Downtown Development Grounded in Market Reality

A primary reason that Gateway Planning was chosen to complete the Downtown Owensboro Placemaking initiative is due to their demonstrated effectiveness in marrying downtown development and market forces. This marriage is the essence of placemaking.

Today, the Gateway team unveiled the elements of the downtown development program. The details of the plan can be found at the downtownowensboro.com.

The suggestion of public amenities and private investment in downtown are based on very rigorous economic analysis provided by Gateway team economist Jon Hockenyos. Hockenyos estimates and the master plan design revealed today show design for the downtown reflecting the market reality of downtown Owensboro with the following recommendations:

• Approximately 300 to 500 residential units, which represents around 10% of the residential units that will be constructed in the metro area over the next 10 years. The design identifies four areas for mixed income housing in the downtown core that would promote a walkable urban envirornment. The plan also call for significant pedestrian linkages and even the possibility of an electric street car to connect downtown to amenities along Frederica street.


• Approximately 250 to 300 hotels rooms in the core downtown, which would likely come with a new convention-caliber hotel and replace the Executive Inn. The design suggests that this could be leveraged in a couple of areas of downtown, many of which do not include the current Executive Inn property.


• Approximately 40,000 to 70,000 square feet of convention space in a multi-purpose indoor event center that can accomodate business-caliber conventions and various sporting events. The plan offered various senarios for the location of a convention center, including a deisgn that does not require the Executive Inn property.


• Mixed-use office and retail space based on market conditions and downtown housing development. The economic analysis suggests approximately 300,000 square feet of office and 100,000 to 150,000 square feet of retail/ restaurant space over the next 10 years, much of it leveraged across from the riverfront development park along Veteran's Blvd. and adjacent to the public amenities such as the convention center and hotel.


• Public space for a Farmer's Market in the downtown core area that could become a year-round amenity and attract a whole foods shop or small-scale grocery. The design offers several options, including a newly created public green that connects the courthouse lawn to the riverfront park.


• Museums and movie theatre to add to the entertainment appeal and enhance the retail and restaurant opporutnities. Increased investment in downtown musuems could enhance other elements of the downtown.


• A privately financed outdoor event venue built to be baseball-friendly, the site plan call for this to be on a mix of public and private property.


• Arts and cultural education center that would capitalize on the great fine arts education in the local schools, colleges, and universities programed in conjunction with the River Park Center Young Adult Theatre Academy the Owensboro Symphony Academy and other musuems.

To see specific renditions from the Gateway Planning Master Plan presentation, please visit http://www.downtownowensboro.com/

Decoding the Language of New Urbanism

With the work of the Gateway Planning team on the Owensboro Downtown Placemaking initiative the community has heard a lot of new terminology and new discussion about new urbanist ideas. Concepts like new urbanism, placemaking, walkable urbanism, mixed-use, sustainable development, smart growth, and form-based codes are all key elements of downtown revitalization in cities all across the country. What do they mean?

Known by a variety of names, the defining characteristics of new urbanist projects appear to be walkable neighborhoods, a mix of land uses that integrate housing, shops, civic facilities, and work places, and preservation and respect for the natural environment in the form of maintaining greenspace. The economic and fiscal effects are summarized as follows:

New urbanist developments tend to enhance quality of life, which is crucial to both recruitment and retention of companies;

Mixed-use developments promote greater land-use density, which can help ease the pressure on transportation systems and other infrastructure;

New urbanist developments tend to have a longer “shelf-life” than traditional developments, which will tend to create a greater fiscal impact over the medium and longer-term. A portion of this impact is due to the inclusion of housing in the project, both through direct enhancement of the tax base and the indirect effects of relocating consumers to the central city.

Charles Leinberger, in the book the Option of Urbanism, outlines the movement away from the pre-industrial walking city away from urbanism to an era of driveable sub-urban development in the post World War II 20th Century. This shift lead to our dependency on automobiles, gasoline, automobile manufacturing as a base on employment, and ultimately sub-urban sprawl as the preferred development option. This shift away from walkable cities to auto-dependent development in the suburbs is reflected in popular culture on TV with families like those in Leave it to Beaver to the Brady Bunch living in the suburbs.

