Owensboro Downtown master plan - part one

So our fair city has decided to "revitalize" the downtown area once again. I won't do any research about how many times Owensboro has "revitalized" their downtown, although it has been several times that I can recall. Downtown buildings have been remodeled, re-opened, and are currently re-decaying from little to no use.

The riverpark center with its IBMA headquarters and bluegrass museum was supposed to put us on the map. It didn't take long for the IBMA to flee to Nash-vegas. Now the only events being hosted by the big red tobacco barn by the river seem to be proms and afternoon performances for busloads of children. Actually the best use I have seen of the place in a long time will be the superbowl party thrown for the city residents during this time of disaster. In defense of the riverpark center, I think the Friday after Five series and Winter Wonderland events have been phenomenal successes, but these two events can only fill at most 20% of the center's calendar.

The focus of this new revitalization revolves around a "Downtown Master Plan". Downtown will be transformed into a "walkable city" and I'm sure the term "mixed-use" has been thrown around several times too. Apparently all these big-time professional city planning "gurus" have decided that cities of the future will be made up of these tiny communities where everything is in one little area. You will basically live in an apartment above where you work and will walk across the street for groceries and one block down to see a show. Apparently, the great leaders of Owensboro have been drinking the kool-aid prepared by these "gurus".

On paper this vision of a mixed-use community is not at all bad in my opinion. However, in order to have a successful mixed use development, it must truly be mixed use, meaning grandma is living next to the twenty-something year old couple with four kids and the drug store for grandma to pick up her prescriptions is next to the honky-tonk bar frequented by the twenty-something year old couple. Once the grandma's overrun the youngin's or vice-versa, your mixed-use development becomes a retirement village or a ghetto. In addition your "big box" stores are typically frowned upon in such areas so no walking to wal-mart grandma.

Lending institutions realize that creating (and maintaining) this mixed-use utopia is risky and therefore it is hard for developers to get the funding to put together such a project. So how do you get a project like this off the ground - well you let the taxpayers of the city take the through the issuance of bonds to finance the project. Wait, did I just say that - an investment is too risking for a lending institution so taxpayers should foot the project? Sounds like the taxpayers of Owensboro are going into the junkbond business.

When Keith Lawrence isn't to fond on some new "vision" for Owensboro, red flags should start waving, and he is staying on the fence on this one (by the way, read the article online quick, before the MandI cranks back on the free access). Will this round of revitalizing be any different? I know where I'm placing my bet on that one, but I'm not tipping my hand just yet...more to come later. Fire away in the comments and we will see how far down this rabbit hole we go.