See How They Fly Like Lucy in the Sky

It's Our Turn

Last week a couple articles appeared in the press about the possible purchase of the Coyle Dodge property for use as City/County headquarters.

At the last regular City Council meeting, (which seems about seven meetings back) a resolution was passed unanimously, favoring the concept of Smart Growth and admonishing the City to hew to that organization's principles in planning. It further suggested that the City's Comprehensive Plan be updated in accordance with Smart Growth principles.

The potential acquisition of the Coyle property is a golden, if sudden, opportunity to put the City's resolve into practice. Smart Growth might not necessarily result in moving City Hall onto the Coyle property. But smart growth, lower case intended, would dictate that the existing Coyle building be used if that property is acquired.

For those not too familiar with the layout of the property, there are three main components of the complex: A) is the main building the old New Albany Motors showroom, B) is the garage between the showroom and Elm Street, C) is the site of the old Frisch's restaurant which, to my perception, is now masquerading as a
fun dome, to me it looks inflatable.

Responsible re-use of the property dictates that the main showroom building be used and preserved as a critical feature of Spring Street. That building has commanding street presence which would translate into an attractive, functional, City Hall. Its size is sufficient to satisfy the City's office needs; it has ample parking. On a cold Sunday morning in February or March, I, and several other Council members, toured the entire property. Also along for the tour was an architect who was able to answer questions about possible alterations to fit governmental purposes. Geothermal heat has been explored to some extent as a possible feature of the renewed building. If I am not mistaken, the second floor is poured concrete, indicating an exceptionally sturdy construction. Someone raised doubts about the Mayor or other offices conducting business behind the massive plate glass windows of the showroom. While sunlight may be the best protection of democracy, it is not always the best ingredient for effective meetings and comfortable working conditions, therefore, in all likelihood the large windows would be replaced with an appropriate window scheme in keeping with the rest of the building's facade. Any architect with even a grain of creativity,unable to clear that hurdle should turn in his/her credentials.

The garage, adjacent to the showroom toward Elm, to my untrained eye, appears to be a vast improvement over the digs the street department and the vehicle maintenance crew now inhabits. It has lifts for the servicing of cars, and since Coyle did a fair amount of truck business, I presume they are adequate for trucks as well. The only proviso on the use of the Coyle garage would be that the eventual acquirer of the old Street Department office be made to preserve that structure. The Street Department building is part of a truly significant block which, architecturally, comprises Downtown's northern border.

The building on the old Frisch's site was ill-considered. It must go.

What would be left would be a laudable example of adaptive re-use. The new City Hall could be a boon to the City by: strengthening the downtown area, allowing the justice system to occupy the entire current City/County Building, bringing better service and efficiency to the Street Department and vehicle maintenance, providing City offices the ability to physically expand, and to bring better governmental services.

All those are fine outcomes. But the real gifts this re-use can bring to the future citizens of New Albany are not so easily quantifiable. Those benefits must be weighed and realized by those people-today's high-schoolers,grade-schoolers and those yet to join the parade. This is our opportunity, in a sadly much smaller way, to undo the damage those short-sighted, temporally-challenged members of the past, who thought tearing down the old Post Office for parking was a good idea, did to our city for all time. This is our chance to make a statement that we do, in fact, get it. We recognize, as Wendell Berry often calls it, "the power of place". We see what defines this city.

Atavist? Nostalgist? Perhaps. But we must take the steps now to do what those who preceded us did not do often enough. I believe that the single exploitable, noteworthy, significant, asset we have been given by our forebears is our store of historic buildings. That is not to suggest in any way that only those things which are old have value. But when one travels from town to town, exurb to exurb, those features which define us and offer interest to those who pass this way, are our larder of architectural gems. If those who held the reins before us had done their jobs responsibly, or had been given the gift of foresight, perhaps the Coyle building would be just another mundane structure failing to rise to the level of what they, in their wisdom, had preserved. But that is not the case.

The stakes are high because we need to preserve those pieces which frame our built-environment. We need to preserve them, not because they are pleasant to look at, or simply because they represent Berry's "place", but because they serve as the tacks which hold to the frame the canvas on which adherents of Smart Growth hope to paint a livable community.

