The Lexington Podcast
The Lexington Podcast
Balancing Heritage and Progress: The Maxwell Development Controversy with Dr. Zak Leonard
This very special episode explores the controversial Maxwell Development Project in Lexington, highlighting the threats to historic homes and the complicated intersection of progress and preservation. With insights from Dr. Zak Leonard of the Bluegrass Trust, the discussion delves into zoning laws, the role of city governance, and how citizens can advocate for their neighborhoods. In this episode we examine:
- Historic significance of homes on Maxwell Street
- The impact of zoning changes on preservation efforts
- Awareness surrounding House Bill 443 and its implications for public input
- National Register misconceptions
- Strategies for community advocacy and organizing
- Dr. Leonard's journey in historic preservation and its importance in Lexington
- Call to action for listeners to engage with local preservation efforts
Welcome to a very special episode of the Lexington podcast called Preserving Our Past, where we're going to explore the sometimes dramatic intersection of progress and preservation. We've got a fascinating episode for you about a development saga that has been unfolding right here in Lexington over the past two years, and we're thrilled to welcome Dr Zach Leonard, historic Preservation Manager of the Bluegrass Trust, who's going to break down all the ongoing drama surrounding the Maxwell Street Development Project, you know the one where a six-story student apartment complex is set to replace several historic homes near UK's campus. Dr Leonard is going to walk us through Lexington's development process and explain something that might surprise you how houses that are centuries old and listed on the National Register of Historic Places can still somehow get demolished. We'll also discuss a concerning new state bill that could potentially limit public input on what happens in our historic neighborhoods. And if you're wondering what you can do to ensure your neighborhood's voice is heard by our, let's say, evolving city council, dr Leonard has some actionable advice for you as well.
Erica Friis:So grab your coffee, settle in, let's dive into this eye-opening conversation about the past, present and future of Lexington's historic landscape. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Glad you're here, y'all. Okay, hi, I am back with Dr Zach Leonard of the Bluegrass Trust. Super kind to be able to join me today to talk about what we have in emails dubbed the Maxwell drama and trauma. So hi, dr Leonard, how are you?
Zak Leonard:Doing well. Thank you for having me.
Erica Friis:Thank you so much. I was so excited to have you over because you're actually only like my second or third podcast guest ever, at least in this room that we're in right now. So I know I cleaned up for you, wanted to make sure that everything looked all right. And I'm super excited to have you over because the Bluegrass Trust is something that's super near and dear to my heart and I want to hear about what's going on lately with the Maxwell Project, so to speak. So I know you've been heavily involved in it. You've been going to council meetings about it. You've written in the Herald Leader op-ed pieces Very well written, by the way. I love your writing style. I thank you, Of course. So why don't you, for our listeners who don't know about the Maxwell Project how it's definitely a point of contention in regards to historic preservation here in Lexington tell us about it?
Zak Leonard:All right. Well, this is a rather involved saga that involves analyzing comp plans, zoning changes and whatnot, but I will try to simplify it for your audience. Essentially, I have been involved in really challenging this project since October 2023, my how the time flies. So the area we are talking about is really East Maxwell and then Stone Avenue. This encompasses 13 properties that are listed on the National Register, the early of which dates to 1885. Most of them are kind of late Victorian, some, you know, early colonial revival examples, and when these were built, these houses were single family housing. They were residences for quite illustrious faculty members at the University of Kentucky, congressional representatives, and they have, admittedly, suffered neglect really since the 80s, and it was around that time that they came under kind of the ownership of a single LLC who then rented them out to students.
Erica Friis:Okay, so it's like student housing.
Zak Leonard:It is student housing now and I think there are kind of some social welfare like recovery programs in some of the houses too. Based on my conversations with students just on the street, these buildings essentially do function as affordable housing, certainly more so than the studio and one bedroom apartments that will be going in their place, and we can only guess at how much the rental rates on those will be.
Erica Friis:Oh, I can't imagine. Yeah, so the overall goal was that some. So it was an LLC for several houses and then somebody has come in and bought those houses. Now a developer from Dublin Ohio. Dublin, ohio, okay, so not even in Kentucky, no. And then that developer has decided to tear down these houses and built a four or five story apartment complex.
Zak Leonard:Six story fronting Maxwell, potentially seven story in the rear, although they have never produced any elevation drawings of that. But it's Maxwell kind of it slopes down going towards high street. So there's variation in the topography.
