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The Greenville Formula: A group from Lexington, KY report on their Greenville visit

This was originally published in Business Lexington magazine.

by Tom Martin

June 21, 2011

Lexington, KY - To get into the passenger seat of a high-performance automobile, place your life in the hands of a driver you may barely know, if at all, and whose skills behind that wheel are a complete unknown, is quite an article of faith.

Getting behind the wheel of such a vehicle in the company of such a passenger is a statement that you hope to be trusted to safely negotiate hairpin turns, including wet pavement, at high speed.

As the driver, you must keep your eyes trained on where you want to go, trusting your mind and body to follow. As passenger, you must keep eyes on the obstacles and, when appropriate, issue warnings.

Now, apply all of that to the function of a public-private partnership.

That was the purpose of the first stop for the 72nd Commerce Lexington Leadership Visit after arriving in Greenville, S.C.: condensed, hair-raising primers in trust, leadership and partnership.

Nearly 200 Lexingtonians from many walks of life buckled into the driver and passenger seats of vehicles built for speed at the BMW Performance Center in nearby Spartanburg, put pedal to metal — or hung on for dear life — and sampled a wide-eyed metaphor for what was yet to come.

With the exception of a few who, as young, budding professionals or entrepreneurs, were provided scholarships, all made the trip for three days of workshops and fact-finding excursions on their own dimes.

That latter group included the mayor, vice mayor and four members of the Urban County Council. There were developers, bankers and lawyers, along with business executives, educators, entrepreneurs, arts advocates and leaders of nonprofit organizations — a microcosm of Lexington's private, public and nonprofit sectors.

After checking into a Greenville hotel and taking an initial walk down a shady, pleasantly busy Main Street, it was immediately clear that what that community has accomplished in the makeover of its downtown would work well as a model for the unrealized potential of Lexington's central district.

"Something"

Many who make these annual treks to study the successes and the cautionary tales of other cities shared with me the sense that in its efforts to whip its downtown into shape, Lexington still is lacking something essential.

We may have found that "something" in Greenville: the progress that can happen when leaders feel that their community has their backs as they risk moving on to "The Next Big Thing."

Just like Lexington, Greenville is a university city (Clemson, Furman and Bob Jones.) Their "Toyota" is BMW's North American manufacturing plant. Their "Lexmark" is Michelin tires, which maintains its American headquarters in the city. And Greenville has suburbs typical of a medium-sized American city.

What sets it apart from most, however, is a recognition that a strong community needs a powerful focal point: an attractive and inviting central business and cultural district that everyone can enjoy.

It all began with the vision of Max Heller, a Jewish WWII refugee who served as Greenville's two-term mayor throughout the '70s. Heller, who died at 92 just days before our arrival, campaigned for a makeover of the city's forlorn downtown, taking his cues from the public-friendly design typical of many European cities.

Heller's vision was fine-tuned into a plan that initially gathered dust under a brief succession of short-term mayors who followed him. That changed in 1995, when Heller's protege Knox White was elected mayor. If dissatisfied with White, the voters of Greenville could have at some point elected a replacement. That they have not, and that White has no opponent in his run for yet another term, speaks volumes about how he has gone about the stewardship and execution of the Max Heller vision.

A circumstance worth noting: in the time Greenville has known consistent leadership at city hall, Lexington has gone through four mayoral turnovers.

Trust

What we learned from speaker after speaker in Greenville was that it got this way as the result of the deliberate and careful nurturing of trust between government and business.

"If there is one thing that Greenville has done exceptionally well over the years it's that we've had a vision and we've planned. It has been a concentrated public-private effort to concentrate and revitalize downtown," noted Nancy Whitworth, Greenville's longtime economic development director.

"We have a public sector that has been willing to take risks and a private sector that is willing to support the risk-taking," she explained.

What kinds of risk? Try condemnation. Not without a great deal of controversy, the politically radioactive tool was deployed to acquire rundown properties near the heart of Greenville's downtown as sites for public-private mixed-use complexes of condominiums, apartments, retail, offices, artist spaces, restaurants and hotels.

Eminent domain in a politically conservative city: the definition of risk-taking.

It was controversial. But the evidence indicates that Greenville's leadership held ground, worked to open lines of communication and built relationships with the naysayers who had come out in force.

Bob Hughes, developer of River Place, a five-building project along the Reedy River, said he has seen downtown evolve from a seedy no-man's land where housing totaled about 40 units 10 years ago to roughly 1,200 units today — with an apartment waiting list of approximately 300.