We in government can serve the greater needs of the City, which means we can serve us, and those who follow us, and those who follow them. Or, we can bend to the will of the vocal nay-sayers who believe their lives are enriched by holding on to fleeting snatches of prosperity, the players in a zero-sum game who only want others not to enjoy what has been given to them.

It is now up to us to plan for the future. Do we bequeath to those who follow, a cookie-cutter hell scape of suburban/exurban sameness defined by Butler Buildings and strip centers with ample parking? Or, do we draw a line which says, no more? You have taken enough. This city has lost enough. Now we must hold what we have, so that those who follow have a place. A piece of continuity.

The reason I have not mentioned the County element of the City/County structure is that, I believe, this property is not large enough to accommodate both entities. A proposed west-end development indicates space needs of 40,000 for County government, 20,000 for City and 20,000 for State. Under that plan two city blocks of space were required. Much of the land was set aside for parking. The Coyle property is also roughly two city blocks (with additional acquisitions ).

I am no fan of City-County merger. I do recognize that this trend is extant and may some day result in such a combination. It is not our duty to build a combined structure which anticipates such a polity. Our duty is to serve the needs of the City as it is now constituted. If circumstances bring another entity into existence which renders the City Hall obsolete, so be it. Future generations can deal with that eventuality.

Finally, some have suggested that the Coyle building, even at its superior size to the existing City/County Building, is too small to allow for assembly space. That possible shortcoming can be obviated by the Baptist Tabernacle which sits just a short walk away from the Coyle complex. I believe the Tabernacle can be resuscitated, with outside funds, if the structure served double-duty as both a City assembly room and a community theater/event hall.

The articles in the papers suggested that the property would be exorcised of its current buildings and presented as a clean site for the construction of a governmental complex. If the county can join the City on the Coyle property while keeping the main building intact, so be it. If not, let it look elsewhere.

If the property were not to be shared with the County, the parcel facing Sixth Street would present an excellent opportunity for some creative, quality-minded developer to work cooperatively with the City to build townhouses or row houses.

Such a development would square with Smart Growth. An adaptive re-use of the Coyle building would be a significant example of Smart Growth with numerous benefits for downtown revitalization efforts. This post is too long to explore most of the positive environmental benefits of Smart Growth. Aside from future generations winning by our efforts at archtectural preservation, the main benefit in saving the structure is the application in the present of resources expended in the past for today and the future.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

The Care We Deserve

Rep. John Conyers at IUS

Yes we can. That was the rallying cry for the Obama troops during the campaign last year. Hope was the fuel. Change was the goal. I was caught up in the enthusiasm as much as anyone. I believed that the page was turning and a better day would dawn if only...

That was then. This is now. I confess to disappointment in the tentative approach Obama is taking to the presidency. He was off to a good start with the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, but now it's time for some reconsideration of that bold move. A few thousand more soldiers to Afghanistan; surely there's a plan.

Let's let bygones be bygones. If Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Yoo, Feith, and the boys from Blackwater pushed the envelope a little, just let it go. At least they're gone now and who wants all that poking around in closets looking for skeletons anyway? Just be happy that McCain didn't win because, well he was old and... Or just be happy that the eight years of Bush have ended and now things are...


Saturday at IUS the topic was health care, but the prescription was self-help. A forum was put on by the Southern Indiana chapter of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, the group working for passage of House Resolution 676, Single Payer universal health coverage for the U.S.. Several of the excellent speakers brought the same sobering news: If we want change, the kind of change that brings us up to the standards of health enjoyed in the rest of the industrialized world, we're going to have to hold Obama's feet to the fire. He's on film speaking eloquently about the virtues of a single payer health plan when he was running for State Senate, now he looks to the influence pedalling lobbyists and takes their cues to slow that train down. Unless we take the initiative,Conyers said, "we will get the kind of health care we deserve, not the kind we want." Now Obama says, paraphrasing, if we were starting out with a clean slate, we'd design a better system for health care, along the lines of a single payer plan.