By the late 20th century the pendulum began to move back to the center with a reemergence of walkable urban developments in many larger cities around the country. Again, popular culture reflected this shift. Rather than the living in the suburbs, TV shows like Seinfeld and Friends were once again set in walkable urban settings.

This does not mean that drivable suburbia and automobiles are becoming a thing of the past. Both will co-exist in cities large and small around the country. With $4 a gallon gasoline and the push for environmental conscious development, the setting is ripe for walkable urbanist development. To read more about New Urbanism, go to the following links. http://www.newurbanism.org/newurbanism/principles.html, http://www.uli.org/, http://www.gatewayplanning.com/Gateway_base_frame.html, http://www.cnu.org/

To see the urban design standards prepared for Owensboro by the Gateway Planning group, please visit http://www.downtownowensboro.com/ and click on Owensboro Urban Design Guidelines.

Be a Part of the New Downtown

Next week is a big week for downtown Owensboro!

The Owensboro Downtown Placemaking initiative, launched by the EDC earlier this year, will reach a climax with a series of town meetings and community design workshops intended to give regional residents opportunities to participate in the "Designing a Downtown for Everyone. "

The process will kick off on Monday, September 9 at 6:30 pm at the River Park Center where Neal Pierce, a well respected journalist and and chairman of the Citistates group, will revisit many of the recommendations he made to the Owensboro region two decades ago, including the importance of downtown development.

The process will continue with a mid-week visual design pin-up session on Wednesday, September 10 at the River Park Center. The final session of the week will be held at noon on Friday at River Park.

The final results will be presented on November 15 from 9 am to noon at Kentucky Wesleyan College.

For more information, or to register for these sessions please visit http://www.downtownowensboro.com/

To read about Neal Peirce visit http://citistates.com/speakers/npeirce/ To review of the Peirce Report as it relates to downtown Owensboro please visit http://www.plfo.org/advocate/volume_5_issue_1/#peirce

Time is Right for Walkable Urbanism in Owensboro

The following In My View, which appeared in the Messenger-Inquirer, is from Michael Huston, Owensboro native and urban designer currently working with the Gateway Planning team on the Downtown Owensboro Placemaking work.

Having been born in the mid 60’s they tell me that I am a member of Generation X, albeit just barely. Our claim to fame is that we were the first generation to be brought up on an endless stream of television sitcoms and TV dinners. I think you could also say that we were also the first truly suburban, car-dependent generation, and the first generation to grow up without a “real” downtown. Even though there were still a few retail stores here in downtown Owensboro when I was young (Anderson’s, Interstate and Sears to name a few), I never experienced the downtown that my parents and grandparents knew; the downtown full of retail stores, drugstores, diners, movie theaters…and people. The generations that have come after me (and I am starting to lose count), know even less about the thriving commerce, the local meeting places, and the entertainment options that used to be at the center of every town.

It wasn’t in fact, until I began traveling, first within the big cities on the east coast, and then in Europe, that I was able to experience the type of urban vitality than was once prevalent in all U.S. towns and cities. I saw in New York City a series of linked, walkable neighborhoods, each with its own drugstore, grocery store, drycleaners, etc. Later in Europe, I saw that this type of urban vitality can exist even in smaller towns and cities. In all of these places, I witnessed a type of social interaction between people that is all but eliminated as we wiz by in our cars up and down Frederica Street and around the bypass, and I started to feel that we as a society were missing something in our now-suburbanized towns. It was then that I became passionate advocate of downtown revitalization efforts.

Therefore, as an architect and urban designer who grew up in Owensboro, I felt a great deal of excitement and satisfaction when I was asked to join the urban design team with the Gateway Planning Group who is spearheading the development of the Downtown Owensboro Placemaking Initiative. This planning process will go beyond just design by establishing community priorities and outlining public/private investments needed to make it a reality. I feel that the timing has never been better to start such an endeavor. With an aging population, higher gas prices, and the threat of global warming more people are seeking a compact, less car-dependent environment; a perfect fit for downtown. And with the closing of the Executive Inn (as painful as it may be), we have a unique opportunity to reinvent seventeen acres of riverfront property into an even more successful downtown destination.

