Dear Bob: Confessions Of A Community Activist

In 2019 I posted an angry rant on Facebook about parking regulations in downtown Noblesville. Nearly 800 people reacted to the post, nearly 700 commented on it, and over 400 shared it. My complaint garnered staggering coverage on social media, more than anything else I’ve ever posted.

The infamous Facebook post

A few days later, Bob DuBois, Director of the local Chamber of Commerce asked if I’d stop at his office for a conversation. I admire Bob–admire that he’s steered our conservative community’s leading business organization toward endorsing diversity and equal rights at a time when certain folk in our country find ways to make that a bad thing. So I happily went.

 

In the meeting, Bob noted I’ve been an outspoken supporter of downtown, its businesses and its architecture. “Look at the reaction to your Facebook post. You’re obviously a local influencer. Now, do you think your post made people want to come downtown or avoid downtown?”

 

The answer was obvious. What I’d posted hurt the business people and property owners I’ve tried to help for over 30 years. I was Noblesville’s first Main Street president, sat on early Streetscape and Design committees–encouraging building restoration and installation of better sidewalks, lighting, and benches. I’d created and oversaw the first façade grant program for the square, and as a Realtor had worked in every way I could think of to put buildings in the possession of owners and tenants who respected the architecture and wanted a more vibrant downtown. Yet, along the way I’d developed some bad habits that at times made me an troublesome ally.

 

I committed then to make my applause public and take my complaints privately to the mayor or city council members. And two years later, I had occasion to thank Bob personally. Here’s the letter I wrote him.

 

August 20, 2021

 

Bob,

 

I was particularly touched by the discussion about civility at the Business Summit this morning. It even got me a little emotional. As I scanned the room in that moment, my eyes fell on you and I was reminded that I owe you a debt of gratitude, one not entirely disconnected from today’s discussion.

 

Two years ago, after I ranted on social media about parking in downtown Noblesville, you asked me to stop at your office for a conversation about it. What you said to me that morning was a turning point in my awareness about the tone of my public comments when I’m passionate about an issue.

 

In a majority of my years here–some 6 mayoral terms to be precise, Noblesville’s mayors were men who made it clear they were not listening to folks like me, and the most recent mayor went so far as to blackball folks like me from city and community boards of directors, even appearing at board meetings to warn members not to elect me or others to positions of leadership. I adapted by protesting through public writing, remonstrating at public hearings, and even trolling city leaders on social media.

 

Our conversation at your office forced me to reevaluate these habits. I couldn’t have any positive impact on those two previous mayors, but I can control myself and how I present my ideas. How I act is nobody else’s fault or responsibility. It’s mine alone.

The parking ticket

At a fundraiser for Darren Peterson last fall, I said hello to [Mayor] Chris Jenson and he introduced me to a local developer by saying, “And watch out for Kurt. If you make him mad, he’ll blow you up on social media.”

 

Fair enough. I earned that. 

I shrugged and smiled and started to walk away, but startled myself a little by coming back and gripping Chris’s hand. I replied, “I won’t do that to you. I’ll call you on the phone because I know you’re listening.” 

 

That doesn’t mean we’ll agree, but it does mean we have to be civil, and even more importantly, I’d rather solve problems than just win arguments and stroke my own community-activist-ego.

 

Whether you know it or not, you helped bring me to that moment. You helped me understand that my rant on Facebook not only wasn’t helpful, it was counterproductive. It probably made some people apprehensive about coming downtown, even though I truly want downtown to thrive, and made others uncertain about engaging with me on issues I care about.

 

Thank you, Bob. You are welcome to call me on my bullshit anytime.

Clients In Crisis

Sitting next to my client at the closing of her house, out the corner of my eye I saw something fall from her face . . . or her blonde hair(?) onto the paper before her. Puzzled, turned to look closer and found her frozen, pen in hand, face bent to the legal document when another . . . something fell to the paper. 

 

They were tears.

