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COVER STORY - September
2006
40059
“It seems so subdued this year,” she said. “I think that’s because everybody’s waiting for Lonnie to appear.” That last part – waiting for Lonnie to appear – was spoken in a hushed voice, almost a whisper. “Lonnie” was Lonnie Falk, who was in his 13th year as Prospect’s mayor when he died unexpectedly June 9 of a heart attack. Falk’s death was as unpredictable as the incoming weather for Prospect’s annual Independence Day celebration. High winds and severe storms in the Louisville area were making Simms and other city officials uneasy. Mention “Prospect” to outsiders and you might conjure up images of a bedroom town just 20 minutes northeast of downtown Louisville, a town of people who make a lot of money in Louisville and at the end of the day drive home in their Mercedes and Land Rovers to enjoy their wealth in private. The money part, at least, is no illusion. According to U.S. Census data from 2000, the Prospect ZIP code – 40059 – is the wealthiest in Kentucky. Of the 11,000 people who live there (roughly half in the city of Prospect), the average household income is $98,316. The average house is worth $255,100. The city’s Web site boasts that the town’s per person income is second to none in the commonwealth, and Falk said its residents claim “more CEOs than any other city per capita” in the state. As of the 2000 Census, Prospect was also Kentucky’s best-educated city: 74.4 percent of adults there held at least an associate degree, and nearly 70 percent had baccalaureate degrees or higher. That is far from Prospect’s beginnings in the early 1900s, when the area’s population was made up of “poor farmers, wealthy landowners and the descendants of slaves,” according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville. Today, six major subdivisions with names like The Landings, Hunting Creek and Fox Harbor house nearly all of the city’s residents in luxury homes, condos and apartments. The asking price for a corner lot nowadays is $250,000, the cheapest house built in the last five years cost upwards of $400,000. Mayor Joe Kehlbeck, 79, has been a resident since 1972. An active man with thinning white hair and a good summer tan, he agreed to be Falk’s replacement until Falk’s term runs out at the end of the year, supplanted by the winner of a November election. He says he’s not running. John Herzfeld is a resident of the city’s first upscale subdivision, Hunting Creek, built in the 1960s. He calls Prospect a friendly place – in fact, the best place he’s ever lived. Falk, he says, “had the vision to include everybody in the community.” As for the high-priced homes, some of which easily top $1 million, Herzfeld, president of the Prospect/Goshen Rotary Club, points out that his house is a three-bedroom, two-bath. He says it’s appraised around $240,000 although the market would up that value considerably. “I’m certainly not a multi-millionaire,” he says. And, some condos reportedly sell as low as the $160s. A visitor might think the description “snobby” is apropos for an area that would have an anxiety attack over the sight of vinyl siding. Prospect is most certainly a brick world. But Loretta Ertel, a retired registered nurse whose husband, Dennis, is a vice president at Louisville’s Kindred Healthcare, says she didn’t find that attitude to be the case at all when they moved into the city’s Sutherland development eight years ago. Ertel says many residents are successful in their jobs and are “transfers” on their way to the next city in the corporate ladder. Because of that transience, Ertel suggests, “transfers look to each other to form connections. They hunger for that. That makes them more eager to make friends and their children eager to make friends.” The prestige of a postmark A newspaperman in Oldham County tells a story about a couple who moved to a new house north of town, along U.S. 42. Told by the developer that they would have a prestigious Prospect mailing address, they found out their postmark was stamped with the name of the more modest nearby Goshen. They were not happy at all. Ann Simms said she’s fielded a few angry phone calls herself at City Hall over similar ZIP code confusion. Most of its southern border is bounded by the Gene Snyder Freeway and I-71. Its western edge is defined by the Ohio River. A narrow tongue of land stretches all the way up the Ohio to face Charlestown State Park in Indiana. Prospect is one of two incorporated cities in 40059, both along U.S. 42. The other is the residential development known as River Bluff, which is several miles north in Oldham County. In fact, the line between Jefferson and Oldham counties bisects the ZIP code. Affluent, pricey developments like Hillcrest dot Highway 42 in Oldham County, each showing their dedication to brick. ZIP 40059 also includes lots of high-priced residences to the east along Covered Bridge Road; to the south, site of the Norton Commons “village” now under construction; and to the west, near the Ohio River. “We’ve got lots of post office boxes,” says LaDonna Brown, Prospect’s postmaster. Including, she says, residents whose families “go back generations.” For the record, James Harper, a supervisor at the Prospect post office, says there are 5,762 “delivery points” in 40059, and other than 100 or so businesses, they are all residential. The Prospect ZIP actually runs south into Harrods Creek, both a creek and a highly prosperous enclave where George Garvin Brown, president and chairman of Brown-Forman distilleries, made his home. The Harrods Creek post office, a subtle white building no larger than a double-wide, is itself a coveted place to have a post office box. Though it sits inside 40059’s borders, it has its own ZIP code and no residential deliveries. Two Prospects,
