The minimum lot size in the rural areas was raised to forty acres in 1999, and in 2000, the Purchase of Development Rights Program and the Fayette County Rural Land Management Board was formed, which assisted in helping protect farms from development forever. It was the first city and county in the nation to develop such a program.
The city adopted its first historic districts in the mid-1950s, and today, the city cherishes fourteen such overlays and two city landmarks that are managed under the Board of Architectural Review. The districts, a result of needless demolition of some of the oldest structures within the urban core for wasteful entities such as surface parking lots, have saved countless buildings from meeting the wrecking ball.
Conservation has always been one of the guiding principles of Lexington. The city, through this and its equine industry, provides a unique sense of place, where dedication to protecting the farms from development, improving the environmental quality of the region and sharing the resources it has with its two universities fosters a bond that is entrenched with how the city government functions. Few talk about pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in terms of conservation of private and public lands, and even fewer enact ordinances and policies to guide these thoughts into becoming reality, but this is seemingly reality for the local government.
With this, downtown has always been known as the heart and soul of the city, sandwiched between the University of Kentucky and Transylvania University. Linear in size and pockmarked with small mid-rises and a handful of modest towers, development of flashy and out-of-character projects has generally been frowned upon. From the World Coal Center to Centrepointe, extensive grassroot efforts have brought a halt to many of these development projects, or forced substantial revisions to appease many within the Lexington community.
This proposed traffic circle for Newtown Pike and West Main may seem impractical or unreasonable, but the city of Lexington has often thought out-of-the-box solutions to fulfill its many needs. The current corridor is aesthetically unappealing, a major sore point for the city as it is one of the major gateways for out-of-town visitors.
The 2006 Downtown Streetscape Master Plan follows the ideals of this and upon the previous planning initiatives, by drawing upon the past failures and drives, to come up with a goal of providing a complete framework for the desired character of downtown. While it does not recommend any sweeping changes or immediate goals, as did previous plans that called for wholesale demolition of buildings, or for the massive reconfiguration of the street grid, it does call for incremental modifications that would come about in an organic fashion, some planned, others not, to fulfill the master plan over a period of years. It would all be dependent upon the incremental funding that is often derived from the state, and from tax increment financing.
The goal of the plan is to,
In the newest UrbanUp article, Streetscaping for Lexington, Kentucky, I elaborate on several key projects that are up and coming for the downtown, taken partially from the Downtown Streetscape Master Plan. These include the phased implementation of the downtown streetscaping efforts, which include the elimination of the one-way street pairs, the creation of rain gardens, the rehabilitation of the sidewalk network and the installation of new wayfinders. Other projects include the new glass-and-iron Cheapside pavilion for the Farmers Market, a canal for Vine Street, South Limestone's College Town transformation and the little-mentioned Esplanade pedestrian project.
Not one of these renderings include depictions of new towers or fantastical proposals for anything unreasonable. This is a proposed view down Vine Street towards the Martin Luther King Drive viaduct. While the canal may seem a bit far stretched, it is appropriate given Town Branch's presence in an old culvert beneath Vine Street. At some point in its future, it will need major rehabilitation or replacement, and raising it to its original height may be a feasible alternative.
Within this, I discovered an intricate blueprint for what Lexington could become. Urban, dense and mixed. Clean, environmentally friendly, small. More progressive and thoughtful, especially in consideration of what was lost in the last push for mass urban renewal during the 1970s and 1980s.
Gone is the oldest remaining commercial building in the city, destroyed for the stalled Centrepointe development. Half of South Hill, removed for acres of parking for the Lexington Center. One of the oldest church buildings in the city, demolished for a bland apartment tower. Phoenix Hotel, which made way for an empty lot destined for the World Coal Center, now home to Park Plaza Apartments.
We are no longer pushing for mass change with the latest iteration of the Downtown Streetscape Master Plan, but for small, incremental modifications to the urban scene that can be parsed with due diligence and time, and with consideration of the residents and their desires and wants. Let's hope that with this front, we can have a unified and vibrant downtown that is more than a pockmark of mid-rises and towers of various designs and styles, flanked by historic neighborhoods, to one that has a brand and identity that is unique to Lexington.