 

I gripped her arm and leaned close, “Stacy, stand up and let’s go into the hallway.” The buyers across the table hardly noticed. In the hall I gave her a brief hug then led her to an empty office and sat her down with a box of tissues. Back in the closing I explained that I’d shuttle documents to her down the hall, saying only, “This is a difficult moment. She needs privacy.”

 

The house sale was the final act of a failed marriage, an exclamation point on a dream that died. But Stacy, a good friend, was tough as nails. She had that good cry and got on with her life.

 

They don’t teach you about this in real estate licensing courses–that real estate isn’t about houses, but about people. I’m thankful for all the educational psychology in my undergrad degree. As a Realtor, I’m often representing people in their brightest, most hopeful moments, when a new house is a realized dream, and also, sadly, in their most broken moments, after death, or amid divorce or bankruptcy.

 

In another emotional moment, I carefully stepped away.

 

A county judge handed me the listing of a home owned by a divorcing couple who couldn’t agree on anything. The husband had possession of the house and though he wasn’t living there he’d changed the locks and prevented the wife access. When I took possession and put my sign in the yard, the wife called and asked if I’d let her into the house to collect some belongings. I asked the judge and he agreed. 

 

She arrived with her father. While she gathered clothing in the master bedroom, her father boxed dishes in the kitchen. I busied myself doing what I do with uninhabited houses; occasionally run water in sinks and tubs to prevent sewer gas from back-drafting into the house.

 

I finally made it to the master bath and after turning off the water, heard guttural sobs. Stepped out to find the wife, a woman I barely knew, sitting on the edge of the bed, face in her hands, crying. The impulse is to sit close, put an arm around her shoulders and offer consolation. But no. I’m a man in a bedroom with a women I don’t know who’s overcome with emotion. I hurried to the kitchen and told her father, “Your daughter needs you upstairs.”

 

Sometimes clients’ needs are more nuanced. At a listing appointment, a completely lucid 75-year-old retired businessman told me bluntly, “I’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.” He handed me an attorney’s business card. “My attorney must approve everything I sign in advance, so copy him on every communication.” I did as he said, and the transaction worked wonderfully.

 

That is, until I discovered six weeks after the closing he’d never paid the electrician I hired on his behalf to make repairs after the home inspection. I called to ask that he pay the bill. At first confused, this otherwise gentle man flew into a rage, accusing me of trying to cheat him. I emailed the bill, the inspection chain of documents, and our emails about the needed electrical work to him and his attorney, showing it hadn’t been paid though he’d agreed to pay it. He could not be moved.

 

The electrician had served me and my clients well over the years. So I personally paid the $750 bill out of respect for the contractor and our long business relationship.

 

The seller’s attorney called with sympathy saying he couldn’t reimburse me without his client’s approval, but promised to find a way to make things right someday. Nine months later, after I’d long-since licked my wounds and forgotten about it, a check arrived in the mail from that attorney for $750. 

 

The lesson: Life is hard and there are good people in it. 

 

Some 7 years ago, another aging client was selling a house she’d owned 35 years, bought when she was a single mom. Her 2^nd husband attended our meetings but respectfully deferred to her on all matters of the sale. The wife and I had a conversation in the driveway about needed mulching a week before we listed. We agreed I’d find a landscaper to do it. Six hours later I called her with a landscaper’s name. She had no idea what I was talking about. No memory of the conversation of six hours earlier. The same sort of thing happened again in the following week. I’m not a mental health professional, but I’ve seen the early signs of dementia before.

 

I called the husband and asked him to participate in our decision making, but he insisted this was her house and she would make all decisions. 

 

And so I proceeded suspecting my client was in the early stages of undiagnosed dementia, whose husband was apparently in denial. From that moment on I emailed and texted as much as possible and followed phone calls with a summary email starting, “To confirm our phone call of earlier today . . .” I wanted digital proof to confirm everything that happened. We sold and closed the house easily. I enjoyed the couple so much, but sadly, we lost contact in the years after that sale.

 

Just this past winter that seller’s son called to share that his mother had died after a long battle with dementia and thanked me for being good to her.

 

Again, my real estate career reminds me that my profession is more about people than it is about houses.