getting along Today, Taylor’s daughter, Minnie Alta Taylor Broaddus, lives in a modest, one-story house her father built in 1960. It is covered with old-fashioned white aluminum siding. It sits on Shirley Avenue, one of the first streets on which her father built houses. Minnie, a former English teacher at Central High School, is 94. Her son, Charles, and his wife, Sharon, live with her. Minnie stands tall and stately, with a full head of white hair and a ready smile. “Most of the people (James) first sold to were servants in Harrods Creek,” she says. “Now they’re white collar, teachers and ministers.” White families now live on these streets as well. Her house needs work. The front storm door is in disrepair, and wires stick out where the doorbell is supposed to be. But Charles, a former school teacher himself, walks gingerly with a cane. His wife Sharon is disabled. At the suggestion that outsiders hear of their Prospect address and automatically think wealth, Charles, an articulate man in his late ’50s, puts down a book he’s been reading and comes back with a terse reply, one that suggests an enduring bond with another community. “Let’em go on,” he says. “I was very proud to be from Harrods Creek.” At the other end of Shirley Ave., Kathryn Brown and her husband, Robert, sit in the living room of the comfortable two-bedroom house that Robert’s brother-in-law built for them in 1957. In those early days, the Browns say the street was gravel and they drew their water from a well. A general store, known as The Prospect Store or Snowden grocery, offered basic goods. You traveled to Louisville to buy clothes. A Prospect native, Robert has been dealing with that Prospect label – “affluent” – for a long time. “They think anybody out here has money,” he laughs. He retired 19 years ago after putting in 35 years at General Electric Co. in Louisville. Lately, he’s been recuperating from quadruple heart bypass surgery. The Browns say they enjoy the area’s peaceful setting. Two of their sons, successfully working for big companies, live just across Highway 42 over in Hunting Creek. A two-street subdivision, Ken Carla, is another historically black residential area that is hard by Prospect proper but is not part of the city. Among its residents are Harvey and Ann Langford, who live on Lynnhall Court. Long before Harvey retired from the Internal Revenue Service office in Louisville, the couple decided to leave their home in Louisville’s West End and head east. “We knew people who lived out here,” Harvey says, wearing a University of Louisville ball cap. When they built their two-story brick in 1971, the Langfords says the 23 houses were taken by “professionals,” but now the neighborhood has become a mix of occupations. Over the years, it has also become integrated. “It was really a close-knit community when we moved in,” remembers Harvey, now a real estate agent in Louisville. Easter egg hunts, celebrations for holidays, even lawn tractor races. “We don’t tend to do that much” anymore, he says. As a city, Prospect was incorporated in 1974. As of 1980, according to the Encyclopedia of Louisville, the city had fewer than 2,000 people. Population grew steadily as more subdivisions were added, and the most recent, Innisbrook, is only about six years old. Ann Simms has been Prospect’s city administrator since 1995 and a council member in the four years prior to that. She says “many residents of Ken Carla wanted us to annex them” before the city-county merger of Jefferson County, “but the rule was we need 100 percent of the property holders signatures. The time constraints did not allow us to get those.” Harvey Langford says the city of Prospect didn’t try to exclude the neighborhood. He was one resident who voted to join the city. But it was apparently a tough sell. Langford supposes that others either voted “no” or didn’t vote at all for a variety of reasons, including anticipation of high taxes and restrictions. Older, largely black neighborhoods like Taylor Subdivision might also have feared of losing their localized identities, some of which went back for several generations. “They were kind of used to being the way they were,” Langford says. Hollywood came and criticized “Lawn Dogs” was critically acclaimed around the country, but got a lukewarm reception from many in Prospect whom it rubbed the wrong way. Kehlbeck alluded to the film as a reason the community is still wary of media attention. But for the culture of elitism Wallace’s movie paints, 40059 has a legacy of activism dating back to James Taylor. Wallace’s father, Henry Wallace, had once been a Time-Life reporter and became a fixture in Louisville’s civil rights movement, attending hundreds of demonstrations and marches before he died in April at age 90. He devoted Henry’s Ark, his 600-acre farm in Prospect, to conservation and was largely responsible for Prospect’s out-in-the-country ambience. The Langfords say the Prospect area is a hospitable one, mentioning that they have friends across U.S. 42 who live in Hunting Creek. And residents on both sides of the road seem to be united in their aversion to unsightly development. The Langfords have joined with many in Prospect to oppose a controversial change that would allow a 150-foot cell tower to be erected nearby. Jim Halvatgis, who with his wife, Edith, has lived in Prospect for 20 years, says, “We don’t want an ugly structure right in the middle of our town.” President of his subdivision’s homeowners association, Halvatgis likes the way Prospect’s city leaders have kept the big-box stores out. With square footage maximums and other restrictions, Prospect has no Wal-Mart, no Home Depot. Wanting greenspace, ‘to be left alone’ “We figure they’ll be paying