Erica Friis:Okay.
Zak Leonard:And then it will step down to about three stories on Lexington. Yeah as to, you know really what the role of the city is to ensure that this new housing compliments and really harmonizes with the existing historic buildings that surround it.
Erica Friis:Which is the Aylesford district. Is that right? Okay, aylesford was Aylesford Okay.
Zak Leonard:I say Aylesford.
Erica Friis:No, you're probably right.
Zak Leonard:That's my northern accent.
Erica Friis:No, I love it.
Zak Leonard:I always mispronounce things in the city. I love it pronounce things in the city. Uh, to ellsford I and this. I'm happy you brought that up because ellsford has been a local historic district under kind of the purview of the city since 1996 and this project area of which I am speaking was initially supposed to be included in that historic district. Um, the guy that owned it at the time and this is from what I have heard slash discovered in our records basically said that he would tank the entire designation of the entire district if this section, including the houses he owned, was included in it, and that's why okay it.
Zak Leonard:These buildings are not protected oh, no, no.
Erica Friis:So for our listeners, tell us if you're a house in part of an older part of Lexington, what makes you designated as being protected or not protected? Let's say, what does that process look like?
Zak Leonard:So really there are two levels of designation one that entails protection on the local level and one that doesn't. So you can be in a national register district or individually listed, which gives you certain advantages if you want, to say, pursue historic tax credits for rehabilitations. But you can blow up a house in the national register and no one is going to come stop you. This is kind of a common misconception. And then you also have what we call H1 overlays in the city. They are generally referred to as local historic districts. They often encompass National Register districts, but in the case of what we're seeing here in Maxwell, the local historic district Aylesford is smaller than the greater National Register district, which I believe is called the greater National Register District, which I believe is called the Southeastern Commercial Historic District or something like that.
Erica Friis:Okay so they the guy who had owned it did not want those to be a part of Aylesford. Yes, okay. So this is it's like a weird loophole of sorts, because they are totally historic houses, yes, and within historic districts to some capacity, but not on the let's say like for sure, let's save them, kind of thing.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, so the city really has no jurisdiction over what happens to these houses. If they were, you know, two blocks East past, uh Rose, they would be protected. And if you were to alter them in any substantial way besides you know normal wear and tear repair you would need to get a certificate of appropriateness from city. Okay, and then if there was any kind of controversy, it would go before the board of architectural review.
Erica Friis:So that was my next question was so the city of Lexington still had to pass or allow this developer to tear down those houses in the first place? Or like, even beyond just there being historic protections, doesn't Lexington, the city itself, get to say what is built and what like? The developer has to go through some red tape with the city of Lexington.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, and it's complicated. Every case is different. In this particular instance, the developer needed a zone change from r4 uh, which these buildings currently were zoned as, and in r4 you know they, there are open space minimums, there are vegetation minimums. The building can only take up so much of the parcel. Developer got it rezoned to b2a, which is supposed to be reserved for kind of the core downtown area, and this was the crux of our debate before the planet commission, which was what is downtown where is that?
Zak Leonard:okay, yeah, yeah if we can see a certain mural or a building, are we downtown, downtown, sure, and the conclusion was that downtown is just a very subjective category.
Erica Friis:Yeah, oh, I'm sure, and Lexington is so unique in the sense that our downtown is so close to the university and so I'm sure there's a lot of like overlap. That's in this like gray area too, Because this is, you know, quote unquote student housing very close to UK. But is that considered downtown or not?
Zak Leonard:Yeah, and if you read the zoning ordinance it's pretty clear that B2A should be reserved for what people would consider to be kind of the main drag where, like you know, the nightlife, the entertainment things of that sort are located, not in a historically residential neighbor, Gotcha.
Erica Friis:So the developer puts up the plan for this new apartment building, and then what happens?
Zak Leonard:Well, because they wanted to get the zone changed, they had to submit a preliminary development plan, which then makes its way up through the technical committee, subdivision committee to the planning commission.
Erica Friis:Okay.
Zak Leonard:And that's where the Blue Grass Trust really became, I think.
Erica Friis:Took notice.
Zak Leonard:In a kind of a public capacity. Before the planning commission, we had published stories about the affected buildings, their histories, their architecture, and that's on our social media pages. Do you run the social media pages? We also.
Erica Friis:Do you run the social media pages for the Bluegrass Trust?
Zak Leonard:I produce a lot of content.
Erica Friis:Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I love it.
