Wednesday, March 25, 2009

An interesting look at who is getting hit hardest by the economy


In a previous post I talked about things Louisville could do to boost its economy and to make it a more competitive city. I was planning on writing a follow up post when I ran into a article in the New York Times entitled "How Some Places Fare Better in Hard Times" 

The article is by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. When he compared unemployment statistics across metropolitan areas and he found an interesting pattern. Cities that tended to have high unemployment rates shared similar commonalties.  The cities had a reliance on manufacturing, most of their employment was outside of the city center, and they tended to have low share of their adults with college degrees. 

While most of the cities that are really doing poor have unemployment rates well into the double digits, Louisville's is at 9.2%. We aren't as bad off as some of the other cities, but we have a lot of the problems that they do. we use to be a heavy manufacturing town.  Most of that has left, but Ford and GE are still here. We also trail most of our competitor cities when it comes to percent of population with college degrees. However, we have made great strides in that area. As far as being centralized. That's a good question. A lot of the jobs either have moved or are moving to east end of town, but with the resurgence of downtown that may be changing. 

I think Louisville has been going through the transformation from manufacturing to service economy. We have just been doing it at a very slow pace. I think we will weather this economic downturn without losing to many more large manufacturers. But their days are numbered. Ford, GE, and the plants that make up Rubbertown wont be here to much longer. DuPont has already closed. I'm sure others are next. 

Louisville is trying to be a medical and distribution hub. I think that's nobel and something we should pursue, but I don' think that's going to keep us going. We have to embrace our artsyness, and push forward with creating a truly creative economy. We can continue to try and prop up manufacturing (which in the case of Ford and Ge we should until we can replace those high paying jobs), or we can reach for the future with something that will differentiate us from the pack. 

Monday, March 23, 2009

What Louisville should do

Economic development is tricky. How exactly do you set your city apart when almost every other city is trying to do exactly the same thing that you are doing? Every city has something unique about it. Indy has the Indy 500. Louisville has the Derby. Nashville has country music. Those are very unique things that each cities leverages to its advantage. However, it's not enough. You still need more. You have to be diversified. Especially in our increasingly global economy. Cities are no longer just competing against each other for business HQ. They are also competing for talent. Talent that isn't afraid to move at the drop of the dime from city to city or even country to country. 

According to Greater Louisville Inc, the metro chamber of commerce, Their focus is on building Louisville niche growth markets. Logistics and distribution, and health related enterprises, and  entrepreneurism. Health related enterprises would be things like going after the biomedical industry. Entrepreneurism is pretty much like it sounds. making it easy for people to start small to medium sized businesses. Which is a pretty good strategy. Louisville is known for being a place where its pretty easy to start your own biz and be pretty successful. Tumbleweed, Papa John's, Ralleys, Chi Chi's, KFC, and many more had their starts in Louisville. 

Going after the Biomedical industry is going to be an uphill struggle. The hardest part is that we just don't have a prestigious top tier research university that would attract the type of talent needed to keep something like that going. The university of Louisville has come a long way. The medical school has grown by leaps and bounds. The number and size of the National Institute of Health of grants have grown every year. However, we still lag far behind our competitor cities and regions. Louisville's biggest problem is that the state of Kentucky will never adequately fund its universities.  The other problem with going after biomed is how many jobs would it actually create. I'm sure there would be a lot of jobs for scientist, but what about the average folk. Will people with regular degrees be able to take advantage of the growing Biomed sector? I know the high paying jobs will do a lot for the cities coffers, but what about the vast majority of the populace? The other downside is that most biotech firms seem to almost always get taken over by Big Pharma. Usually once that happens Big Pharma buys all of the intellectual property dissolves the company and moves on. What would Louisville have left? The guys who started it would make a killing, but what about the city in the long run? I'm not saying this isn't a worthwhile goal. It is a very worthwhile goal. It's just going to require a lot of work, and take decades before we can really start to reap the benefits.  

Louisville should keep pursuing those economic development strategies. I just think that Louisville should just take advantage of its other strengths. Strengths, I think once properly cultivated, could lead to greater prosperity for the city. It would also help to Louisville to stand out amongst its peers. What are those strengths. Simple. The Arts. 

Louisville is a quirky artsy town. Why not take advantage of that. The city with the help of Greater Louisville Inc.,  should start a film commission. Like most film commissions they should try and recruit hollywood films to be shot in and around Louisville. However, I think their biggest function should be to cultivate the local talent that's already here.The film commission should educate the venture club (local meeting of venture capitalist in Louisville) about investing in low budget movies. Then educate local filmmakers on how to present their ideas to the venture club. The Film commission would keep track of all of the movies made in Louisville so we know just how much the local film industry is contributing to the local economy. I would also like the commission to sell locally made movies on it's website. This would be a way for the commission and local filmmakers to make a little bit of money. The commission would also fund education programs for youth. You always need to groom the next generation of talent. 

