Lexington

As Strangeite pointed out in the comments, there’s a great piece up at ESPN recounting one North Carolina’s trip to Lexington for the big game on Saturday. The entire diary is worth a read because it paints Lexington and its people as about the nicest damn folks you’d ever want to meet.

There are two parts of it that are, for this site, of interest. First:

I brought my friend Edward along for this trip because he is the friend who most shares my love of bourbon, but he is also perhaps the least knowledgeable person about sports that I know. We planned our trip to Kentucky as a four-day educational semi-bender where I’d get to scratch my Tar Heels itch and we would mutually numb our whiskey itches. So it was that on Saturday morning we were walking down South Broadway toward Rupp Arena with small but vocal headaches when we happened upon a place called Tolly Ho. The Ho, I have come to learn, is the gem that can be found in any decent college town. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day, and most of it is served after 2 a.m., so it is the sort of place where hashbrowns are sold whose booze-sopping properties could not be improved in a laboratory. It was at Tolly Ho that we got our first inkling of the day to come.

Strangeite’s comment, in part:

Besides being a heart warming story of Lexington, take note of the route he took to walk to Rupp Arena. He states that he and his friend walked down South Broadway to Rupp and passed the Tolly Ho. My best guess from his stated route is that he stayed at the Spring Hill Suites, which is basically on the corner of Red Mill Road and South Broadway.

How many Lexingtonians would even consider walking from Red Mile down South Broadway to Rupp? I would say less than 5% is being very conservative and it is probably less than 1%.

There are certainly nicer paths from that area to downtown, but Broadway would have been the most direct. Some pedestrian highlights would include the massive amount of bird poop caking the sidewalk underneath the railway overpass, the fairly dangerous intersection turning into the Gold Star Chili Apartment Complex and a fantastic used book store. And, of course, Tolly Ho and the expansive surface parking lot between Maxwell and High.

Also worth highlighting in the UNC fan’s diary:

The inside of Rupp is the raddest. It is just the illest possible combination of slick modernism and tradition. We walked by the UK band playing on the concourse, and a mob of people had formed a circle around them, filming and dancing. Nobody said a word to us about our apparel save one person, who called to us as we walked to our seats, “Gonna be a long day for you boys.”

After the game, they hung out at the Horse and Barrel and some total strangers invited them home for family dinner over by the Arboretum. Read it all, Lexington. We won the basketball game and some hearts.

Final installment of the rundown of the Rupp Area public meeting. See Part 1 and Part 2.

CONVENTION CENTER & ARENA – The biggest complaint Gary Bates says he’s heard is that the current structure “kills the street.” This is undoubtedly true, the convention center as it has stood has never invited interaction and even when there is a convention there (or a gun show), it’s hard to tell the difference between that and any other day because the goers are all locked inside and everyone else can just see the same damn beige walls. It’s not a place to be or even be near.

Some might say that’s the nature of a convention center. If you’re not attending the convention, why would go near its center? But if you put such a structure right in the midst of your downtown and build it like a fortress, well, you’re not helping anyone (citizens, conventioneers, convention scouts). Is there another way of building a convention center? That seems to be one of Space Group’s central lines of inquiry.

Couple this with the Arena needs — whether new or re-done — and several options become available.

[Note: I believe this is a slightly different slide from the one shown in the meeting which appeared to have an A, B, C1 and C2... sadly the Task Force has not given me these slides yet so the above, while similar, is mostly illustrative. Possibly the biggest change is the labels.]

Option A renovates both the Convention Center and the Arena. This leaves the body essentially as it is, not giving enough room for a proper arena renovation and not doing much to address the existing problems with the convention center. “Neither would be a success.”

Option B constructs a new arena and a new convention center. This is economic madness.

Option C1 renovates Rupp and constructs a new Convention Center. “This is an interesting option,” placing the new Center in the Cox lot and wiping away the surrounding walls and hallways (current Civic Center + Shops and “Food Court”).

Option C2 renovates Rupp and constructs a new Convention Center on the High/Maxwell lot. This “could work.”