Zak Leonard:Anything that involves a, you know, a deep dive into a building is probably my work.
Erica Friis:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very well done. By the way, yeah, you're so welcome. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I was I. I think it's great for listeners to know that that is such a phenomenal resource for anybody who's interested in Lexington history.
Zak Leonard:But also, you've been chronicling this situation to like yeah, and I mean our social media really functions these days to advance our education objectives, because many of the buildings that I feature have not been properly inventoried. They might have Bluegrass Trust plaques. On Fridays I like to do a Forgotten Friday feature that feels, you know, just demolished buildings that no longer exist. But this and again, without going on a tangent, the Kentucky State Historic Inventory of these resources in most cases has not been updated since 1979, 1980. Oh, wow. So this is kind of the Bluegrass Trust's contribution to updating the information and sharing these stories Absolutely More widely. Yes, yes, but aside from doing those social media posts, I also set up this petition that got just about 3,000 signatures, opposing the rezoning and the redevelopment opposing the rezoning and the redevelopment and a lot of the there was, you know, talk about the reason why, like, well, who cares?
Erica Friis:It's just shitty student housing, right, Was that pretty much the like for your average person that is not a developer? Was that that side Like why would someone not want to sign this and not want to support saving these houses?
Zak Leonard:That was certainly the rationale that the lawyer for the developers gave us.
Erica Friis:So much.
Zak Leonard:So the example I gave of, you know, a possible adapter for use was actually the Kimball House Square development which is on South Limestone.
Erica Friis:Yeah, where they're connected in the back with glass. Yeah, were there, connected in the back with glass.
Zak Leonard:Yes, A bunch of kind of late Italian Romanesque buildings that formerly served as the Kimball House Hotel. Fun story once upon a time, apparently, there was a monkey house in the back that you could visit A monkey house, a monkey house, yeah, okay, in the back of South Limestone. Houses.
Erica Friis:Like several monkeys, yeah monkeys.
Zak Leonard:Where did these monkeys come from?
Erica Friis:We don't know. I think they might have been lab monkeys, but don't quote me oh gotcha okay, this is deep history here well, you know, I've just done a huge deep dive into um the narco farm. So I wonder if there's some sort of like link that I just think everything's linked to narco, like I just have it in my head. So maybe there was lab monkeys at narco, but okay, go on, sorry. Exactly, it's not that far fetched.
Zak Leonard:Crazier things have happened.
Erica Friis:Crazier things have happened.
Zak Leonard:But essentially, yeah, those buildings were rehabbed and they were united with a whole block of new construction in the rear. And that is something that the Maxwell parcel could have accommodated is new construction behind the historic properties. But that was kind of shot down out of hand by the developers, probably because it would have been more expensive, even though those the houses on Maxwell would be eligible for state and federal historic tax credits 20% of qualified rehab expenses. They also made some kind of dinky argument that because the Kimball House Square development had happened, it happened really during the recession, I believe, and the developer there there were some financial issues but that was because of the recession, not because of the feasibility of the building project.
Erica Friis:Yeah, that is a dinky argument.
Zak Leonard:Dinky. Yeah, I don't like that at all yeah, that's pretty lame and but now I mean I can't. I can't imagine those houses on limestone not existing there totally and again, those are in a national register.
Erica Friis:Yeah, district as well, and it's just one of my favorite stretches of lexington like and it's such a major stretch between campus and downtown and I thoroughly look forward to it. I think it connects that little corridor so nicely and I just can't imagine those houses not being there. It's such a great, great example of adaptive reuse. And to your point, too, about I don't think our average listener, maybe the average Lexingtonian, really knows that there's so much good to adaptive reuse in regards to, like, what developers can do in terms of tax credits, right. So why isn't that enough? I guess kind of the classic question in historic preservation might be why isn't that enough for developers to want to adaptively reuse something instead of tearing something to the ground and rebuilding themselves? I mean, it's not as simple as that. I know it's always complicated. It's certainly going to be different for each and every project, but why do you think developers are so quick to be like, no, we're not going to think about rehabbing this.
Zak Leonard:I think and this is maybe just speculation, but in the case of the Maxwell parcel, they were just thinking about how many units they could squash into it, and I think it's about 700 beds with 165 or so parking spaces within the building.
