOUND, PART THREE: Anatomy of a red herring.

Since this was written last fall, I've decided that Wile E. Rosenbarger is anything but benign. He's taken credit for bringing the world leader in street sense, Jeff Speck, to New Albany, after which Speck was hired to study our Miller Lite of a street grid and recommend modernity. Now Rosenbarger will fight behind the scenes against whatever Speck recommends, and when the whole project collapses, he'll blame either the stupidity of Joe Sixpack, the cowardice of politicians, or both, and intimate that the only way for us to weather the ensuing nastiness is continue paying him to pretend he's Gail Wynand.

Apart from that, I stick with the following. Thus far, entrepreneurial capital has made the difference in New Albany. The rest is sophistry (see Part Three).

---

ON THE AVENUES: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor ... originally published on September 9, 2013

On Tuesday I visited an old pal to do some catching up.

He’s a Louisville restaurateur whose business is located in the epicenter of Frankfort Avenue. As we spoke over a cool adult libation, a steady stream of walkers, joggers and cyclists traveled past. It’s a thriving area with a strong indie ethos. There are a handful of retail vacancies, but not many. The neighborhood around my buddy’s place is filled with homes worth double or greater the value of equivalent structures in New Albany.

In short, Frankfort Avenue is fun and livable, and it’s the same milieu once publicly shunned by a New Albany city councilman, who feared our town might become too much like it. Yogi Berra couldn’t have said it any better than L’il Stevie: No one goes there anymore because it’s way too crowded.

Granted, my friend’s business always has been difficult to reach in peak periods – and the parking at times is gruesome. But even now, when me and the wife spend so much of our own free time in downtown New Albany, we still make the transit over to the Frankfort Avenue area every other week. Yes, there are lots of people therein. Travel can be quite slow, and parking often is a pain – and yet, precisely owing to these factors and others that flow from urban density, there is abundant life on every corner.

It’s a worthwhile destination, and so we seek it out.

So there I was on Tuesday afternoon, ensconced a stone’s throw from Frankfort Avenue -- and all my friend wanted to talk about was my town, not his. He said that recently his family was in New Albany for an entire day, just exploring, shopping, eating and drinking. He professed fascination with the atmosphere and history, and conceded that there’s enough to do in New Albany to occupy a whole weekend without once venturing into Louisville.

He asked me: How are you guys managing to do this?

My answer: Pretty much all on our own, as entrepreneurs, volunteers and chief bottle washers.

“But what about local government? What has it done?”

Crickets chirped. Pins dropped.

Somewhere, a skateboarder barked at a dog.

---

The single most important step toward New Albany’s revitalization ever taken by any portion of city government was the council’s approval in 2006 of the riverfront development area, and the subsequent availability of non-quota 3-way alcoholic beverage permits.

It’s true that the Urban Enterprise Association’s façade grants have been helpful, as has Develop New Albany’s networking. While I’ve not always agreed with Clean and Green’s program of beautification, at least the work has come from private donations. The Horseshoe Foundation’s revolving loans have been useful, too.

Other than these entities, and with One Southern Indiana abjectly negligible, most of the entire record of revitalization has been written by entrepreneurs, ranging from business owners through developers and facilitators like Steve Resch. There are too many names of over-achieving, life-savings-grade investors to mention all of them here, but it should suffice to say that apart from a perpetually well-intentioned bully pulpit, local New Albany government largely has been AWOL – chronically under-funded, often paying more attention (and granting very real tax abatements) to larger companies in industrial parks, or just uninformed, disorganized and obsessed with political irrelevancies.

It isn’t that I’m not thankful for their moral support. It isn’t that the politician types aren’t trying the best they know how, with the tools at their disposal. It’s just that the haphazard, uncoordinated and plainly strange way we’re now approaching street grid reform has me fearing the worst.

And those fears have a history of being realized.

---

This blog began in 2004. In 2005, the Garner administration publicly (and with exaggerated and paranoid caution) casually mentioned the concept of impending two-way street conversions.

Nothing happened.

Garner’s successor, King England III, talked quite a lot about the topic. In truth, there may never again be a mayor who talked as much.

By the way, nothing happened then, either.

Now, a full eight years after the first muffled and muted Hauss Square mutterings somehow leaked into the newspaper of record, we’re told that when it comes to two-way traffic, the current Mayor Jeff Gahan is said to be “for it” – so much so that City Hall has yet to make an official statement supporting two-way streets ... and David Duggins, Gahan’s economic development adjutant, has offered no public utterances on the topic to date.

