Enlightened Suburbanites, Idiot Yuppies
A suburban Louisville developer wanted to ”to step out of the normal mode . . . and do something very exciting and very different.” Encouraged by the city’s exciting (well, exciting to land-use wonks who care about this sort of thing) Cornerstone 2020 development guidelines, he decided to do a mixed-use, infill project, called Clifton Lofts, in the historic Frankfort Ave. area. I was especially impressed to see a developer, who usually builds single-family homes out in the hinterlands get fired up about urbanism. But wait… the city residents, concerned about a few trees and the “gigantic size” of the building (It appears to be about four stories tall), will possibly prevent the project from moving forward. They’re even circulating a petition against it. Stupid NIMBYs. They were even opposed to an underground parking garage, insisting that residents should
park at a SURFACE parking lot. At first I thought I read it wrong. Underground garage (much more expensive to build than surface lot) bad, surface lot good? As if fighting a half century of suburban-style zoning ordinances, strip mall junk, and a culture taught to fear cities isn’t hard enough, now the environmentalists and others that should be pushing for more infill, are the most resistant to change. These people are apparently against sprawl, against mixed-use density, against tree removal, against… where are people supposed to live anyway?