His complex is a brick-and-mortar example of how a public-private partnership can work. Hughes owns and maintains the buildings; the city owns and tends the land they occupy. The arrangement is enabled by Tax Increment Financing. The result is a relationship built on trust.

Could Lexington see this "trust thing" happen among its political leadership and development and investor communities?

It's always comforting when quarreling 900-pound gorillas find common ground. After years of acrimony over the original and then revised designs of the proposed Centrepointe project, Mayor Jim Gray and developer Dudley Webb are now communicating regularly and congenially over a new plan for the vacant city block in the center of town that is coming together under the direction of the Chicago architecture firm Studio/Gang — recommended by Gray and Dean Michael Speaks of UK's College of Design, and hired by Webb.

A recent presentation by architect Jeanne Gang left even some of Centrepointe's most vocal and strident critics conceding that the ideas now on the table are far more in keeping with a scale and design scheme appropriate to downtown Lexington.

Is it full-blown trust yet? That soup still needs to simmer a bit.

In the meantime, Greenville offers additional assets that highlight what downtown Lexington's missing "somethings" might be.

Trees

While Greenville's Main Street is lined with retail shops and restaurants (some 70 within walking distance of the hotel), its streets bordered by pleasant, well-tended shrubbery and comfortable street furniture, most immediately noticed was the comforting leafy canopy above.

The mature trees shading the many public spaces from the heat of the afternoon sun held special poignancy for the Lexingtonians.

After Lexington's downtown trees were abruptly removed some years ago due to disease, their replacement has come in fits and starts leaving the downtown corridor denuded, baking pedestrians in the unforgiving blaze of hot Kentucky summers.

Water

Completing the calming environment of downtown Greenville are the soothing sounds of cascading water from fountains, falls and other water features.

Humans love water. We're made of the stuff.

The centerpiece is a waterfall that many lifelong Greenville residents had not realized existed until a federal highway bridge hiding the falls from view was removed, an example of a determined act of risk that Greenville's vision-keepers carried forward by opening communication and building trust to overcome doubt. An ugly, obstructing bridge was replaced by a spectacular pedestrian suspension span. The result was to bring out of hiding an impressive natural feature.

Falls Park on the Reedy River is now an urban respite for newcomers and residents alike. The 32-acre park is evidence of what can result from organizing ideas into a plan, orchestrating collaboration between the public and private sectors, and steadfastly sticking to the plan.

Developers have done their part by surrounding the public investment with urban residences, performing arts theaters, art galleries and interesting restaurants and shops.

"Every place we go, we see water," observed developer Woodford Webb when asked what Lexington needs to make its own downtown a people magnet. "It seems like every year, 'Lake Lexington' comes up again in some way. Maybe it's opening up Town Branch and doing a mini-shallow lake," he said, referring to the notion of the manmade downtown lake the Webb Companies have championed.

While Greenville has brought its own one-way, four-lane Main Street under control by switching to two-way flow patterns and angled street parking, Lexington's Main Street is, in reality, a highway with traffic rushing in one direction, mostly on the way to someplace else — a pattern that has contributed to difficulty in attracting the retail that brings street life and authentic character to a downtown district.

Lexington is getting there, with more than 20 projects completed in recent years. Others are in various stages of planning or actual progress. There have been a few rehabs and renovations in the Distillery District, but the concept awaits full investment. Jefferson Street is experiencing a seriously interesting renaissance. An Arena, Arts and Entertainment District Task Force is charged with developing an omnibus plan for the Lexington Center's 42 acres on the western end of downtown, as others work on the revitalization of the city's East End neighborhood. And a makeover of Triangle Park is currently underway.

Against that backdrop, this visit to Greenville leaves the Lexington decision-makers who made the trip processing a lot of tantalizing information that seems to boil down to leading, accepting risk, trusting, communicating and doing.

"The single best tool for economic development is airplane tickets," noted Lexington attorney Bill Lear in remarks to the opening session in Greenville. "There aren't any new ideas. Public spaces? The Italians knew how to do that a couple thousand years ago. The best way to improve is to go and see what somebody else is doing and how somebody else has done it and come back home and copy it. Imitation is the highest form of flattery."

Imitating Greenville would mean placing trust in the hands on the wheel, as well as a willingness to keep an open ear to the observations of those who have signed on for the ride.