Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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that he���s speaking for groups he doesn���t represent. Nonetheless, he���s one of several squeaky wheels pushing hard for Portland, and about that no one seems to mind. Te ofcial voice of Portland since 2001 has been Portland NOW, a non-proft that formed to connect the various groups working on community issues. Te group often acts as the fscal agent when government funds are involved, and the list of names involved with the group presently or in the past make up the neighborhood���s movers and shakers. Tat list includes a number of transplants who���ve been deeply involved in Portland over the past three decades. Architect Gary Watrous, for example, married Portland native Judy Schroeder, and after living in Philadelphia for a few years, they returned, bought a starter home in Portland in the 1980s and have stayed. Today they live in one half of a duplex in the 2700 block of West Main Street, and Watrous runs his architecture business in the other half. It would be hard to fnd a Portland efort over the past three decades without the couple at the forefront. Te same could be said for Nathalie Andrews, whose connection to Portland began in the winter of 1977-���78 ��� she remembers it by the massive snowfall ��� when she wrote a grant application that someone told her might lead to a meaningful civic position. She still leads the Portland Museum at 2308 Portland Ave. Owen directs me toward the mansion district along Northwestern Parkway, where the riverboat captains once lived, and asks the $64 million question about why so few East Enders know about this stately boulevard that leads to Olmsted-designed Shawnee Park and the Shawnee Golf Course. As dusk approaches, we stop at Portland Park between 27th and 28th streets. (Much bigger Lannan Park is on the other side of I-64 from us, covering six blocks along the river.) We sit and talk for a while before walking on. Owen wants to make a point. ���Has anyone tried to come up and rob you?��� he asks as we stroll along the row of shotguns that line the park���s east side. Our last stop is to see Herb Brodarick, who���s making up a cheeseburger for a lone customer at his pub on Slevin Street. Brodarick grew up in Chicago and moved with his family to Louisville. Newly married to a Louisville gal and starting his a career as a corporate chef, he was incredulous when she insisted they move to her old neighborhood. He was quickly won over by Portland���s character, which reminded him of Chicago neighborhoods, and the couple owned and operated the Toll Bridge Inn at 33rd and Northwestern Parkway for years. 52 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.13 Tey divorced a few years ago and ��� you guessed it ��� he remained in Portland while she moved to the East End. Brodarick, who���s also been active in Portland NOW, is still bullish on the former river town. A small rail yard near 15th and Main, which some observers said would���ve made a great site for the Yum! Center, would be a choice location for a casino and/or outlet mall, he tells me ��� a good match for the job-hungry Portland work force. C he Rhodes sweeps up concrete dust from the sidewalk in front of his home and turns to greet me after I park on 20th and walk around the corner to Main. Te old two-story brick building dates to at least 1863 and has spent much of its life as a grocery. It was a used appliance shop when he found it eight years ago. Rhodes, an art professor who heads the glass department at U of L, paid $75,000 for 5,000 square feet of usable space and now lives in a I ask what he considers his immediate stomping grounds. After some thought and consulting Aleasha, he settles on Market to the river, and Ninth to 32nd, the latter boundary because it���s where a recently built Kroger is located. Te Kroger is arguably the most ���regular��� shopping experience in Portland. Tough there are exceptions like the storied Shaheen���s department store at 26th and Portland Avenue and Janes Bros. Hardware just down the street, Portlanders sheepishly admit they often leave the area to buy things they want and need. W hen the city put the former Albert A. Stoll frehouse in Clifton up for bid, it was bundled with the 106-year-old Portland fre station at 24th and Portland Avenue. Te Frankfort Avenue site, now the popular Silver Dollar Saloon, was the object of that desire, but Gregg Rochman was equally interested in the other one. He won the bid and now holds the lease Historically, asking a Portlander where he or she lived would rarely draw the answer ���West End.��� Conversely, ask someone in Crescent Hill where Portland is located and he���s likely to say ���in the West End.��� renovated loft-style space on the second foor. He���s rehabbing the frst foor to include possible gallery space and a workshop. Te 39-year-old grew up in Cincinnati and is one of a handful of creative types who���ve landed in Portland over the past decade, drawn by its ridiculous afordability and their own adventure gene. He was pre-approved for a loan, but was repeatedly turned down after lending institutions visited the property. ���I was red-lined by six banks,��� Rhodes says. He later purchased the 2,200-square-foot Queen Anne-style house next door for $10,000. Rhodes, who is black, loves it in Portland. ���I like to think it���s the most civil neighborhood in Louisville,��� he says, ���because you have such a mixture of ethnicities and income brackets.��� Matthew Huested lives across the street from Rhodes in a Victorian house that he and wife Aleasha renovated. Te 41-year-old Michigan native, co-owner of Sunergos Cofee, admits that moving to a challenged neighborhood appeals to his personality, but adds, ���We didn���t move here to be forerunners, just to be neighbors.��� To their west, the Huesteds have turned an open lot into a community orchard. Tey���ve purchased the camelback (a shotgun with an upper foor over half ) on their east side and will fx it up. on the Frankfort spot. But he���s put down a stake in Portland by moving the shop for his construction business, Shine, there. And he���s about to embark on a new venture with Gill and Augusta Holland, the architects of the NuLu arts district east of downtown, to raise private capital to invest in Portland. Te so-called Portland Investment Initiative, or PII, envisions three separate LLCs. Te frst, Artist Row Portland, with a $2 million funding push, will focus on rehabbing shotguns between roughly 15th and 23rd streets, from Portland Avenue to Main Street. Holland wants to bring in artists to live and work there in a project he describes as a cross between Nashville���s Music Row and a successful artist relocation project in Paducah, Ky. Shine will oversee the construction. Holland, an East Coast transplant, has had Portland on his mind since the frst time he saw it, for the same reasons of architecture and proximity to downtown. Te Hollands already own an 1880s wedge-shaped fatiron building at the confuence of 15th, Bank and Rowan streets, which was set for demolition. Holland sees it becoming a cafe and gallery. Te PII plan includes two additional phases with much larger fund-raising goals����� $10 million each ��� to create the tentatively named East Portland Entertainment and Lo-

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