attention by then,” he says dryly. The city has done its part by distributing T-shirts promoting its 25-mile-an-hour speed limit, which applies to every street except U.S. 42. And to address speeding on that highway, a state project will add a turn lane and raised medians along U.S. 42 by 2007, says Simms. Victor Staffieri is one resident of Prospect who says he enjoys the presence of the police – especially when it comes to traffic control. Staffieri is president, chairman and CEO of E.ON US, formerly LG&E Energy company, in Louisville. Staffieri and his family moved from New York to Louisville 14 years ago after he took the LG&E job. “It’s a wonderful small town for us,” he says, bolstering Prospect’s working profile as a comfy, down-home place. Another idea Falk kicked off less than a year ago was a “Green 2010” committee. Todd Eberle, a city council member, says the group of residents is looking at “a lot of things” to keep open spaces in a city pinched for land – things like creating walking trails and access for canoeing and kayaking in Harrods Creek. Green 2010 ties into the slogan found on the city’s Internet home page: “This site is dedicated to the people of Prospect who share a vision of our future unmarred by overdevelopment and in harmony with nature.” That dream echos in the sort of man-made nature of the Cowley Greenspace, a thin strip of land where a few homes, a park and a gazebo have been squeezed between two golf holes on the local course. Back at the Fourth of July celebration, Radio Disney has canceled due to the temperamental weather, as has a tethered hot air balloon and a parachutist who was expected to swoop down brandishing a billowing American flag. But the parade appears, right on schedule. Led by an antique truck from the Harrods Creek Fire Dept., it makes its way to the Greenspace around 6:30 p.m. A light drizzle begins to fall as maybe 300 children and their parents appear in a long, laid-back procession. It appears like any other small-town Independence Day parade, replete with walkers and kids on bicycles – until the golf carts arrive, that is – some 30 of them cruising in a line. They are trimmed with patriotic banners and driven by residents, a reminder that a core value of Prospect is the unabashed pursuit of suburban bliss. This is Prospect, after all. Here the city asks the big Louisville newspaper not to include its celebration in its Fourth of July listings, so as to, Falk said, keep it “a community event.” It’s a community where above-ground pools and chain-link fences are not allowed. Most of the shops here are small and upscale. The McDonald’s restaurant isn’t permitted its yellow arches and Dairy Queen’s sign is on a small, understated brick wall instead of a glary backlighted sign. But 40059 also is a place where folks who work at the post office say they know most of the people who come through the door by their first names. Council member Alan Simon stands at the Greenspace and acknowledges that some people do move to Prospect for the “status.” But most of the residents, he says, just want garbage service, recycling, snow removal “and to be left alone.” Kehlbeck, a longtime friend of Falk, stands in the light rain in a red, white and blue sports shirt. The American flag is raised and then lowered to half-staff, in remembrance of Falk. Kehlbeck takes a deep breath and gives a brief welcome to the crowd. Then, just in time, the skies clear before the big fireworks show begins. Simms says it is one of the city’s best ever – an ending as perfectly crafted as the manicured grass of the fairways spreading out around the spectators.
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Copyright 1996-2006, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2006, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
Shortly after 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the Fourth of July, Ann Simms, administrator for the City of Prospect, brushed aside her short blonde hair and gazed from the Don Cowley Greenspace overlooking the Hunting Creek country club and golf course. Setup was underway for Prospect’s biggest celebration of the year.
But as the Fourth of July plays out each year as Prospect’s signature civic event, city officials give Falk much of the credit for taking Prospect beyond its status symbol image and building a real sense of community. In an interview just days before he died, Falk said Prospect’s “focus is ambience for the people who live here. Nice homes, quiet streets, services...we want to establish a concept of this community as a residential community,” as opposed to a bedroom community. Asked if the city was in the economic development business, Falk smiled and replied, “We’re in the residential development business.” 
ZIP 40059 is known by the U.S. Post Office as the Prospect ZIP code, but it spreads far beyond the city itself.
The handful of streets and homes are wedged between more affluent neighborhoods in Prospect proper but are not within the boundaries of the city. Police protection comes from the county sheriff’s office; garbage collection from private contractors.
In 1997, Prospect native and screenwriter Naomi Wallace debuted her independent movie “Lawn Dogs,” which was filmed largely in the city. It is the story of an unlikely friendship between an affluent 10-year-old girl whose family recently moved to the community and a working-class 21-year-old man who mows her lawn. The script lays bare the ugly class distinctions Wallace sees as prevalent in suburban America.
Instead, Wilson says, “a lot of our focus” is keeping a watch on traffic on U.S. 42 and in the city’s neighborhoods. The city’s nine officers exercise a soft touch, first putting up electronic warning displays, followed by warnings and finally citations.