 

 

 

 

What's To Be Done With Bill Cosby?

When I was a kid my parents had a Bill Cosby comedy record. God it was funny! 

For anyone my age, Cosby was a near life-long presence, from a groundbreaking TV roll in the ‘60s to Jell-O commercials and Saturday morning cartoons in the ‘70s and ‘80s to another groundbreaking TV roll in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In a fall from grace I never could have imagined, and despite whatever legal loopholes keep him out of jail, it’s abundantly clear from mountains of evidence that Bill Cosby was privately a heinous sexual predator.

 

And so what’s to be done with his amazing career accomplishments? Comedian and commenter, Kamau Bell is trying to answer that question in his new documentary, We Need To Talk About Bill Cosby.

 

I’m creeped out enough by the courtroom testimony against Cosby, I’ll never be able to watch his old work without thinking about it. So I won’t watch. And I’m not alone. He’s been virtually excommunicated from our culture.

Likewise, Louis C.K. was once one of my favorite comedians. He rightfully also fell from grace as the MeToo movement unfolded. But on a long drive recently I listened to a streamed comedy channel that played some of his old standup. I quickly rewarmed to his comic genius and so researched his recent efforts to reenter the standup comedy world. While his initial apology was thoughtful, his recent jokes on stage about his former bad behavior are so weird, and just creepy, it makes you doubt the sincerity of that original apology. I’m back in the anti-Louis C.K. camp.

 

I watched the HBO documentary about Michael Jackson called Leaving Neverland. There can be little doubt that Michael Jackson was a child molester. But like it never happened, in 2020 Sirius Radio launched a Michael Jackson channel, and just last December the musical “MJ” premiered on Broadway.

A radio station and a Broadway musical celebrating the work of a child molester! What’s next? Will Turner Classic Movies broadcast a Harvey Weinstien film festival?

I’m reminded of the line, “Tolerating racism is racism.” Likewise, I think tolerating sexual assault encourages sexual assault.

 

I’m not saying there’s no place for redemption. In some cases, there truly should be. But what that would look like is hard to imagine. Most transgressors who have survived in the public eye don’t accept responsibility for their sins. Think Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

 

Yes, most of Clinton’s accusations involve consensual relationships, but still he repeatedly used an unequal power dynamic to lure women into sexual relationships, and there are several accusations of forced sexual contact. Yet, when Democrats hold a convention, Clinton arrives to an affectionate standing ovation.

And with Trump it’s even worse. He spent years bragging in New York tabloids about his extra-marital affairs, made repeated ugly sexual comments to women in public, and of course was caught on tape bragging about the joys of sexually assaulting women. Nineteen women have come forward accusing him of doing just that. Yet, tens of millions of Americans didn’t care that they might be electing a sexual predator to the most powerful office in the world.

Is anything real? 

 

I’ll admit, I’m not perfect at drawing the line either.

 

With some unease, I still listen to Ryan Adams’ music. He’s one my favorite songwriters of the past 25 years. His private misdeeds also came out as a result of the MeToo movement. Apparently, he methodically established friendships with up-and-coming female artists under the pretense of acting as a mentor, when in fact he was grooming them for sexual encounters. 

One of Adams’ best-known victims was Phoebe Bridgers. She's recently built a successful music career on her own and her most memorable song, Motion Sickness, is about her relationship with Adams. In the opening lyrics she sings: “I hate you for what you did, and miss you like a little kid,” lamenting the lost, innocent joy of connecting with one of her heroes, and rightly hating him for the ugliness that lay hidden beneath the surface.

And maybe that’s what we’re all doing as we struggle and fail to make peace with the heroes whose work moved and inspired us, only to later discover they were secretly monsters.

 

 

Geoff Davis: My Friend In His Creative Prime

I met Geoff Davis in 1987. At the time, he was helping found the Noblesville Preservation Alliance, trying to make a then, indifferent Noblesville, care about its historic architecture. For the 35 years since, he’s doggedly walked his own path, pursuing out-of-the-ordinary interests, delighting and inspiring people like me along the way. 

