Crescent Hill named a ‘comeback’ neighborhood

Business First reports on a Southern Living article (see link below). Nice tribute to the Franfort Ave scene and photo of Blue Dog Bakery & Cafe.


http://www.southernliving.com/home-gard ... page8.html

[Robin Garr]

Publicity is always nice, but in my opinion as a Crescent Hill resident since 1994 (and familiar with the neighborhood for many years before that), Crescent Hill - like the Highlands - never really DE-gentrified and thus is rather oddly described as a "comeback" neighborhood.

Thoughts, all? I wonder who wrote the piece and how familiar she or he is with Louisville. Guess I can click the link and see ...

Business First reports on a Southern Living article (see link below). Nice tribute to the Franfort Ave scene and photo of Blue Dog Bakery & Cafe.


http://www.southernliving.com/home-gard ... page8.html

That was my first thought as well. What is it coming back from exactly?

[Robin Garr]

That was my first thought as well. What is it coming back from exactly?

If you read the short article, it's apparently about the Frankfort Avenue restaurant/shop resurgence, which is reasonably legit. It had the tone of being written by a guy in Atlanta doing telephone interviews, though.

I had to laugh at Tina Ward-Pugh saying you used to be able to walk across Frankfort Avenue without looking for cars first. She's lucky she survived to become a council member!

Crescent Hill has always been a hip neighborhood. Took swimming lessons at the pool (pre-Mary T bubble) as a kid in 1966 or 67.

On the other hand this is good publicity and well deserved.

On the other hand this is good publicity and well deserved.

That's right, Mark. Us local folk can pick away at it. But outsiders are going to see it at face value. And every little bit helps. It is a cool area with great eats, whether more recent or long standing. I'll take free positive publicity with a few insider shrugs any day!

Nice to see the neighborhood getting some attention like that!

I grew up off of Frankfort Avenue near Vernon avenue around Osaka and Nancys Bagels....lived their from 1988 to 2001 then moving to Middletown. I personally have to say that I felt the neighborhood had gone down hill for some time. My family saw crime go up in the neighborhoods.etc . But I think in the last few years it has seen a resurgence...new restuarants, fancy boutiques, the mellwood art center, and the trolly hop! I have always loved frankfort ave/crescent hill but i never remember it being as hip as it is now!

We moved onto Kennedy in 1973. It's always been nice here,friendly, little crime, front porch sitters, and talkers. There were fewer restaurants, but more little groceries, and drug stores. The houses were in good shape, but more original than some are now. This end was not really in disrepair. We miss the quaint grocery and pharmacy stores, but love the new restaurants, and classy shops. i would never want to live elsewhere. The park being created where the Kennedy mansion was, was a good thing, because the house was too torn up to be repaired after" the tornado".

[Robin Garr]

That's right, Mark. Us local folk can pick away at it. But outsiders are going to see it at face value. And every little bit helps. It is a cool area with great eats, whether more recent or long standing. I'll take free positive publicity with a few insider shrugs any day!

Okay, all that is good, and I don't disagree with it. But here's the downside as I see it: Stories like this imply that Louisville was a debilitated Rustbelt city like Detroit or Cleveland, and oh, wow, gee whiz, one of those neighborhoods that used to be a slum has got some nice shops in it now. In my opinion - and maybe I'm being too finicky here? - stories like this paint an unrealistic picture of the unusual demographics of our town. Yeah, we had white flight in the '60s, and it was shameful in retrospect. But it was contained to the West End and downtown and didn't "shell out" the entire urban area the way it did so many other older cities. I think that's a good point about Louisville, and to some extent, stories like this mask that reality. That's my problem with it.

I think I read somewhere that a Louisvillian was named to a top editorial post on Southern Living. The coverage in the magazine is always positive (well, I guess it's positive for every place. You don't go there for muckraking!). Click through this series. It makes us look pretty good: http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-central/louisville-kentucky-derby-guide-00400000043373/

You know, despite our best efforts, Louisville seems to fly under the rest of the country's radar. If you look at blogs, discussion sites, etc. people who happen to end up here are always surprised. To most, we're just the Derby (though it's amazing how many people think it's in Lexington. The two L's get conflated all the time)... we have a basketball team... we're, uh... oh, the Slugger...

and that's about it. Any positive publicity like this is good, I think.

That's right, Mark. Us local folk can pick away at it. But outsiders are going to see it at face value. And every little bit helps. It is a cool area with great eats, whether more recent or long standing. I'll take free positive publicity with a few insider shrugs any day!