Erica Friis:So it's just like simple math money, money, money.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, got it, got it. Yeah, no-transcript employee working in the planning department. If you're a developer and the only thing you have in your mind are these density targets that are calculated with some algorithm that you know we mere mortals are not privy to, that's only one facet of planning that completely trumps, or rather excludes, how people interact with their built environment, how these communities such as Ellsford will function with just a seven, six, seven story building plop down in the middle. I mean, it's not even the construction, the building.
Zak Leonard:they're gonna be blowing up half a Hagerman court and redirecting it onto Stone Ave yeah and up until you know, a few weeks ago, the developers wanted that segment to be a private with a public easement, and thankfully the city said no, you can't really do that, yeah, yeah yeah, um, can't just colonize the neighborhood completely you don't own it, yeah, okay.
Erica Friis:So then, okay, what? What happened next with with this situation? Like so we're at the point where they have come with plans, right, and then the city has said what?
Zak Leonard:So the Planning Commission and this was back in late 2023, approved the rezoning to B2A, and that was contingent on the developers abiding by the final development plan and the renders of the building that they had submitted. Okay, so what did the renders of the building that they had submitted?
Erica Friis:Okay, so what did the renders look like?
Zak Leonard:Oh, there were various versions.
Erica Friis:Okay.
Zak Leonard:The final development plan render at that time, had it had step backs from Stone Ave and the planning staff and the developer's lawyer at the time may emphasize the necessity of those step backs creating these townhouse units that were about two stories tall and would kind of blend in more seamlessly with the other houses on Stone Ave.
Erica Friis:Okay, so the facades are going to look fairly historic.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, that's how it was sold at least, and there was a variety of cladding materials window shapes, fenestrations but they really emphasized at the time kind of activating this ground space and having a quote unquote front porch feel.
Erica Friis:Okay. Okay, because there's other houses in the area that also have kind of a front porch yeah they're bungalow types, right? Yeah, so to speak, or not not quite, because it's 1800s, right late, yeah, they're I mean really two mostly two-story brick homes, the various styles and ornamentation.
Zak Leonard:Some are bungalows, more on stone app than on Maxwell Okay, but the Maxwell houses are I mean, some of them are actually of a decent size. So how they would have functioned in the earlier 20th century is that, you know, you would have had your permanent residence but they would have let out certain rooms to borders.
Erica Friis:Okay, cool. So they come up with this final plan. And it was approved by Lexington. Yes, and then what? And it was approved by Lexington.
Zak Leonard:Yes, and then what? So we were then agitating for the council, the city council, to review the planning commission's decision, because they have the ability to do that. And this opened a whole other can of worms, because the city council, in a split vote, decided just to approve the rezoning, without any further public comment.
Erica Friis:This is the council from last year. Okay.
Zak Leonard:Yeah.
Erica Friis:Which was a very interesting council, I think in general. I mean, it was a. Several of them did not get I'm saying this you're not, but several you know there's been a lot it was a. It was a huge shakeup of who was on that last year and it was definitely a kind of a shakeup of who was back and who's not back this year, and that was a. I'm speaking specifically on the. They also approved to expand the urban growth boundary. So this was a council that was pretty big about like let's just do a lot.
Zak Leonard:Don't you think? Yeah, I mean in this particular case and you know anyone can go back and watch the videos of these hearings on the government website but there seemed to be a contention amongst the council members as to what the purview of their power really was. There were some that said, oh well, we shouldn't review any planning commission decisions that get a unanimous vote. And there are others saying, well, the planning commission are not elected representatives, we are, and if we are granting some people an appeal and there were other cases that same day about rezonings that got their appeals heard we should kind of grant them across the board.
Erica Friis:How do you feel about that?
Zak Leonard:It was disappointing because I believe it was the council member for District 3, where the project is based, who voted, who really motioned to approve the rezoning and didn't give any explanation of that decision making. And, kind of to add insult to injury, the modus operandi, so to speak, of the council members was not to receive any correspondence or communication from their constituents involving rezonings.
Erica Friis:Why.
Zak Leonard:Because they claim and again I submitted an open records request we have this from their aides in which they say the council members may serve in a quasi-judicial function when they are evaluating the zone changes and any testimony or correspondence from constituents might kind of prejudice at a time.
Erica Friis:Oh, interesting Wow.