To renovate the Convention Center, we’d basically have to “double up” the space, building vertically, which doesn’t lend itself to convention events nor alleviate any of the street issues. Bates explored different Centers here, identifying three basic models — Compact, Stacked, and Subterranean. The first two are more costly and remain and mammoth objects. The Subterranean model, which could do well on the High/Maxwell lot at the top of the hill coming out of Downtown, works well here because, well, Convention Centers don’t generally have a lot of natural light anyway so why not just bury their cavernous spaces — halls, ballrooms — and either putting some of it above ground or letting in natural light through the roof (i.e., ground).

There’s a fourth way, Bates said, and you get the sense that this is not just the one that he would propose for the Cox Street lot but that this may well be the one that he ultimately proposes in his plan. In this model, the Convention Center would be constructed as a series of buildings. Rather than one behemoth, this would create a “campus,” distributing the needs and uses of a Convention Center into a set of structures linked together with covered walkways and open courtyards.

Bates showed a couple examples and a rough rendering of what Lexington’s could look like. One of his examples was Lincoln Center in New York which, while not a convention center, demonstrates the interconnected building strategy and, since I don’t have the presentation slides, here’s Lincoln Center, if you’re not familiar with it:

This Campus model would allow the flow of traffic from downtown to easily continue through to the Distillery District, with the rest of the Cox Street lot presumably converted into a surrounding green space — including the disapearing of the Jefferson Street Bridge and the connecting of High Street to Manchester.

It’s safe to say Bates is leaning toward the Subterranean or the Campus model and, given the time he spent on the latter, that one’s looking more likely.

“SLOW COOKING” – This was his term for not just the planning process but also, one gathers, for the development process.

“People come expecting a drawing,” he said, “But we need a basic framework.”

The cooking metaphor, simplified, is the difference between nuking your TV Dinner for three and a half minutes on high and marinating for 24 hours or dropping a brisket into a pit for a day. (There are less extreme examples; I leave that to you.)

The High Street Lot was his chosen example. If you start by covering over the surface parking with, in part, a new parking structure that takes up a fraction of its footprint, you can then cover the rest with the Sports Park (easy as repaving, placing dividers, painting appropriate sports lines, etc). Eventually, down the line, some of the sports park is peeled back, making room for the Catwalk. The path from UK to Rupp is clarified and it passes from Maxwell through the lot, on either side surrounded by these differing sports fields and the parking garage. Then, later, more construction can commence — perhaps the new FCPS school goes on the southwest corner (Maxwell and Patterson/Poplar), perhaps the space between Broadway and the Catwalk is filled with office and retail space, even a restaurant row. And, still later, maybe more of the Sports Park is replaced with residential space.

The point being, the Sports Park and garage happen soon, and the rest is slow cooked, with a plan for what will come as money and other factors fall into place. In the meantime, this massive space is activated, rather than the totally dead zone it is about 75% of the year (and that’s probably generous).

This cannot all be done at once. The Arena, The Convention Center, The Parking, The Catwalk, The Sports Park, The Arts Center, The School, etc etc etc. It’s not even that we should take it slowly and deliberately, but the reality is that we have to take it slowly. Producing a sketch of what all of this would look like could have been done months ago. Anybody can draw a picture. While rushing one out might satisfy people’s immediate needs to see (or better yell about) something, it doesn’t make a plan to carry much out (and it might just make a half-cooked plan that’s not worth the price of eggs).

“#FREERUPP” — Back to this. Rupp Arena, redone or rebuilt? The answer seems pretty obvious. And again Bates made his case, never showing exactly what might happen, but, taking what he said, how he said it, and what we were looking at, Rupp Arena is going to renovated.

Think about the Arena like this. It is a basketball court surrounded by decks of seats. Everything else about the arena is essentially superflous. It could all be stripped away and replaced. The concrete and the steel that holds that part of the arena up stays in place. The giant aluminum box it sits in doesn’t need to be there, not as it is today. The plan will be to re-do seats, re-do concourses, add in amenities (suites, concessions, etc), and get rid of most everything else.

Peeling away the walls that surround it as well as the convention center and shops (moving them to better locations) leaves a free standing Rupp Arena which is almost certainly going to have transparent-to-translucent elements, letting those outside see in and those inside see out. It will be a visual Arena, not just a concrete box.