We sat on that early NPA board together and restored our own Victorian-era houses in the same neighborhood. I knew I loved old homes and restoration, and already knew a lot about carpentry, but Geoff understood the granular details of architecture and historic design and helped me deepen my own knowledge. I’ve learned so much from him over our 35-year friendship. 

 

Together, we salvaged old buildings slated for demolition. Once, we scoured a decades-long-abandoned boarding house, picking decorative hardware, woodwork, light fixtures, and eventually, a staggeringly heavy 1940s refrigerator we slid down a stairway and into my truck.

 

I wrote and published a novel called The Salvage Man, about a man doing what Geoff inspired me to do; save those irreplaceable bits of beauty before they got thrown in a dumpster. I returned the favor by giving him a set of 1890s doors with matching ornate hardware I’d salvaged to be used in an addition he was building to his 1890s home. 

Twenty years ago I was free-lance writing, doing a piece about IPS schools. Thanks to Geoff’s help, I interviewed teachers and students in the school building where he taught. There, I discovered what an amazing teacher he was. Geoff was allowed to teach his elementary students a unique topic of his choosing each semester. He taught them to play the ukulele, creating a school ukulele band. It was an insane success. He and his students would go on to perform at former Indiana Governor O’Bannon’s funeral and in one of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion shows. 

Some years later, when I was going through a divorce and an emotional mess, he took me for a for peaceful walk along White River near the Blatchley Nature Study Club land, identifying birds and trees, giving my troubled heart exactly what it needed at that very moment. He probably has no idea how powerful, healing and inspiring that walk was. I went on my own walk the next day, and the next day. From that day on, I’ve walked in the woods and biked in the countryside to clear my mind and find relief from the chaos of life.

 

For 35 years we commiserated over beers about our difficult relationships with our fathers, woodworking, historic preservation, primitive country blues recordings, and our love/hate relationships with our shared former profession of teaching. 

 

A decade ago, my friend Bill Kenley and I created a literary journal for Noblesville, called the Polk Street Review. It was only natural Geoff would get involved. He set out on the North Forest Canoe Trail, a six-week, 350-mile canoe journey (with his canoe, named Joe) through New York, Vermont, Quebec, and Maine, and chronicled the arduous trip for that year’s edition of Polk Street.

His retirement from teaching in 2018 ushered in his most prolific creative period. He opened his own workshop in downtown Noblesville, teaching woodworking and ukulele building. This soon grew as he added a letterpress print shop that he operates for profit and for teaching that disappearing craft.

He plays uke and trombone in various ad-hoc bands and has built an impressive reputation as a wood carver, best known for his 50 Little Birds series that started with birds but grew into fish, dogs, and sea-going creatures. He’s a leatherworker, making belts and suspenders and is an impressive decorative painter. In the past year he’s given a TedTalk and a documentary was made about him called 50 Little Birds. And now he’s organized Noblesville residents to build a community toboggan to enter in the National Toboggan Championships in Camden Main this February.

There’s just about nothing he doesn’t do. Oh, and did I mention he set up a workbench in his shop window this past Christmas season and entertained shoppers dressed as Santa working in his workshop? Yeah, he did that, too!

Last December, at a bourbon tasting in my garage, Geoff arrived with two wooden cocktail garnish muddlers he’d made on a wood lathe. He pulled them from his pocket and handed one to me and the other to Samir Mohammad, like it was no big deal, “Made these for you guys.” The self-deprecation is very Hoosier–to make something so precious and beautiful and give it so casually. 

 

I love him for that quality. And over the holidays, every time I muddled the orange peel and cherry in my old fashion, I was reminded how lucky I am to call this incredible person my friend.

*Santa photo by Rocky Walls

 

 

Are New Downtown Developments Good For Old Town Noblesville?

The Village At Federal Hill is set to break ground in 2022

I see folks on social media claim new high-rise apartment buildings are “destroying downtown Noblesville.”

 

I disagree.