We're not starting with a clean slate. We're starting with a slate on which health insurance sellers rack up $25 billion a year in profits. We're starting with a slate where these same corporations work not to deliver health care to the hapless purchasers of their flawed products but, rather, to deliver profits to their investors. They are in business not because that is how they deliver their needed service, but because it is a business, and a hugely profitable business. On their slates they write about the unfettered holy mandate of the marketplace. They write that a single-payer system of health coverage results in long waits, inferior treatment and a slight wafting of a European odor which is not to their liking. They write that they will voluntarily wring TWO TRILLION DOLLARS out of the heaven-sent cost increases to which they are entitled but which they will forgo because they are "team players" and they are on the capitalist team. That's how it's done, they write on their not-so-clean slates, in the land of the free, by choice.

Is it by choice that nearly fifty million citizens of the richest nation on Earth play the health care equivalent of Russian Roulette by having no coverage? Is it by choice that our once most valuable manufacturing powerhouse, General Motors, is brought to the brink of bankruptcy, in part by the current and legacy burdens of private health insurance which GM pays, but which is paid by the governments of foreign producers? Is it by choice that our citizens have shorter life spans than citizens of nations with universal health care? Is it by choice that in the U.S., according to a Harvard study in 2005, that half the personal bankruptcies are caused by the high cost of medical treatment? Is it by choice that the U.S. spends nearly a half trillion dollars more to deliver health coverage than is spent in Western Europe? Is it by choice that this excess spending delivers less care?

Huge numbers of people want a single payer health system for this nation, some polls report as high as 65% in favor, nearly 60% of doctors favor it,and yet it seems now that it will not happen. Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the author of HR 676, spoke to the IUS gathering. He spoke of his heroes, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Rosa Parks. What these people all had in common was that they did not take no for an answer. They knew what was right and they persevered. Civil rights legislation was not seen as a viable option at the time. Marches on Washington brought segregation to an end and opened voting booths to all races. Ending the Viet Nam war was impractical, countries are like dominoes you know. Focused effort ended that war. Today the health care industry comprises 17% of our economy, those who benefit from the role of middleman in the transaction portray their work as critical to the success of the nation. Those who are shut out of the system, and those who are bankrupted by the system, and those who see health care as a right of citizenship, may be excused for seeing the health insurance industry as so many leeches feeding off the populace. The nation needs to adjust to new economic realities. Reform of the health care system, providing health care for all as a right not a commercial gewgaw, is one of a few important steps in that adjustment.

Congressman Conyers's admonition to those who see the health care system as broken, and those who feel the weight of that broken system, is that we must now do what those who preceded us did when they encountered injustice. We must now take the fight to the halls of power. We must let legislators know that we will not stand for the status quo on health care. When they don't listen, we must open their ears. When they are swayed by lobbyists oozing cash we must say, "Enough". Now is the time to take this right to health into our hands and make it real. We now must let Obama know the status quo is in need of change. We must recapture the hope which made us believe the words "Yes We Can" and utter those words once more. This time they must signal our knowledge that we can bring meaningful change to our broken,sub-standard health care system. If we don't act now, we will get what we deserve.

The Al Franken Decade is Almost Here

Al attempted to tag the Eighties as "The Al Franken Decade". It didn't quite take hold. It looks like he missed the real decade by about 25 or 30 years. I can relate.

As most people are aware, Al Franken won the Minnesota Senate seat, defeating Norm Coleman by several hundred votes. He will be the state's junior senator when the beaten Coleman bows to reality and decency.

Franken is a non-traditional politician. I witnessed him getting his political sea legs through several years on Air America radio. He was a champion of progressive causes from universal health care to a strong anti-war stance on Iraq. He was educated at Harvard. His anti-war position did not prevent him from traveling to Iraq for Christmas shows for the soldiers stationed there. From my admittedly limited perspective he seems like a good and decent man. For those who would question his qualifications to be in the U.S. Senate, quick, what are Jim Bunning's qualifications? For my money I'll take good and decent.