These steps also create a clearer pathway from Maxwell to Main (letting the Catwalk continue across High and down through the now opened space into the Triangle Park area. Which is another thing…

TRIANGLE PARK / MAIN & VINE / RETAIL & VICTORIAN SQUARE – So Rupp is now an interactive space, “the game experience pouring out into the public space,” what happens around it? There’s the Convention Campus and open space in the Cox Street Lot, there’s the Sports Park and Catwalk and all that facing High, there’s the Hyatt Hotel, still.

Could we move the retail that currently fails, largely, inside the Lexington Center, to opened up locations along Vine and Main? The dead concrete space that faces toward Vine on the back of the Hyatt could be activated, especially if Triangle Park’s fountain is bisected, the Vine connector cut off and that space joined to the Arena in a way it’s never been. Then, along Main Street heading toward Mary Todd Lincoln’s house, more retail space is created, activating a section of Main Street that’s currently simply for passing cars.

On top of all this, there’s Victorian Square which has a beautiful facade but inside is largely a failure, with its confused hallways and empty storefronts (you remember what it looks like even if you haven’t been inside it in 20 years). This is an existing space with potential currently being underused. How can it be re-used, and re-used in such a way that not only does it draw game-day attendees but people on other days as well?

THE TEN PROJECTS – Gary Bates ended by breaking all this down into 10 Projects.

1. The Arena

2. The Convention Center

3. Distillery District

4. High Street Lot

5. Cox Street Lot

6. Retail from Civic Center and additional

7. Catwalk

8. The Commons (i.e., “the creek”)

9. Transferia

10. Victorian Square

NEXT STEPS — The next public meeting will come in January. We are likely to see arena sketches ahead of that event.

Something was missing at last night’s Rupp Area Arts & Entertainment District Task Force public meeting, and it wasn’t just a clear vision of what Rupp will become.

To be sure, there was no diagram of a new arena — neither a literally new one nor a ‘gently used’ one made new through creative re-use. There was no simple course plotted into the future.

Instead Gary Bates, the Rupp Area master planner, again laid a course forward populated with different avenues, many choices.

And somewhere in there… one could see what was missing. At first it seemed like excitement, as if the Task Force was easing into thought fatigue. By the end of the evening, it was clear that some of the excitement was missing, but it wasn’t necessarily because any relationship has soured or the prospects for doing something big had dimmed. The excitement seems, perhaps, to have withered into decision making, or at least the need for it.

Bates again delivered an hour-long presentation, largely rehashing his October performance, throughout building out from the previous discussion to layer in new detail.

[See B.Fortune's HL story for more | See RuppDistrict.com to contact Task Force -- they are seeking public input ahead of final reports which will come this January]

And the meeting itself came at the end of a day which saw Mayor Gray presenting the Rupp prospects (and other items) to legislators in Frankfort and the oracle himself, Coach John Calipari, seemingly voicing his support for a re-invented Rupp rather than a brand new one if that’s what works.

So let’s get to it… what did we learn? What wasn’t new? Where are we going?

Brent Rice, chairman of the Task Force, opened the evening by encouraging public ideas — if you have ‘em, let ‘em know! — highlighting a couple of those who’ve already pushed ideas, including Nick Nicholson who’s come forward pushing for a rail line connecting downtown Keeneland and the Airport. (Of course, he’s the president of Keeneland, so it makes sense he likes this idea, not that it’s a bad one and there’s more on railways below.)

Then, as they have in the two previous meetings, they reached back to find an inspiring quote, this time going with architect and city planner Daniel Burnham (planned downtown Washington DC, Chicago, designed the Flatiron building… and more, see here and here) rather than Adolph Rupp:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.

What if you prefer your man’s blood shaken, though? Then could the little plans be realized? But… I digress.

Mayor Gray took the mic next, noting that several in the room were around 40 years ago and experienced the initial planning for Rupp and, also, experienced what happens when there’s a lack of community involvement. It seemed an admonishment of sorts from the past to span the future, and was one of the first indications that the excitement is sharpening into decisionmaking.

Gray talked about the importance of moving slowly, deliberately, and argued that by developing thoughtfully, the public marketplace eventually takes over — which appeared to mean not just general citizen involvement but the more specific opening of giant pocketbooks.