 

Some eight years ago I was guest speaker at a local civic group. Asked to name the biggest change I’d seen while living in Old Town, I answered that because of rising population, rising economic activity, and increased traffic, it was becoming less a small town environment, like Tipton or Lebanon, and more an urban environment, like Fountain Square. 

 

That didn’t’ go over well. A Noblesville Common Council member in the crowd scoffed that traffic congestion in Old Town was no different than when he was a teenager in the 1980s. That astonished me. The next day I called the Indiana Department of Transportation and got 30 years of traffic counts for Conner and 10^th streets. The data showed a nearly 300% rise in traffic since the late ‘80s.

 

Perceptions have to meet reality.

Village At Federal Hill looking west. Conner St. is at left and
existing amphitheater green space is out of view to the right.
The existing playground remains in middle of this rendering.

 

I’m fine with Old Town’s increasingly urban environment. Two years from now when four more planned apartment complexes are complete, any debate on the topic will be over.

 

I was the first president of Noblesville Main Street back in the early ‘90s. Main Street is an economic development entity that works to revitalize historic downtowns. At Main Street’s founding, we got a year of consultation from experts on that very subject thanks to the National Trust of Historic Preservation. They examined Noblesville back then and made two big observations.

 

First, Noblesville was developing a surface “parking doughnut” around downtown, an asphalt desert between commercial and residential Old Town. They warned that this tends to destroy downtowns, that people don’t like to move through an ugly, barren environment to get to a pleasant destination. The pleasant destination will just wither. No one in power listened at the time. The City, the County, a law firm, and a developer all torn down historic structures and made more ugly surface parking. So I’m thrilled now to see these asphalt deserts turned into something that can both increase population and intensify economic activity, which will help sustain downtown restaurants and retail and make for more compelling night life. 

 

Their second observation was that we Noblesville folk saw the river as the edge of downtown and should reimagine it as the middle. At the time, the Kroger strip mall was under construction. They argued Noblesville should have zoned the west side to work like the east side: buildings right up on the sidewalk, put parking behind, and add wide sidewalks along bridges to encourage pedestrian movement across the river–in other words, an urban environment. Instead, we let the Kroger mall, including the street width out front, be built like a suburban environment designed for cars.

The Bridge of Flowers, the brainchild of Dick Gordon, seeks to transform the new, wide Logan
Street sidewalk over White River into a lush, green connection between east and west downtown.

 

Those consultants were 100% right. And the current City leadership appears to be in the process of undoing that mistake. And I say ,“Hell Yes!”

 

With the construction of a new 3-building complex at Federal Hill, we lose a Wendy’s, a Mexican restaurant eyesore, and the parking area next to Federal Hill Park. Ninety five percent of the park’s green space will remain. The buildings will have apartments, garage parking, retail and offices. The City intends to narrow Logan Street there so it’s more like a neighborhood and less like a highway. Hopes are the Kroger outlots will get redeveloped and better fit what those National Trust consultants argued for 30 years ago.

 

I’ll admit, we’ve got a developmental tiger by the tail, one that might turn on us and our goals, but at the moment, that’s not what’s happening.

 

Do I wish the Levinson was one story shorter so it fit in downtown better? Yes. Do I wish the county had put two stories of their new parking garage underground so it wouldn’t loom over downtown? Yes. Do I wish the historic structures at 10^th and Clinton could have been restored rather than a new apartment building put in their place? Yes. But I’m tired of waiting for downtown to be transformed into a compelling, energetic place, so I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

 

Downtown projects have faced simmering resentments. On the morning
of the groundbreaking of the County's parking garage last May, this awaited.

Having said that, compromise isn’t limitless. The city needs a moratorium on the demolition of pre-1960 structures in Old Town. Most of the lovely homes and historic buildings we see now and love looked terrible at some point in the past 75 years, but they were reclaimed. Just because something looks bad today doesn’t mean it can’t be made beautiful. If we’d torn down everything when it looked bad, we’d be . . . well, Fishers or Westfield.

 

For those disheartened by these new developments, be prepared for 2022. There are more new buildings coming. If you see a surface parking lot in or around downtown, assume someone is planning to build something new.