Stories like this imply that Louisville was a debilitated Rustbelt city like Detroit or Cleveland, and oh, wow, gee whiz, one of those neighborhoods that used to be a slum has got some nice shops in it now..

I wouldn't go as far as describing Louisville on these terms upon our arrival here about 13-14 years ago. However, let's take a glance back:

Scrap yard and scraggly river front.
No Slugger Field.
No Papa Johns Stadium.
No 4th St. Live. (depressing, dying shopping center still there)
No Ali Center, Frazier Museum, Marriot, etc.
More strip joints downtown.
Less immigrants, thus less ma & pa and creative ethnic restaurants.
No Summit Shopping
No Westport Village
No Norton Commons
Pre- Churchill Downs makeover
Pre-Galthouse makeover
Pre-East Market makeover
Downtown Convention Center ( I don't think this was here either)
Pre-Park Duval
Pre-Liberty Green
Pre-sidewalk makeover along Bardstown and Baxter

What am I missing? Louisville has come a long way in the past decade or so. It wasn't a slum, but rather a smallchange sort of cowtown--at least in the eyes of outsiders like me. My views evolved and my out of town guests are pretty blown away once they get the full tour of the metro area.

[Robin Garr]

I wouldn't go as far as describing Louisville on these terms upon our arrival here about 13-14 years ago. However, let's take a glance back:

Scrap yard and scraggly river front.
No Slugger Field.
No Papa Johns Stadium.
No 4th St. Live. (depressing, dying shopping center still there)
No Ali Center, Frazier Museum, Marriot, etc.
More strip joints downtown.
Less immigrants, thus less ma & pa and creative ethnic restaurants.
No Summit Shopping
No Westport Village
No Norton Commons
Pre- Churchill Downs makeover
Pre-Galthouse makeover
Pre-East Market makeover
Downtown Convention Center ( I don't think this was here either)
Pre-Park Duval
Pre-Liberty Green
Pre-sidewalk makeover along Bardstown and Baxter

What am I missing? Louisville has come a long way in the past decade or so. It wasn't a slum, but rather a smallchange sort of cowtown--at least in the eyes of outsiders like me. My views evolved and my out of town guests are pretty blown away once they get the full tour of the metro area.

Oh, great things have happened in the past 10 or 15 years for sure, and the resurgence of much of downtown (south of the Seelbach is still more iffy) and the Riverfront parks and Slugger Field is a big part of it. And I think as the economy improves, we'll see the resurgence of East Main and Market really take off more than it has now. (Still mourning Primo.)

But you're changing the subject a bit, James: The article was about Crescent Hill, and the primary point I've been making is that the Frankfort Avenue and Bardstown Road neighborhoods, specifically, were never really subject to "white flight" or serious disinvestment, although I'll admit that even there, the Triangle went through a period where a lot of the old houses were broken up into apartments, many of them hippie pads, and certainly gained in stature when most of those old buildings were put back together.

Separately, I agree with much of your list, even, grudgingly, Fourth Street Live. I wish the Convention Center had been done in a very different way: It's no architectural jewel, and its long, blank walls create the opposite of a welcoming, walkable urban streetscape. And as for Churchill Downs, money may be the name of the game, but I'll never be happy that they transformed a historic, characterful facility into something that, save for the twin spires, somewhat resembles an Atlantic City casino.

I get a subscription from an older, suburban, female relative...and from the mostly lame traditional decorating, the heavily convenience product based recipes, and the Gatlingurg/North Florida vacations, I'd say that she's their audience.

The Louisville piece is one of several about cities throughout the region. Most actually gentrified 10-15 years ago, but this is new to Southern Living readers.

I had to laugh at Tina Ward-Pugh saying you used to be able to walk across Frankfort Avenue without looking for cars first. She's lucky she survived to become a council member!

As a kid, I used to frequent Frankfort Avenue at a very young age: Crescent Hill Ice Cream Shop, Better Days, Hudson’s, Wobbey’s, Ropple’s, Melton’s, the list goes on. They were all part of my beat. We would run back and forth across Frankfort Avenue without a care – there were pennies that needed to be placed on the railroad tracks, darnit! Today, there is no way I would let my children roam Frankfort Ave. at the young age that I did. I don’t think that the increased traffic is as much a signal of neighborhood revitalization so much as an increased populous in the city in general (not to mention an overall increase in the vehicle:home ratio). But, it is definitely much busier than it used to be.

I think it's a glass half full versus a glass half empty argument. I don't think the average reader analyzes this type of piece to that degree but maybe I'm wrong.

BTW I occupied one of those "hippie pads" for a number of years. The house has since been restored to a single family dwelling.