Given this “thoughtful, intelligent, intentional” pace, Gray said the Task Force is moving “right on schedule.” (And if you click over to the Rupp District’s PDF schedule, you’ll see kinda what that means, with the culminating presentation coming at the end of January.)

And — right on schedule because each of these meetings have had a crisp pace — it was time for Gary Bates.

Bates talked about all the feedback his firm, Space Group, had received, and assured us he was listening. He quickly moved to address some of the wider impatience. There are many out there who don’t understand what is going on, don’t understand why it’s taking so long, don’t understand why there isn’t a drawing of a new arena, and think that all that anyone’s talking about is streams and creeks and parks. So Bates explained that a good plan may span 10 to 40 years, it is not dependent on architecture — as in, its not just about what something will look like, but how it will work with the other facets of the city landscape, how it will function in totality over the long run.

He then returned to the “#FreeRupp” theme of the October meeting. This appears to be his grounding question from which the rest of his work is derived — how Rupp can stimulate the City, how it can unite the University and the City (a UK priority), how it can act as a cornerstone for a working Arts & Entertainment district (a city priority).

Next up, we were reminded of the idea of Rupp as a standalone structure — reimagining the area by first pretending the surrounding convention center wasn’t even there (which was where he ended last time and… wait for it…), and we were also reminded of the mirroring of Lexington’s current downtown core down through the Distillery District, transforming Rupp from the western terminus into the very center of a space running from Midland out Manchester.

Bates skimmed over streets, the 2 or 1 way question was never his focus, he said, it is the quality of the street, “regardless of directionality.” He demonstrated the weave of business and residential areas surrounding Downtown and buttressing the core (the core being approx. Short, Main, Vine, High). The question is about how people perceive of the streets, and how to change those perceptions, and Bates again side-by-side compared Fayette Mall and Downtown, one where people walk and the other where they don’t.

Throughout his presentation, Bates talked of his idea for a “Transferia” — a transportation hub first mentioned at the October meeting, which would provide parking, bus transfers and trains heading out to Frankfort/Louisville, Cincinnati and Nashville. Bates seemed stuck on this, almost obstinate in the face of what must be insistent voices telling him to drop it. (This is one of several Long Term v. Short Term misunderstandings, but more on that later.)

There was more re-capping from there — feedback received from the public, the difference between the vibrant downtown of a century ago and the post-Flight downtown of today with its attempts at revitalized life, the stark disappearing density of downtown over that time, etc.

Then it was on to the evolving recommendations, many of which will likely take some form in the final report:

SAFE ZONES — Connecting existing walkable streets to each other. These are streets that are already well-lit, populated with shops and with safe sidewalks, and the plan would be to more clearly link them together to encourage foot traffic. Highlighted streets ran from Rose to Jefferson and 3rd to Maxwell. Again highlighting the fact that most parts of downtown are just a 10 minute walk from the other — very compact, very manageable, but currently not walked.

THE COMMONS — A Central Park. Which is not a continuous park. There’s a misconception about this, like it’s the only idea or like it’s the culminating idea. Clearly this public space and streetscaping is meant as foundational to all ideas that come after it. As in: When a gardner explains what they’re going to do to your yard, you’d be an idiot to only take away from their explanation that their going to turn the over the soil.

The Commons allows for an inviting public path, of sorts, cutting through downtown from Distillery to Midland. In places this could mean through a large park (like, the Cox Street parking lot) and in others it would mean navigating through new buildings (the Convention Campus, say) and existing ones (enlivening the Vine Street cement canyon, say). This does not mean the whole thing would be a tree lined bubbling brook. In places, perhaps. In others, fountains, squares, etc. The idea behind The Commons appears to be a diversified set of greening spaces that together encourage a sense of unity and compactness to downtown. (And the idea itself is derived both from the winding path of the Town Branch and from a pre-Vine St. Lexington where there actually was a creek, with bridges crossing it, and a public area called “The Commons,” complete with swimming hole.)

It’s not just one thing, it is not just a creek – as Bates himself said, “You don’t have to turn it into a giant park.” – but rather a series of projects creating a unified sense of open space, which also serves to connect the green “soft matrix” that surrounds downtown right to its edges — at UK, west toward the Cemetary, north toward the leafy neighborhoods around Transy, south toward UK.