As you can tell I'm pretty high on the local filmmaker angle.  I think this would be a natural fit for Louisville and something that can honestly be done in short order. The reason I would concentrate most of the commissions energy on local films is because I think they offer the greatest return on investment.  If you're lucky you might attract one medium budget hollywood film to your city. A film that has the budget of say $40 Million. However, most of that money will not be spent in Louisville. They might higher drives, rent some homes, get hotels, catering, and the like. But as soon as filming is wrapped up they are gone. That's not a bad thing, and if Louisville could do it great. However, if Louisville could produce 10 $1 million dollar low budget movies a year the money would have a greater impact in the community. First, most of the people who worked on the film will most likely be from Louisville. Their wages would stay here. Second, you will be building up a film workforce that will make attracting bigger budget movies easier since you would have built up a talent base. It's a win win. Thirdly, the education barrier isn't as high and the pay is usually above average.

I also think the city needs to get more serious about cultivating local businesses. 4th street live is great. The Center City project looks cool. However, Louisville has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up an out of town company. Why not put several million dollars in a fund to try and lure local businesses to finish building out the rest of 4th street. You could make the money forgivable loans up to $250,000. If you could add a lot of local flavor to say several national chains I think it would do a lot for the city. you can go to any city and go to a HardRock Cafe. You can't get Wick's pizza everywhere.

Louisville should also try and become the green capital of the Midwest. We should have the most LEED certified buildings in our region. We should have more bike lanes, houses with solar panels, and first rate mass transit. While this may not be "economic development" per se it does create a progressive environment. That progressive environment is what will attract the younger (and young at heart) talent. People want to believe that they can make a difference in their hometowns. Even if they they really don't have voice they need to believe that they do. Being a progressive town that is a quirky artsy place gives people the feeling that they can make a change or try something different. If a town can tolerate and even cultivate it's funky, quirky artsy folks, then it will also do the same for the straight and narrow guys. It makes everybody feel like they can fit and that they do have a place. More importantly, it makes people like you have their back. Which means, that I'm not as afraid to try something new because I have support. 

This might be the biggest economic development tool Louisville has. Making people feel like they belong. 

Thursday, March 19, 2009

What's going to happen to Market Street?


What's going to happen to Market Street as it runs through Russell? I took some pictures last year of west Market as part of our historic preservation efforts. Now as I go down Market Street I noticed that several of the buildings have been torn down. This bothers me. Older urban neighborhoods like Russell need their older building. 

These building are very flexible and can/could have a variety of uses. Besides, it's usually cheaper to rehab one of these older buildings than to build new ones. It's already hard enough to convince someone to come and start a business in Russell. It's going to be even harder to convince a business to build a brand new structure that fits in with the urban character of Russell that will most likely cost several million dollars. Besides these older buildings give Russell it's character. 

Here are a couple of photos of some of those older buildings on Market that still stand.










Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Revitalizing Russell Pt 1 Inner City Blues

One of the main missions of CARR is to revitalize the Russell Neighborhood.  We want to bring it back to it's former glory. I know that is a very lofty goal. Very lofty. And, to be honest, I'm not sure how achievable it really is. It is really difficult to revitalize an urban neighborhood. Like most predominately inner-city African-American neighborhoods, Russell is usually ignored by the rest of the city. We have become a place to warehouse the city's poor, and a good depository for it's halfway houses. 

I could go on and on about the problems and hurdles that Russell faces, but I'm not. I've always been the type of guy to focus on solutions. I believe in order to find a solution you first must know what the problem is, but more importantly, the root cause of the problem. That's why this first installment deals so much with Louisville's history. You have to know how you got to where you are if you plan to move forward. In the following installments I'm going to talk about plans that we have come up with to try and revitalize Russell. I'm also going to talk a lot about how to get the ear of your elected officials. To get them to pay attention to you and act on your proposals. Maybe you might be able to learn something that could benefit your neighborhood or city. We could also learn a thing or 2 from you as well. Let's start with a brief history lesson. 

 I'm not going to go in-depth into the history of Russell and the history of African-Americans in Louisville, but I will give you a brief overview. I believe this is essential because some of the things that have happened in Louisville's past is directly affecting what's going on today. But you can say this about almost every city and it's relationship to it's majority African-American neighborhoods.   