Now, I believe what I’ve heard through the grapevine, but at this juncture, the administration’s only real comments on the matter have been made at council meetings by city planner John Rosenbarger, and I’m sorry: This is rather like President Barack Obama trotting out the head of the Postal Service to reveal bombing plans for Syria.

All Rosenbarger can do is speak nuts and bolts to engineering wonks. The political side of this – and yes, so long as Bob Caesar seeks to hold back the evil forces of modernity, there is a political side – falls to officials quite apart from the planner. They’re not putting enough skin into this game, at least for my taste.

Consequently, and mostly because no one else seems willing to say it aloud, please allow me to be the bringer of truth:

Dear New Albany politicians in the executive and legislative branches of government,

Hi. You know this whole two-way street conversion thing we’ve been talking about since the House of Bread was still open? Well, here’s the way it needs to work.

Do it. 

Now.

You owe us.

That’s right: You owe us.

In fact, it’s all quite easy to understand, so let me help you out.

Just take every one of those “no-brainer,” “quality of life,” and “economic development” arguments made by those in favor of $20 million worth of new city parks, and grasp that these exact same arguments apply just as strongly to two-way streets, traffic calming and complete streets – at least insofar as the new cadre of independent business owners are concerned. 

Remember us? 

We’re the ones who actually have been investing downtown.

Then add the needs and interests of present and future inhabitants in those neighborhoods making up the city’s historic core. They’re not feeling arterial – no, not at all. 

While you’re at it, take the case for Main Street’s makeover (you can keep the excessive expense, but that’s another story), and understand that the Main Street rationale (i.e., we all need nice things) applies to Elm and Spring Streets, too – as much, and probably more so, because unlike Main Street, those other neighborhoods still hang in the balance. The NSP was nice … but it was mostly Federal stimulus money, wasn’t it?

You see, you owe us a modern street grid, because so far, most of the heavy lifting in the historic core has been on someone else’s dime, whether from local investors, state highway pay-outs or Obama funds. Now, with this much needed two-way street conversion and other related measures to enhance New Albany’s prospects, it’s time at last for you to go all in and show us that you really get it, and that River Ridge envy shall not be the dominant economic development motif hereabouts.

Just remember: You owe us.

Pay us all back, all at once. Give us a street grid that facilitates revitalization, not one that actively hampers it. 

Hell, if you buy the paint, we might even roll a few kegs out some afternoon and paint the stripes for you.

If you decline to act – well, we might just paint the stripes ourselves, anyway. Maybe Clean and Green can fund it. A little civil disobedience never harmed anyone.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're watching.

Roger

More on what I learned this week: Félix, Susan, and the Engahan times we live in.

Remember the law about signage outside polling places?

It was enacted to move the political operatives away from the doorway, where they used to stand with stacked crates of Kessler, handing out half-pints of whiskey so that someday, we might have a Main Street Deforestation Project.

Those handovers of booze in broad daylight were masterpieces of subtlety and discretion compared with what happened in New Albany during the third England administration, when Hizzoner awarded Susan Kaempfer $108,000 at a rate of $50 hourly to serve as project manager of the Midtown neighborhood stabilization project.

From the moment Kaempfer endorsed that first check, presumably with the mayor’s wife beaming while handing her the pencil, her credibility vanished faster than the plume from an e-cigarette.

It was the veritable capstone of England Doug’s career in cynical payout largesse, and a complete, all-encompassing civic embarrassment rivaling that of French president Félix François Faure.

Take it away, Wikipedia:

Faure died suddenly from apoplexy in the Élysée Palace on 16 February 1899, at a critical juncture while engaged in sexual activities in his office with 30-year-old Marguerite Steinheil. It has been widely reported that Felix Faure had his fatal seizure while Steinheil was fellating him, but the exact nature of their sexual intercourse is in fact unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various jeux de mots (puns) made up afterward by his political opponents. One such pun was to nickname Mme Steinheil "la pompe funèbre" (wordplay in French: "pompes funèbres" means "death care business" and "pompe funèbre" could be translated, literally, as "funeral blow-job"). George Clemenceau's epitaph of Faure, in the same trend, was "Il voulait être César, il ne fut que Pompée" (another wordplay in French; could mean both "he wished to be Caesar, but ended up as Pompey", or "he wished to be Caesar and ended up being blown": the verb "pomper" in French is also slang for performing oral sex on a man); Clemenceau, who was also editor of the newspaper L'Aurore, wrote that "upon entering the void, he [Faure] must have felt at home".