SPORTS IN THE CITY – This idea seems centralized to the current surface lot stretching from High to Maxwell. Filling this space in with sports fields, as suggested in October, remains a central suggestion and will likely have some place in Bates’ final presentation. Soccer, tennis, and basketball — “You can play in the shadow of greatness,” Bates says, and that seems about right, a centralized park, the place could host Junior Pro tournaments and would be a zoo of activity on game days as well as most months out of the year.

THE CATWALK — How can you orchestrate the arrival of all those fans? This was a central question put to Bates by the UK administration and here he’s envisioning a path (remember those Safe Streets?) which would deliver the masses from UK and surrounding neighborhoods to the Arena, a see of people stretching from Limestone (street party anyone?), turning left on Maxwell and leading down to Broadway. Here, the formal Catwalk area would cross through the “sports in the city” re-used parking lot and lead directly to Rupp. As developments grow, the area could be lined with other buildings (residential, commerical)… but more on that later. (And the explanation in the paper didn’t quite do this idea justice.)

***END PART #1***

More to come… but gotta run…

NEXT: Parking, Schools, Arts, a freed Rupp, a distrubuted Convention “campus” and Main Street retail…

Mayor Jim Gray was in Frankfort this morning presenting info on the Rupp Area Task Force and BEAM and some other stuff that’s not as important as basketball and this evening, the Task Force holds its latest public meeting:

Consultant Gary Bates will lead a public forum to solicit ideas from the community on the proposed Arena, Arts & Entertainment District, and discuss the future of the Lexington Center and Rupp Arena from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Lexington Children’s Theatre, 418 West Short Street.

Ahead of that meeting, the Task Force has released details on its current thinking, specifically a feasibility study and, as usual, the fabulous Ms. Fortune has the story.

Basically, the study doesn’t recommend one thing or another, but compares the cost of renovation to rebuilding, as well as whether a renovated Rupp could meet the University’s demands.

A renovated arena would cost $100M+, a new one would cost $300M+. Add in costs for a convention center restructuring of $70M+ or a brand spanking new convention center for $130M+ and the cost/economy/taxes/etc is certainly on the side of re-using.

As for the University’s “demands,” the study finds Renovation fulfills each. At the end of the day, that means Mitch Barnhart would get a million dollars, a helicopter ride to the airport and a charterd jet to an undisclosed tropical island never to be heard from again.

Ms. Fortune’s rundown of the demand/feasibility:

■ No loss of seating capacity. Renovation would allow a modest increase in the number of seats, more seats in the lower arena and upper-arena seats with backs, according to the study.

■ Uninterrupted play while renovation is under way.

■ Upgraded, and in some cases new, support spaces such as a media room, interview room, training room and kitchen. Plus, the option to move the women’s basketball team to Rupp, which would entail a new locker room.

■ Some premium seating, including space for the UK president to entertain before and after games. Currently, President Eli Capilouto uses the Bluegrass Ballroom in the Lexington Center.

■ New technology including a center-hung scoreboard —perhaps eight-sided — that would display the score, player stats, show instant replays of the game and have close-up shots of coaches and players.

■ Retain the collegiate atmosphere of Rupp, as opposed to an arena that would be more appropriate for a professional team.

There is much more where that came from.

And from the Mayor’s office:

The study evaluated four options, above, concerning Rupp and Lexington Center, including alternate locations and a choice between new and renovated facilities.

“To successfully compete, Lexington, like any progressive business, must build its brand by leveraging its assets and making investments, even in tough times,” Gray said. “The University of Kentucky basketball program is an enormous asset. It’s an international brand. The Cats should play in a state-of-the-art facility, but that facility needs to get off its island and become more connected with downtown so people who come to the games get a full event experience with activities before and after the game.”

Now… all this has made some people very unhappy.

Which is fine. There’s plenty in there to be unhappy about, regardless of which side you may be on. Aside from Eli Capiloutu getting his own place to entertain before and after the games and a debate about whether a collegiate arena is better than the soulless commercialism of the professional ones, the most important bullet point in that list above is the question of uninterrupted play.

That’s not the most important in, say, the world of life and death. But in the current debate over the Rupp Area and what to do with it, it’s big. If the Task Force can put together a plan for renovating Rupp without sending the Wildcats to Louisville or wherever for a year, then the University and its collection of short-sighted boosters are hard pressed to continue to complain.