Speaking of money...if you'd like to help further progressive causes and candidates, Democracy for America www.democracyforamerica.com has started a pledge-type fund raiser based on Norm Coleman's stamina. Or is it pig-headedness? DFA is asking progressives, liberals, or simply those who believe that Norm Coleman is a boor who is shooting the bird at fair elections, to pledge one dollar for each additional day that Coleman hoists the sore loser banner.

The people of Minnesota, by virtue of their citizenship, are entitled to two senators. They currently have one. The United States is entitled to 100 senators. We currently have 99.

If you'd like to help Norm do what's right for America, check the Democracy for America web site.

Hit the Bricks

I recall a scene from a movie: a young couple upon moving into their new house, go ecstatic as they pull up the shag carpet to reveal hardwood floors. They had found value and asthetics beneath what had surely seemed a good idea to the previous owners.

Last week I noticed a rather healthy pothole on Market Street near W. Seventh Street. It had probably followed the path of most potholes and started out as a tiny fissure in the asphalt. The recurrence of rain and snow and the steady flow of traffic had enlarged the tiny break into a thing of noteworthy dimension, measuring about two feet across and of rougly equal length. The depth was about two and a half inches. At the bottom of the hole exposed to the new century lay a small expanse of New Albany's past; ten or twelve of the big thick bricks which underlay many of our inner city streets. They appeared to be in good shape. Is the pothole akin to a rip in the movie couple's shag carpet?

As the discussion of pavement continues, I wonder if, in a 180 flip of Shirley Baird's recent blog post, "Let's Pave Some Roads" perhaps it's time time to also say, "Let's Un-pave Some Roads".

Removing the asphalt from city streets is not a broad substitute for paving. On the contrary, if applied, the exhumation could most likely only be done in a very limited fashion. But, if tried on a limited basis, it could be a means of enhancing the historic district of town. It could also bring a long term solution to the merry-go-round of paving, which could reduce the costs of street maintenance for the future.

Certain parts of Louisville have brick streets intact, and intact is a relative term. But those streets which have remained brick appear to be protected. Some of the streets have, in fact, improved fairly recently. The improvement taking the form of the removal of ashphalt scars from utility repairs and replacing missing bricks.

Beyond the benefits of historic preservation and potential cost saving, a return to brick surfaces should serve as traffic calming, as people tend to drive more slowly on such a surface.

Salem, Indiana is another good, local example of extant brick streets. I did not verify, but I surmise that the Salem streets have never been paved. The only surface of which I'm aware that has actually turned back the clock by removing blacktop is the alley next to St. Mary's Church. That removal was accomplished with little fanfare and could serve as a model to be expanded beyond simply one block. The method used there returned the brick to the appearance I recall prior to paving.

In discussing this, some have said the newly-exposed brick would be a surface too foreign to drivers unaccustomed to driving on bricks. That idea doesn't hold up when one considers that both Louisville and Salem must have drivers who are unfamiliar with bricks and yet neither place has found it necessary to cover them up.

This idea may actually come to fruition if the pavement issue is delayed much longer. Apart from my suggestion that some streets be stripped of asphalt, the process is unfolding in its own time on E. Sixth Street between Elm and Spring Streets. As I remember it, that street was in pretty good shape before it was covered up. Interestingly, that block was paved with bricks laid on their sides rather than the chunky bricks more commonly used throughout New Albany and most cities. Something I did not realize until work last summer on Pearl Street in front of Kaiser's revealed it, Pearl Street is a yellow brick road. Oh my.

Spring Street Hill Open Tomorrow

The new road at Spring Street Hill will be dedicated tomorrow morning.

A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at 10:00 AM to mark the event. If you would like to attend, the ceremony will be held at the top of the hill.

This is a project which is of prime importance to the residents of Silver Hills. It is more than that,though, it is a statement of commitment to the infrastructure of our city. It would have been irresponsible to abandon that pathway to Silver Hills, and it would have said that we are willing to live with deterioration. That is not a message we should be sending.

For those who may point to obvious signs of deterioration on many streets throughout the city and carp about skewed priorities, I would say this reclamation of the hillside road is a vitally important step in the initiative of renewal. This is only one of many steps we need to take, but it is a good one.