For the past two weeks, we’ve witnessed Kaempfer on the comeback trail, actively and politically soliciting cash for “her” farmers market,openly on behalf of "her" Develop New Albany, in spite of DNA's largely theoretical non-profit-driven stance against such crass, transparently manipulative activities.

In effect, Susan Kaempfer has orchestrated a hostage-taking, by abducting a straw man of her own creation, stirring up panic among the non-resident vendors, then slicing the straw man's throat before a spineless, pliant council while City Hall looked skyward in search of missing Malaysian airplanes.

There have been so many lies told this past week that if our civic symbol of Pinocchio (an intellectually impoverished river town's equivalent of the Golem) might be positioned facing east, toward Bamberg, those among us seeking immediate exile might promptly arrive at the Schlenkerla tavern without once wetting our feet.

Concurrently, before I begin shopping for plane tickets, permit me to hereby propose that we rename the newly embellished farmers market the Félix François Faure Memorial Cucumber Stand, because in New Albany, the city itself is Pompey, with the cash spewing inexorably in one direction.

JAYsus: Why -- why, why -- on earth must we continue paying her, again and again?

ON THE AVENUES: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

ON THE AVENUES: Yellow lines, and what comes due.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On Tuesday I visited an old pal to do some catching up.

He’s a Louisville restaurateur whose business is located in the epicenter of Frankfort Avenue. As we spoke over a cool adult libation, a steady stream of walkers, joggers and cyclists traveled past. It’s a thriving area with a strong indie ethos. There are a handful of retail vacancies, but not many. The neighborhood around my buddy’s place is filled with homes worth double or greater the value of equivalent structures in New Albany.

In short, Frankfort Avenue is fun and livable, and it’s the same milieu once publicly shunned by a New Albany city councilman, who feared our town might become too much like it. Yogi Berra couldn’t have said it any better than L’il Stevie: No one goes there anymore because it’s way too crowded.

Granted, my friend’s business always has been difficult to reach in peak periods – and the parking at times is gruesome. But even now, when me and the wife spend so much of our own free time in downtown New Albany, we still make the transit over to the Frankfort Avenue area every other week. Yes, there are lots of people therein. Travel can be quite slow, and parking often is a pain – and yet, precisely owing to these factors and others that flow from urban density, there is abundant life on every corner.

It’s a worthwhile destination, and so we seek it out.

So there I was on Tuesday afternoon, ensconced a stone’s throw from Frankfort Avenue -- and all my friend wanted to talk about was my town, not his. He said that recently his family was in New Albany for an entire day, just exploring, shopping, eating and drinking. He professed fascination with the atmosphere and history, and conceded that there’s enough to do in New Albany to occupy a whole weekend without once venturing into Louisville.

He asked me: How are you guys managing to do this?

My answer: Pretty much all on our own, as entrepreneurs, volunteers and chief bottle washers.

“But what about local government? What has it done?”

Crickets chirped. Pins dropped.

Somewhere, a skateboarder barked at a dog.

---

The single most important step toward New Albany’s revitalization ever taken by any portion of city government was the council’s approval in 2006 of the riverfront development area, and the subsequent availability of non-quota 3-way alcoholic beverage permits.

It’s true that the Urban Enterprise Association’s façade grants have been helpful, as has Develop New Albany’s networking. While I’ve not always agreed with Clean and Green’s program of beautification, at least the work has come from private donations. The Horseshoe Foundation’s revolving loans have been useful, too.

Other than these entities, and with One Southern Indiana abjectly negligible, most of the entire record of revitalization has been written by entrepreneurs, ranging from business owners through developers and facilitators like Steve Resch. There are too many names of over-achieving, life-savings-grade investors to mention all of them here, but it should suffice to say that apart from a perpetually well-intentioned bully pulpit, local New Albany government largely has been AWOL – chronically under-funded, often paying more attention (and granting very real tax abatements) to larger companies in industrial parks, or just uninformed, disorganized and obsessed with political irrelevancies.

It isn’t that I’m not thankful for their moral support. It isn’t that the politician types aren’t trying the best they know how, with the tools at their disposal. It’s just that the haphazard, uncoordinated and plainly strange way we’re now approaching street grid reform has me fearing the worst.

And those fears have a history of being realized.

---

This blog began in 2004. In 2005, the Garner administration publicly (and with exaggerated and paranoid caution) casually mentioned the concept of impending two-way street conversions.