That’s not a deal breaker. If play must be interrupted, that is no reason to blow three to four times as much money. But given the forces at hand, that’s a pretty central question. The feasibility study’s finding comes on the heels of some Task Force members touring the Madison Square Garden renovation, where play for multiple professional teams and a full calendar of concerts and events went uninterrupted. That viewing swayed big shot Dan Ball, and left even Mitch Barnhart hemming and hawing.

This morning on his radio show, Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones spent most of his two hours attacking the 47-member task force, their findings and this notion of renovation. While allowing he was open to being swayed down the line, his central question was what the arena would look like.

And that’s a fine question, but surrounding the question of the Arena is a whole downtown and most of Matt’s tangential conversations actually spoke to that exactly. He mocked the Task Force for only putting forth ideas about creeks and parks rather than the Arena, as if the Arena is the only thing that matters. But later he talked about the new ice skating rink and talked about how he looked forward to skating on it. He and his co-hosts/sidekicks talked about how difficult it was to eat near Rupp, how few options there were… and how strange that was.

Which is exactly the point. The Task Force is not just about an arena. People who care only about what the arena looks like on the inside, and what it’s like to be at a UK basketball game, aren’t looking at the right picture.

The notion that the Task Force has a predetermined decision is equally inane. Matt — who’s as nice a guy as I have ever met — even went so far as to suggest that the Task Force is only concerned with what hippies in Lexington want, which I understand was hyperbolic, but speaking to the fanbase it’s plain ludicrous. If it were up to the hippies, $300 Million would be spent on bettering the community and helping people. And that Task Force is hardly a collection of hippies. Even the arts people who are represented are shrewd, businessminded people. The bigger threat is that you’ll get all the members cracking deals to protect their individual corners of Lexington’s cornered markets. But the idea that they don’t “get” the importance of the Arena to the overall vision is silly, and the idea that they want to skimp on amenities because they don’t care about basketball is ridiculous.

This isn’t just about an Arena, it’s not just about basketball, and while pretty much everyone in Lexington can appreciate that people in Paducah want to come, watch a game, eat shrimp in a pinot gris reduction, while sitting comfortably in a million dollar luxury box and then immediately drive back to Paducah… the rest of us have to live with the arena and the area (and yes, Matt, it’s strange there’s not more life surrounding Rupp right now… that’s exactly the point).

Jerry Tipton discussed the four best basketball programs over the weekend, comparing them and talking to some other people with generic opinions, coming to some sort of conclusion that UK is not the best in the entire history of the world which, honestly, is about as interesting a debate as it sounds and lots and lots of people read the article and crapped all over Tipton… but there was more to his article than just overlooking the fact Coach K is the devil.

Specifically, Tipton had some more details of the Rupp Area task force members’ tour of Madison Square Garden, the one that changed at least one members mind about renovation rather than a new arena. Here’s some:

Joel Fisher, Madison Square Garden’s vice president for sports and arena transformation, explained what the task force members saw. Maybe most compelling was how MSG’s transformation included tearing down an outside wall to a concourse and replacing it with glass. This brings a view of New York City to patrons as they walk down concourses that, in some cases, are three times wider than before the transformation. The change more closely incorporates the Garden to the city.

“We felt it was important to bring light and happiness and an ‘up’ feeling to the building,” Fisher said in a telephone interview. “… A lot of the goal was to bring the energy of New York City (and) to have that all relate to Madison Square Garden, which is a major part of the city. Now, you’ve got the energy coming through the windows.”

On several occasions Gray has noted how glass walls can tie together separate parts of the arts and entertainment district he envisions for downtown Lexington.

Tipton goes on — here’s a link to page 2 so you can skip over the fact that the winningest coach in basketball has a somewhat impressive track record — and Not-Not Jerry Tipton also announces the next Rupp Area Meeting:

Public forum

Another public forum to consider opinion about the proposed arts and entertainment district in downtown Lexington has been scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Nov. 30 at the Lexington Children’s Theatre, 418 West Short Street.

“It’s the best downtown location we’ve got,” he said. “That along with the fact we’re starting to learn we can update Rupp.”