Yet, some may still ask, why go to all the effort? I think there are many reasons why we should, or perhaps must, take on this challenge. Economically, it is imperative that Owensboro remains competitive in creating and keeping good jobs. To do so, we must maintain a quality of life that is as good as, or better, than our regional competitors. Owensboro already has so much to offer, and a beautiful, thriving downtown would add even more to its appeal. Further, every great town or city needs a strong “center” as a place of identity and a place to come together as a community. The renaissance has, in fact, already begun in Owensboro as can be seen by the sidewalk cafés on Second and Third Streets, the opening of a new dance studio on the east side of downtown, and the imminent renovation of the Smith Werner Building. This plan will help to ensure that the renaissance will continue, and that when the big pieces are added to the puzzle, whether a new hotel, a new convention center, etc., it will be done in a way that reinforces the “downtown experience” as a whole.

Now, back to Generation X. It is my hope that my generation, and the generations that follow, will once again be able to feel the spirit of community and identity that come with having a strong, vital “center.” And that in addition to the option of living in the suburbs, we will have the option to live and work in a beautiful downtown urban neighborhood, in a “not-so-quiet” town on the banks of the Ohio River.

Michael Huston

Michael Huston is an Architect and Urban Designer with the Gateway Planning Group and lives in Miami, Florida. He is a graduate of Owensboro Catholic High School.

Email: mike@gatewayplanning.com

HPV Vaccine Deal Huge for KBP, Regional Economy

from Keith Lawrence at the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer

Owensboro's Kentucky BioProcessing LLC has signed a deal that could have a huge impact on the region's economy -- if a new human papillomavirus vaccine is successful. Louisville-based Advanced Cancer Therapeutics has signed a deal with the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center to license its technology for a second-generation HPVvaccine.

And a second deal with Kentucky BioProcessing will allow ACT to use the Owensboro company's patented GENEWARE technology to grow the vaccine inside tobacco plants and to use the Owensboro facilities for commercial production if the new product is approved for the U.S. and world markets. If that happens, "a very, very significant capital investment would be needed" to Kentucky BioProcessing's facilities, Hugh Haydon, KBP chairman, said Wednesday. "But the business would be there to support it."

Haydon said some countries have a shorter window for testing new drugs than the United States. It's possible that ACT could begin production in Owensboro for the world market before it receives FDA approval to sell the product in this country, he said.

KBP, a world leader in the expression, extraction, purification and commercial scale production of proteins and other products from plants, operates a 30,000-square-foot biomanufacturing facility with an adjacent 22,000-square-foot greenhouse at 3700 Airpark Drive. It's not large enough for the type of production that would be once," Haydon said. "We would have time to ramp up for production if we get there. And we hope we get there."

ACT isn't the company's only customer. Last year, two start-up companies -- Mapp Biopharmaceuticals and Intrucept Biomedicine -- established a local presence at KBP. Haydon said earlier this summer that KBP is working with a dozen biotech companies on products at its bioprocessing facility. "And we're in discussions with upwards of 20 others," he said. Haydon expects at least one and maybe two more announcements this summer. Pharmaceutical production, he said, isn't subject to boom-and-bust cycles. The demand for medicine never slacks, Haydon said.

The intellectual property to develop the HPV vaccine, licensed to ACT through University of Louisville's Office of Technology Transfer, is based on research by Jenson, Kenneth Palmer and their colleagues. Palmer conducts research at the Owensboro Cancer Research Program, a joint venture between Owensboro Medical Health System and U of L at the Mitchell Memorial Cancer Center. "We hope that the technology we are using to manufacture this vaccine will yield a product at a cost that will facilitate its use in resource-poor areas of the world where vaccines against HPV are most needed," he said in a news release. "Our research to date indicates that the technology we are using to produce the vaccine protein in plants will be very cost-effective."

