LEXINGTON, Ky. — Picture a robust Southern region bisected by interstates, its core city blessed by the presence of a research university.
Listen to its music, distinctive to its people; taste fine food at myriad, superior restaurants.
Roots? Travel back a couple of centuries.
Downtown? It bustles at night. Standing sentry at its gateway, the statue of a Confederate general hovers.
Leadership? It comes from consolidated government.
Sound like Lafayette? Sure. But it’s Lexington, Kentucky, one long stride ahead of Lafayette in its development and seemingly sure of its eternal path toward becoming a “great American city.”
One Acadiana led a group of some 70 Acadiana people to Lexington last week to glean from its leadership how Lexington became what it is: a Top 100 metro area that has embraced and partnered with its seven more suburban or rural neighbors for economic advances, branded itself according to its myriad, unique strengths, and now presents itself to the world through a largely shared story.
The Leadership Exchange visit was One Acadiana’s second such trip; 18 months ago it traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, for the same purpose. Charleston, One Acadiana leaders said, was more advanced in its transformational journey; Lexington, successful more lately, is within Acadiana’s scope.
Lexington success: Within reach?
Is that a stretch? Is Lexington and its environs comparable to us? Consider this:
- One Acadiana’s nine parishes include 693,000 people; the Kentucky Bluegrass Region has 647,000.
- One Acadiana edges the Bluegrass in households earning more than $100,000 a year, but has more people reaping less than $25,000.
- One Acadiana has a greater percentage of homeowners, 72 percent to 64 percent, but more poverty, 21 percent to 17 percent.
Those differences are slight and put Acadiana and the Bluegrass Region in the same ballpark.
Here’s where Lexington holds the advantages: in labor force, employment, educated workforce. It’s America’s 11th-most educated community with 41 percent of people over 25 holding a bachelor’s; 18.9 percent hold an advanced degree.
Here’s where else the regions differ markedly: The Bluegrass Region, with lush emerald horse farms, pushes back against no-holds-barred growth. Urban growth boundaries were set six decades back. That means land-poor Fayette County may demand $150,000 an acre for land, while rural parishes may ask a tenth of that.
Conversely, land-poor Lafayette Parish may depend heavily upon nearby, partner parishes with more available land for future development. Witness recent acclaim over the freshly minted, certified, 700-acre site for development in Jefferson Davis Parish. That’s the kind of site large industries demand for industrial development.
Lexington leads Lafayette in development of its downtown, too. One Acadiana’s delegation stayed in a boutique hotel, an historic bank building that’s been refashioned into an art gallery and hotel, steps from the entertainment district. Historic buildings, some dating back to the town’s early days, mix comfortably with new development. Downtown investment abounds.
Behind the hotel, on trendy Short Street, restaurants have increased from three to 15 over the last decade.
“It can happen fast,” said Ben Berthelot, executive director of Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission. Can it happen here?
Lexington has suffered its setbacks, too. Big coal prospered in the region. It’s gone. Big tobacco prospered and fizzled. Seven years ago, unemployment was 13 percent; now, it’s less than 5 percent.
How did it change? Where was the turnaround moment? Answers are as numerous and varied as Bluegrass people themselves.
What triggered that success?
Bill Lear — attorney, former lawmaker, horseman — says a new Lexington emerged when IBM invested locally in the 1950s. The company located its office products division there, a significant employment opportunity apart from the University of Kentucky.
Others point to Toyota establishing its largest manufacturing plant in the country in nearby Georgetown in 1987.
But Mayor Jim Gray, former CEO of a large, family-owned construction company, said Lexington’s success stems from attitude, not from individual events. There’s a lot of “blocking and tackling going on” in the leadership trenches. When each episode is over, each effort culminated, he said, the city and surrounding area progress and people “feel better about themselves” for living in the Bluegrass Region.
“If you look for a moment you’re going to miss it,” said Melody Flowers, executive director of strategic analysis and policy at the University of Kentucky.
Gray, she said, has been an inspirational leader, someone who drives things to happen, to actualize ideas. But Gray’s tenure will end someday, she said. Things may change, but success will continue with the right community partners, the right attitudes. There is a penchant to produce, to make things happen.
Inside the brand: Authenticity
Mary Quinn Ramer, president of VisitLEX, the convention and visitors bureau, said her agency recruited a top mind to help craft a brand for the region. After days of intensive study, he offered only this: “It’s all about the horse.”
The horse.
“Well, everybody loves horses,” said Lear. “It’s in the DNA somewhere.”
But not everyone raises horses, thoroughbreds that gallop around racetracks with grace and power to win championship stakes. The Bluegrass Region does, in abundance.
The tourism leadership offered a simple, trademark blue horse as the symbol for its regional tourism, an image that didn’t catch on with everyone right away but has caught on with time. It’s “all about the horse,” but the horse is all about authenticity for Lexington and environs. Authenticity, Lexington had decided, matters most. They want to tell their own story.
It’s about the bourbon, too, and Kentucky has embraced that. Small distilleries have sprung up alongside the likes of Kentucky bourbon giants. There’s a Bourbon Trail, a “baker’s dozen” of stops, which visitors travel in hopes of visiting every site. More than 1 million people participated last year.
Preparing for success
It’s about the people, too, and preparation for success. Lexington in the 1990s saw its school infrastructure system overwhelmed. Help didn’t materialize at the state level. Local leaders delivered a thoughtful message about the deteriorating situation for public schools.
“It’s about our kids and where they learn,” said Alan Stein of Commerce Lexington, the local chamber. “We had a lot of portables.”
The school board passed what was the equivalent of a local millage tax to improve school conditions, publishing a clear schedule for which schools would be improved and when. The tax will generate about $300 million over 20 years. The goal: to build “world-class schools.”
There is a plan for what happens inside those schools, too: Every child will be prepared for higher education or for a career. To that end, the business community and school leaders know what careers are in demand, locally. The schools, through career academies, try to prepare students for those careers by honing the right skills.
What happens beyond that matters, too. Lexington is marked as one of six “university cities” in the U.S., municipalities of 250,000 to 1 million people with core, research universities; student populations of 10 percent or more; and other, distinctive measures that prepare them for a place in the “knowledge” economy. Scott Shapiro, senior adviser to Mayor Jim Gray, said that designation “drives the character of a city.” The presence of college graduates helps buffer communities against recessions.
There’s more. Universities gives cities a larger feel by delivering the benefits of big city living: “culture, salary and economic vitality,” Shapiro says. They attract good jobs, lure or retain young professionals and help limit violence in the community. They inspire healthy lifestyles, happier people, spark creativity and civic mindedness.
Could that be us?