First lets look at the history of Louisville and the history of race relations in Louisville. In the early years Louisville was a key player in Slavery in the United States. After the United States outlawed the importation Africans, Louisville became the central distribution point of slaves being sold to the south.  The term "sold down the river" was first coined in Louisville. Slaves, like horses, were bred on Ky farms, and brought to Louisville to be "sold down the river" to plantations in the south.  At the same time Louisville was also home to free Blacks. Free Blacks who had the right to vote. In fact, were encourage to vote. This is quite odd. In every other city in Kentucky the opposite was true. In fact, many of the cities free blacks lived in houses in predominately White neighborhoods. Now, these houses fronted the alleys and were very small, but they were still in wealthy White neighborhoods. Louisville really wasn't segregated until the Black population crossed the 10% barrier. Until then Blacks could go to movie theaters and sit in the front row, sit anywhere on street cars, and the like. This again, is the exact opposite of what happened everywhere else in Kentucky. 

Louisville has always been a city where the main populace never really wants to ruffle any feathers. A go along to get along type of city. It always has been and it still is. Don't get me wrong. Blacks may have had it a tad bit easier in Louisville than in many cities in the south and north, but there still was a lot of racism in the city. Louisville still had it's share of violent protest and riots. 

Another major influence on race relations in Louisville and on the psyche of the city as a whole is it's location. Louisville was once known as the gateway to the south. All Ohio river traffic had to stop here. Most railways ran right through Louisville. However, if you look at the map, Louisville is in a kind of no mans land. We aren't the South. We have some southern ways, but we're not southern.  We're not exactly in the Midwest. We have some midwestern architecture (just like we have a great mix of Southern architecture), and we have some midwestern attitudes, but we still aren't quite midwestern. We have a little East Coast attitude, and some of that western frontier spirit. However, we are neither east nor west. Louisville has an identity crisis. We can be very progressive and we can be very conservative all at the same time.  That's why Blacks always had the right to vote, and were encourage to vote. But, there was still rampant racism. That's why we propose these grand building projects, but then we fight them tooth and nail. 

With the history of Louisville as a backdrop lets look at a brief history of Russell. Russell was originally one of Louisville's first "suburbs." The neighborhood that would become known as Russell was founded around the 1870's. It was a place where the city's wealthiest citizens would call home. They moved to stately victorian mansions on such grand streets as Jefferson, Walnut (president day Muhammad Ali Blvd.), and Chestnut. The streets in-between these, Madison, Ceder, and Magazine is where the working class lived. Behind the Mansions there were small shotgun houses that fronted the alleys. In most of these houses is where some of Louisville's Black population lived. As the Black population of Louisville started to rise they slowly moved into Russell. As more and more Blacks moved in the white population started to move out. White flight. By the early 1900's Russell was pretty much an all black neighborhood. 

Russell was the center of African-American life in Louisville. It was the Harlem of KY. Russell was a mix of some of the wealthiest African-Americans , the working class, and some of it's poorest citizens. The settlement pattern pretty much followed that of the previous inhabitants. The wealthiest African-Americans lived on Jefferson, Walnut and Chestnut. the rest on the streets that fall in-between those.  

Russell also boasted a rich business district known as Old Walnut Street. Old Walnut Street was home to several theaters, restaurants, night clubs, roller rinks, homes and schools. It was the heart of Russell. It was also Russell's connection to the heart of the city.  If you look at a map of the City Russell is pretty much shaped like a square. The original neighborhood was bounded by 6th street on the eastern edge, Jefferson street on the northern edge, Broadway on the Southern edge, and 32nd street on it's western edge. 

Russell's declined followed that of many inner-city neighborhoods. First, the end of de-facto segregation meant that Russell's wealthiest residents could move out of the neighborhood. Which they did. Urban Renewal did the rest. Under Urban Renewal's watch Russell lost it's connection to the heart of the city. Everything from 6th to 9th street was torn down. Everything on Old Walnut street except two buildings were razed. In fact, they razed almost every structure in Russell to 13th Street.  Russell was effectively cut off from the rest of the city. 9th street now became Russell's western edge. Then when 1-64 was being built the 9th street exit became of 4 lane boulevard with a tree lined center median. 9th street went from your typical city street to what was described above.  All in all Russell lost over 5000 businesses, and homes. It was replaced by approximately 500 low income housing units. Most of what was razed was east of 9th street was turned into surface parking. All of this took about 30 years, and Russell has never fully recovered. 

Now what? How do we go about revitalizing Russell? In the next installment I'm going to talk about how we can revitalize Russell. Why some of the city's best half-hearted efforts have failed, and why should we even care. 


Tuesday, March 3, 2009

St. Augustine Fish Fry

I know St. Augustine isn't technically in Russell, but it's close enough. If you get a chance they are having their annual friday fish fry. You don't want to miss out. It's one of the best in Louisville. St. Augustine is located at 1310 West Broadway. The lines can get pretty long. I would call my order ahead at 502-584-4602.