Emerging Ventures Year One

By Madison Silvert, EDC Executive Vice President

The Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corporation began its entrepreneur and high-tech initiatives in earnest in October of 2007. We opened the Emerging Ventures Center for Innovation in February 2008, providing small business support, conference rooms, free wi-fi, and work areas for entrepreneurs. Importantly, we also began work in this region with the state's innovation and commercialization center network, of which we are a proud part.

When we began, it was hoped that this office would work with two clients, fund one company, and help create two high-tech jobs in 2008. Since February, we have worked with ten client companies seeking funding and assistance for their ideas. When our actual numbers came in a few weeks ago, it was clear to us at the EDC that supporting entrepreneurs and small, high-tech businesses was a good use of our time and resources. Our numbers showed that, not only did we work with five times as many companies as we expected, but those client companies created 18 high-tech jobs, another 5 support jobs, and the average salary of those high-tech jobs was about twice Owensboro's median income.

Additionally, one of our client companies, Dewater Rite, received a grant award from the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation. The grant will help refine Dewater Rite's concept for an agricultural waste treatment and processing machine that, hopefully, will lead to manufacturing of the machine right here in Owensboro. We hope to announce another company receiving KSTC funding before the end of the year.

It is through the cultivation of these small high tech businesses that will help grow our local and regional economy for years to come.

Why the city and county should buy the Executive Inn property

By Darrell Higginbotham, President, Independence Bank, EDC Board Chair and Rod Kuegel, Farmer, EDC Board Chair-Elect

Much has been said recently about the fate of the Executive Inn property. Some of the talk concentrates on methods being used to secure the 16.5 acre riverfront site, but very little is said about why it is so important that the property be acquired by the city and county governments.

We do not think the city or county governments should be in the business of re-opening or operating the hotel. The current hotel structure is not in serviceable condition and it should be razed. However, it is a rare opportunity for any community to gain control of 16.5 acres, nearly one-third of a mile, of river frontage. Fortunately, the infrastructure is in place to make the most of this opportunity. Recently, the Greater Owensboro Economic Development Corporation in partnership with the Downtown Development Corporation, engaged the services of the Gateway Planning Group, a nationally recognized firm based in Ft. Worth, Texas, that will create a long-term implementation strategy for the rebirth of our downtown.

The urban planners and economists from Gateway Planning refer to the 16.5-acre site as “the cornerstone of downtown redevelopment.” The Board of Directors of the EDC, a group representing major employers and key private sector partners in the region, wholeheartedly agree, and urge the community to rally behind the city and county governments’ efforts to acquire the property.

What our governments recognize is that communities with thriving downtowns are able to attract the talent and workforce necessary to excel in today’s economy. Simply put, downtown redevelopment, including redevelopment of the Executive Inn site, is crucial to our region’s economic vitality.

Development of the property as a public/private partnership will attract private investment that would not otherwise invest without certain public amenities. Once in control of the property it would be in the community’s best interests for the governments to act swiftly, decisively, and prudently on how to best develop such public amenities, while welcoming all private investment that could add to the endeavor. The city and county would then be able to retain the few acres they need for public projects while selling the rest to private developers.

By the fall, our community will have a site plan for the 16.5 acres and adjacent properties that may include a convention-caliber hotel, multi-purpose indoor event center, potential office, retail and other mixed-use space. The professionals from Gateway Planning will work with city, county, and economic development officials to evaluate and analyze the qualifications for developers interested in developing amenities on the property.

Given this opportunity, we are concerned at what might happen if we do not gain control of the property. Some may say that the community should just wait for a private investor to purchase the property. Yet we cannot be assured that a private investor will support the objective of downtown redevelopment or even redevelop the property at all. Without public involvement, the regional market will be diluted with smaller, limited service hotels that will further deter the development of a convention-quality facility. However, if acquired, the convention and visitor business combined with other potential amenities offered through the site plan will lead to a solid return on investment, not unlike that of a large employer for which public dollars are routinely leveraged.

This is a classic example of where it is prudent and, in fact, highly appropriate for local governments to leverage public funds to attract high quality private investment to meet the goals of the region. The importance of this issue goes beyond downtown and the Owensboro city limits; it is an investment in the future of the entire region that will no doubt pay dividends for decades to come.