Nothing happened.

Garner’s successor, King England III, talked quite a lot about the topic. In truth, there may never again be a mayor who talked as much.

By the way, nothing happened then, either.

Now, a full eight years after the first muffled and muted Hauss Square mutterings somehow leaked into the newspaper of record, we’re told that when it comes to two-way traffic, the current Mayor Jeff Gahan is said to be “for it” – so much so that City Hall has yet to make an official statement supporting two-way streets ... and David Duggins, Gahan’s economic development adjutant, has offered no public utterances on the topic to date.

Now, I believe what I’ve heard through the grapevine, but at this juncture, the administration’s only real comments on the matter have been made at council meetings by city planner John Rosenbarger, and I’m sorry: This is rather like President Barack Obama trotting out the head of the Postal Service to reveal bombing plans for Syria.

All Rosenbarger can do is speak nuts and bolts to engineering wonks. The political side of this – and yes, so long as Bob Caesar seeks to hold back the evil forces of modernity, there is a political side – falls to officials quite apart from the planner. They’re not putting enough skin into this game, at least for my taste.

Consequently, and mostly because no one else seems willing to say it aloud, please allow me to be the bringer of truth:

Dear New Albany politicians in the executive and legislative branches of government,

Hi. You know this whole two-way street conversion thing we’ve been talking about since the House of Bread was still open? Well, here’s the way it needs to work.

Do it. 

Now.

You owe us.

That’s right: You owe us.

In fact, it’s all quite easy to understand, so let me help you out.

Just take every one of those “no-brainer,” “quality of life,” and “economic development” arguments made by those in favor of $20 million worth of new city parks, and grasp that these exact same arguments apply just as strongly to two-way streets, traffic calming and complete streets – at least insofar as the new cadre of independent business owners are concerned. 

Remember us? 

We’re the ones who actually have been investing downtown.

Then add the needs and interests of present and future inhabitants in those neighborhoods making up the city’s historic core. They’re not feeling arterial – no, not at all. 

While you’re at it, take the case for Main Street’s makeover (you can keep the excessive expense, but that’s another story), and understand that the Main Street rationale (i.e., we all need nice things) applies to Elm and Spring Streets, too – as much, and probably more so, because unlike Main Street, those other neighborhoods still hang in the balance. The NSP was nice … but it was mostly Federal stimulus money, wasn’t it?

You see, you owe us a modern street grid, because so far, most of the heavy lifting in the historic core has been on someone else’s dime, whether from local investors, state highway pay-outs or Obama funds. Now, with this much needed two-way street conversion and other related measures to enhance New Albany’s prospects, it’s time at last for you to go all in and show us that you really get it, and that River Ridge envy shall not be the dominant economic development motif hereabouts.

Just remember: You owe us.

Pay us all back, all at once. Give us a street grid that facilitates revitalization, not one that actively hampers it. 

Hell, if you buy the paint, we might even roll a few kegs out some afternoon and paint the stripes for you.

If you decline to act – well, we might just paint the stripes ourselves, anyway. Maybe Clean and Green can fund it. A little civil disobedience never harmed anyone.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We're watching.

Roger

Quid pro quo: Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean its there.

It's a new week, and there are waters in need of muddying. Fortunately, I'm just the right man for the job.

To begin, and speaking personally, I’ve not once differed with the science that prefaces the city council’s “out of nowhere” workplace smoking ordinance. Me? I accept it.

At the same time, I accept that numerous hazards exist in daily life, both at home and in the workplace. It is perfectly legitimate for us to discuss how these risks are to be prioritized for the greater good of the community, to discuss these matters aloud, and to expect our elected officials to periodically emerge from the bunkers of their own making to join the conversation. It seems like a minimum standard of accountability, doesn't it?

As such, I‘ve argued that in terms of prioritizing personal risks and the city’s needs, the pro-ban council bloc’s choice of workplace smoking as the opening salvo in a campaign (real or imagined) of quasi-progressive reform for the city of New Albany is misguided and borders on the tragic, especially since far more pressing issues await the council’s attention -- and the current council has shown no more coherence than the previous one when it comes to consistency in pursuit of goals.

Furthermore, I have made the case that when the observations of science (why second hand smoke is injurious) meet the customarily greasier imperatives of politicians (the iron necessity of re-election), standards of admissible evidence quickly morph into something far broader than those cherished by the stricter legal minds among us.

