SHE WON'T GO!
There’s a Dudley who’s sure
All that glitters is gold
And he’s buying a Pedway to heaven
When he gets there he knows
If the hotels are all closed
With a word he can get what he paid for
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
And he’s buying a Pedway to heaven…
Dudley Webb and his Mayor, Jim Newebberry, are on the verge of bringing their grand vision to reality.
Sure, “CentrePointe” does not yet exist and its current business plan – a hotel twice as expensive as the competition achieving occupancy rates well above the city’s current average – makes absolutely no sense. And the fifty million dollar condos aren’t exactly a hot commodity.
But Jim Newberry and the Family Webb know something the rest of us do not. They have a secret weapon.
It is the power of the Pedway.
As we have detailed over and over, the CentrePointe project as a whole is laughable: high on ego, short on funding, mindless in design, lacking in brains, etc.
But its Pedway system… oh, the CentrePointe Pedway system is genius. We hope this thing gets built some magical day in the future just because of the heavenly Pedways it offers the well-healed citizens of this fair city.
You see, even if the CentrePointe monstrosity sits essentially empty and serves no purpose for the vast majority of Lexington’s citizens – it will still have the Pedways!
Like Festival Market, Victorian Square, the Big Blue Building, the “World Trade Center” and the “Radisson” hotel before it, if there is one thing the Webb Company knows how to do… it’s build Pedways.
If there’s another thing they know how to do it’s build giant useless buildings that sit empty for years and are of little use to anyone.
And if there’s a third thing, it’s making big promises they can’t keep and somehow getting away with it time and time again.
Which is where the Pedways to Heaven come in.
In the spirit of civic cooperation, with the best interests of the community in mind, we at Barefoot & Progressive have a modest proposal.
Let us build Pedways in our time!
Let us come together in support of the CentrePointe boondoggle simply so that we might walk upon air, floating above the riffraff of homeless people who congregate in the failed 1980s Webb World Coal complex, aka, Phoenix Park.
Let us float in the sky like Elijah, or CentrePointe’s funding, or the Webb Companies’ unimpeachable record. Let us be closer to the Heavens.
Let us have Pedways.
The CentrePointe TIF plan – the one that will cost Lexington taxpayers $7 Million and state taxpayers three times that much – provides funding for these Pedways as “infrastructure improvements.”
Originally, the Webb/Newberry CentrePointe plan included another Pedway spanning the rabble enclave of Phoenix Park, connecting the mythical hotel/condo complex to the Library parking garage.
It is imperative that this stretch of Pedway be built – for reasons that become clear below.
As a city, it’s important to be known for something. Currently, Lexington is the Horse Capital of the World and the Basketball Capital of the World. But now is the time to diversify our world renown.
Dudley Webb and Mayor Jim Newberry are on the cusp of creating a new and lasting brand for Lexington, KY:
THE PEDWAY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.
Technically speaking, there are other cities with larger walk-way-networks. Montreal and Toronto both have public walkways that stretch upwards of 15 miles, but much of that is underground not above ground like Lexington’s unique vision.
There are other cities with wholly above-ground Pedway systems. Atlanta and Cincinatti each have Pedway systems that stretch across nearly a dozen downtown blocks.
Lexington might not be able to top that distance, but what we lack in hard figures, we make up for in vision.
Mayor Newberry has that vision. Dudley Webb has that vision.
In cases like this, simply declaring yourself “The _____ Capital of the World” of anything is enough so long as no one’s already claimed it themselves.
A quick search of Google reveals that “THE PEDWAY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD” is not yet claimed by any one city.
Think about this…
If CentrePointe’s two Pedways to Heaven are constructed the following will become reality:
You would walk via Pedway across Phoenix Park and across Limestone into CentrePointe. You would walk through CentrePointe and into another Pedway crossing Upper Street and above McCarthy’s into the Big Blue Building’s eastern parking garage.
Exiting the parking garage on the same level, you cross by Pedway into the Big Blue Building itself, through a hallway of empty office space and into yet another small Pedway which delivers you into the “World Trade Center” complex across Mill street.
Here you skirt the parking garage of the Radisson and, up three steps, enter a Pedway across Main Street into the Webb’s failed Festival Market. Walking here through a tragedy of urban design – enjoy especially the darkened and dangerous back hallway– you eventually emerge into a parking garage and, up one flight of stairs, onto yet another Pedway, this time across Broadway and into the Webbs’ failed Victorian Square.
In Victorian Square, a series of pointless glass elevators and impressive escalators must be traversed before entering into yet another dangerously empty hallway which will deliver you to the crown jewel of Lexington Pedways which crosses not just Main but also the acute corner of Triangle Park and the starting sprout of Vine Street to enter the Civic Center Shoppes.
Once in the Civic Center, the intrepid visitor to The Pedway Capital of the World passes by a series of shoppes selling UK gear and Kentucky Proud products and, up another escalator or non-glass elevator (also situated in a dangerously obscure hallway) into the Hyatt hotel. Here one must ascend yet another stair case and walking above the expensive atrium cafe/bar/restaurant, the millions of tourists who will descend from all across the Globe shall find a plaque from the American Heart Association pronouncing this above-ground-track impressively healthy and, through two doors, enter into the hottest and perhaps oldest of the Pedways, crossing Broadway again this time into the Central Bank.
Down some stairs, through yet another dangerously abandoned hallway, one must take a sharp left to find the next Pedway, crossing Vine Street, now in full concrete flower below, to enter the Radisson Hotel.
With above head signage leading the way, the Pedwaytourist, of which there will be millions each with thousands of tourist dollars to invest in downtown Lexington’s businesses, finds him or herself back almost where it began, in the unheated and uncooled walkway of the “World Trade Center” and headed back now, finally, through the Big Blue Building’s totally unoccupied second floor and through a parking lot back above all the homeless people and into the parking lot of the library where this whole super-peripatetic adventure began.
The Pedway to Heaven.
If Lexington can do this, if we put our differences aside and simply support the grand vision of Mayor Jim Newberry and his former landlords-cum-neighbors/campaign-funders, the Webb Family, then Lexington will finally be the great city they have long promised to make it.
Their lies will no longer be lies and our discontent will be quieted for we shall have Pedways in our time, and they shall create economic revitalization and even if all the Webb buildings which they connect remain empty and of little use to anyone, still, at least we will be known for something, at least our “Welcome” signs upon the interstate shall say:
“WELCOME TO LEXINGTON, THE PEDWAY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Come downtown and walk on air. And maybe stay in a hotel room, Lord knows we have the space.”
And as we wind on down the road
The shadow’s taller than that hole,
There walks a Mayor we all know
Who spins white lies and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The truth will come to you at last
Hoodwinked one, hoodwinked ‘em all
To be a block and not to grow
And he’s buying a Pedway to Heaven.
KentuckyElection.org
BONNIE PRINCE BILLY
