Out with the Old, In with the New:

Preservation vs. Development of the Rosenberg Block, Lexington, KY

I’m standing at the corner of Main and Upper in the heart of downtown Lexington, staring through a chain-link fence at what used to be this town’s hippest music venue, the Dame. Now, it’s a crater. Actually, the entire block—often referred to as “the Rosenberg Block” for its owner, Joe Rosenberg—is a crater, perhaps 14-feet deep in the center, and 500 feet across. Along the edges, yellow bulldozers stand guard over piles of limestone and brick. Within the middle, drill rigs are poised to burrow deeper into the mud. It wasn’t a meteor that carved this pit and wiped out these historic buildings, some of which had stood since 1826; rather, it was something man-made and controllable, though perhaps driven by a force just as strong: development. Joe Rosenberg’s block—housing a jewelry store, a pool hall, a rocker’s haven, a pharmacy, and more—is being ripped up and reborn as Lexington’s soon-to-be tallest building, a massive hotel / commercial establishment called CentrePointe. Two years from now, this crater will be 40 stories high.

I first heard about the plans for development in February of this past year. It seemed hard to believe in the beginning; that block was the one place downtown that was consistently filled with people. It was THE party block on the weekends, the place to run into people and have fun. I’d been going there for years; I’d met my boyfriend at the Big Maracas salsa night at the Dame. Etc. [Make sure you tells us about your own personal connection to the place, why you’re interested in it. Telling us early in the essay is better than later. We want to have a sense of the writer….]

I wasn’t the only one who was upset by the plans. Protestors under the banner of “Save the Block” held a vigil outside the pool hall… [give history of the controversy, citing the source(s) where you learned this info. Include first-hand experience like, “I sat and watched them one evening from the steps of the old City Hall…” Set up the relevant context, like that the World Equestrian Games are coming here in 2010, and Lexington hotels routinely sell out already during big football or basketball games, or during race season at Keeneland. How to proceed and progress with such restrictions? How best to serve the city? Set up the conflict of positions on the issue.]

Clearly, those who were regulars of the Rosenberg block were opposed. So-and-so, who is a friend of mine and owns Mia’s café, a popular downtown restaurant located on the block, said she was crushed when she heard that her restaurant may be torn down. “Blah blah blah,” she told me. “Blah blah blah blah blah.” Mr. OtherGuy shared her remorse. He’d been playing gigs at the Dame since he was in college here at UK. “Man,” he told the reporter of the Lexington Herald –Leader, “this blows” (“Rocker”).

But it’s not just rockers who mourn the loss of their hangout; local historians and preservation activists recognize the Rosenberg block as valuable for other reasons. After all, it’s a local treasure. [Give some history of the place. Dates, stores that have come and gone. Important events there. Important people. Always cite source(s).]

Person A and Person B of the Bluegrass Trust are concerned about this community’s commitment to preservation of historic venues just like this. “Understanding our history and heritage is the driving goal of our organization. Blah blah blah” (“Bluegrass Trust”). Many Lexingtonians support the BGT’s mission and also see the need for preserving our past. Ed Jones, a school teacher in Fayette County, wrote a pleading letter to the editor begging his fellow citizens to reconsider the push for development. “This block holds the oldest operational building in Lexington,” he writes. “Shouldn’t that count for something?” (“Save the Block”)

This is a useful question: Should the history of a building matter when we’re faced with plans for development? And if so, how much? Does age alone equal value? I suppose it does seem short-sighted to only look backwards. What about Lexington’s future? Isn’t change inevitable, and shouldn’t we welcome any developments that might, in fact, make this area a more vibrant spot for visitors? [Note how I’m posing important questions here, one leading into the next. Also, I’m not taking sides, just noting different priorities. Reflection can be opened by the asking of good questions.]

The variety of answers to these questions illuminates the variety of purposes and priorities we hold for our land. Mr. Developer thinks of it this way: “blah blah blah” (“Developer”). Local business owners, like Mr. Shmo, agree with this attitude, especially in these hard economic times. “Blah blah blah,” he says. Etc. [Keep going with others who offer various answers to these questions, being careful to draw relationships between the people and their ideas with your own language in between. Weigh the concerns of the developers with the concerns of the preservationists. Talk about those who have some perspective in between these two extremes. Try to articulate clearly what each group is prioritizing, and why. It’s a complicated issue; don’t present one as wholly good and the other as wholly bad. See ALL sides.]

Deciding whether to preserve or to develop will always arouse conflicts, and Lexington isn’t alone in this battle. Cities all across the nation are engaged in similar struggles right now: [list a number of examples. This frames the issue in a larger context, shows that these concerns are bigger than just what goes on around the corner. You could make some explicit statements about how this conflict is universal, and it is inevitable: The only constant in this world is change. The struggle is whether to resist it or to hop on.]

[The ending is crucial. You’ve got to come to a SO WHAT, to make some statements (hypotheses, insights) about some larger issues. Somehow returning to where you began is often a good strategy, but it’s not the only way. Try to gain some perspective by the end; look outward, or look forward.]

By now, eight months after the controversy began, the decision on the Rosenberg block has been made: out with the old, in with the new. I go visit the site on occasion—when I’m buying squash at the Farmer’s market nearby, or when I’m running in one of the 5k races downtown—and I watch the foundations being jack-hammered into bits and then tossed aside. I’m melancholy, but also trying to put it in perspective. At some point, the Dame wasn’t the Dame. It was a liquor store, and before that, a place to buy your short-wave radios. At some point before that, it was probably a feed store, or a saloon, with a post outside to which you could tie your horse. Our world is in motion. It’s foolish of me to want to stop it, and yet, of course, I do.

Instead, I try to think of it this way: A hundred years from now, my great-grandchildren might be standing on this very corner, mourning the loss of the stately old CentrePointe hotel, a place that was known for its historic (early 21^st century!) flare, but that was hopelessly outdated, and was outpaced by the surrounding establishments. A prominent developer has bought it and will level it flat, so that he might rebuild something bigger, better, newer than new. My great-grandchildren lament the changes, and share memories of the hotel: proms held in the ballroom, graduation brunches at the restaurant, late nights in the lounge bar. They stand with folded arms and stare up at the massive bulldozers, calling them intruders, calling them thieves of their sacred past.

It makes me smile, thinking of my progeny this way, and thinking of a new design for this block, which will live on long after me, in whatever evolving forms. With every mutation, something is lost, true. But something else is gained. It’s depressing, and uplifting, too. I can’t help thinking that what matters is in fact the struggle—the conversations we have about the value of these buildings, these ordinary parcels of land—even when those conversations come into conflict. It gets us talking about what matters to us, and allows us to reconsider other viewpoints, as well as to stand up for what we believe in. We do all agree on one thing, after all: this place is worth fighting for.