To wit, while anti-smoking advocates cite science, and pro-smoking defenders cite freedoms, I’ve chosen to cite politics and the observable political precedent ... and as such, contrary to the opinions of our visiting lawyers, when the discussion turns to politics and politicians, the previous history and inclinations displayed by these politicians are absolutely germane to the topic at hand.

Absolutely.

----

Even after morning coffee and a brief perusal of the world headlines, for one to take an honest look at the political implications prefacing the city council’s Thursday smoking ordinance vote is very much like being compelled to watch one of the “faces of death” videos. You see it and are disgusted, and then you want to turn away in abject revulsion … but somehow cannot, and soon you're wondering when the liquor stores open for business.

With the first reading vote in favor of a smoking ordinance clocking in at 5-4, the unlikely swing voter becomes none other than Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey. That's only marginally less frightening than George W. Bush with his paw on the button.

Much has been made of the Wizard's seeming conversion to the anti-smoking ranks. I’ll only buy into it if the council chamber is thoroughly screened for raw onions and paring knives prior to any of Cappuccino’s future filibustering oratory.

Straight up: If you believe that Coffey isn’t playing his swing role for all it’s worth, and if you believe he is sincere in this sudden and unprecedented conversion to tenderhearted concern for the downtrodden low wage workers that reside in the district he congenitally neglects, all I can say is that you have not observed his council demeanor over the past few years.

Something about defecating like a duck -- and we're not talking AFLAC here.

Whatever the nature of Coffey’s current set of theatrically self-aggrandizing precepts, they’re vitally important in light of the fact that if we accept as gospel the at-large councilman John Gonder’s version of events – the smoking ordinance as a mere prelude to sweeping progressive legislation in the far more significant area of rental property regulation and code enforcement – then we must consider the circumstances and ask a perfectly plausible question.

If “progressive” reform is the strategic goal, and a smoking ordinance a chosen tactic toward that destination, in what way does the council’s smoking fixation further the ultimate aim (among others) of bringing slumlords to heel?

I’m afraid that as of yet, we have no coherent answer beyond Gonder’s own admission that he would not have chosen smoking as the “first” step along the path of progressive enlightenment. Who actually did choose it, and why? Gonder has this to say:

I never asked who brought this issue forward. My sense of it is that since the previous council had let this bill languish, Jeff Gahan wanted to resurrect it.

For the perpetually self-interested Coffey to be the swing vote in any piece of legislation styled as progressive in the barest of coherent terms surely foreshadows imminent doom, probably at the expense of something on the horizon that is far more progressive (and hence, meaningful to greater numbers of citizens) than a ban on workplace smoking.

That’s because in terms of political capital, Coffey’s cooperation on smoking undoubtedly comes at a steep price. What future consideration is being swapped in return for his crucial vote on smoking?

How does this further the cause of rental property reform, an isue of public health and safety that dwarfs tobacco?

To rely on Coffey, bar none the least principled of all local politicians, for anything at all short of crisply barbecuing the bologna is to echo the words of the Peter O’Toole character in the movie “My Favorite Year.”

You can depend on Dan Coffey – he’ll always let you down.

And yet, what amounts to the progressive bloc in city council (itself a debatable proposition, but offered here for the sake of the argument) now depends on Dan Coffey to pass the smoking ordinance – and to judge from long years of experience, Coffey will either renege on the payback or mutate it beyond recognition when the times comes to pass the basket.

The same is true of smoking ban proponents in the community. When the time comes to tackle a truly important public health issue – sub-standard housing and the reign of local slumlords – will any of the smoking ban proponents be there on the front line with good intentioned politicians like Gonder?

The Health Department?

The eccentric do-gooders?

The professional health fascism lobbyists?

Don’t hold your breath. They’ll get what they wanted on the one issue that matters to them, then melt away as fast as an April snowfall. At least it will free the council to abandon rental property reform quickly and then turn back to the sewers for another two to three years of impotence.

In short, the smoking ordinance is “one off” in council political terms, and as such, it is a grave tactical error indicative of sadly misplaced strategic priorities. It will not assist the prospects for rental property reform. It is having the effect of rallying against rental property reform precisely the same people who’d have to be brought on board to achieve the curtailment of the slumlord presence.

----

Once again, due praise to John Gonder for coming forth and joining the discussion in the blogosphere.

Too bad the same can’t be said for Coffey, Pat McLaughlin, Bob Caesar and Jeff Gahan.

How’s that list of exceptions coming along, anyway?