Zak Leonard:So and the takeaway from this was and I think this is in the third op-ed I wrote was that council members, you know, in issues involving of great magnitude, such as rezonings that affect entire neighborhoods, may never have a chance to hear directly from the people they're supposed to be representing. And you know, we can talk about the comp plans too, but once we didn't get that hearing before the council, we then filed a suit to get the case considered before the circuit court because we really had no other option.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, you're back into yeah and the judge at the circuit court, basically, you know, confirmed that cities, city agencies, when they are dealing with planning, do not have to really implement every aspect of a comp plan, because that would just be unmanageable and to a degree that makes sense. But if it's permissible just to focus on the density goals and exclude everything in the comp plans that has to do with historic preservation and compatible design, where does that leave us?
Erica Friis:Right, yeah, golly. So it's like it's so much more complicated than I think meets the eye and there's so many players involved. I think that's what's kind of overwhelming about it too. You would think, like in any facet of government, there should be a lot of like checks and balances along the way, and it seems as though some things get that and some things don't.
Zak Leonard:Well, I think the trend that is kind of disconcerting to me is the city's unwillingness to really bring in the public and treat their opinions seriously. You know, even when the council was debating reviewing the planning commission's decision, certain council members had acknowledged that there was a lot of hostility towards this project from the community. People had been airing their grievances, but they were willing to disregard that public input as just noise or loudness. And this is, you know, this disinclination to hear from Lexingtonians about the neighborhoods they inhabit. Also, it extends to other planning issues too, and this might be a good opportunity to talk about House Bill 443. Do you know much about that? No, please tell me about House Bill 443.
Erica Friis:Do you know much about that? No, please tell me. House Bill 443? Yeah, it is coming.
Zak Leonard:It has been approved, so it is now law, section 100.275 of the KRS and this new piece of legislation. Again the city is going to have to change its zoning ordinance in the way it does things to really meet these objectives that are being put forth at the state level. Is that basically planning decisions involving development plans and subdivision plots and all that? They have to adhere to objective standards and be approved ministerially. That is the language. What does ministerially mean? Basically, by the administration, without substantial exercise of discretion okay, so it's.
Erica Friis:That's essentially a box ticking exercise and what will be in the box well that it's.
Zak Leonard:This new piece of legislation has probably under 100 words to it. So it is oh wow yeah, um, and there are carve-outs that are themselves extremely vague. But the takeaway here seems to be that while preliminary development plans will go before the planning commission, final development plans will not. So the developer can submit something and then, you know, a year on, might have to deal with Lester committees subdivision committee, technical review committee but there won't be another kind of public hearing on the project.
Erica Friis:So this is really good for developers and terrible for historic preservation.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, I mean. It just makes it very difficult for the public to air their views.
Erica Friis:Yeah, which obviously is already a problem.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, and I mean there are. From what we've heard, city planning staff have been reaching out to developers about things like this legislation to get on the same page. Same for the new downtown master plan that's in the works but you know no one's contacted us for input yeah no one's contacted the neighborhood associations for input. It just seems to be this dealing between the city and the developer community that I mean gross, like how is this allowed to?
Erica Friis:it seems like where did this come from? Like why now? And why they're just trying to streamline this process to make it both easier and less noise for the process of development.
Zak Leonard:That seems to be the way it looks.
Erica Friis:Okay, wow. So what can we as the public and in the historic preservation community, those that are passionate about I don't know everything from our neighborhoods to having a voice about our neighborhoods, what can we do to, I guess, lobby against this, or what do you see as the best course of action to take?
Zak Leonard:Because a lot of, at least concerning the bill, the law now that I just mentioned, it's still up in the air and the city doesn't even really know how it's going to have to alter its codes. But more generally, I would say I think the neighborhood associations still have an amount of power. I think in many cases their ranks just need to be replenished with new membership and the neighborhood associations would benefit from coordinating their efforts more with one another. Everything's a bit balkanized right now. In some cases it's even difficult to figure out who is supposed to be chairing a neighborhood association. So again, we do have a crop of new council members who, I imagine, would be very willing and, you know, amenable to hearing from the neighborhood associations. They might just not have the background and preservation, understand the necessity of it, and that's fine, you know. That's why we exist too is to spread that knowledge Totally. We are trying.
Erica Friis:Yes, yes, so the? Is there an overarching neighborhood associate, like where they all come together, I wonder?
Zak Leonard:There, the? Is there an overarching neighborhood associate, like where they all come together? I wonder? There used to be something of the sort. Yeah, I'm not still. If it is still. I'm not sure if it's still operative or not that would be.
Erica Friis:So it's like a strength, strength in numbers kind of situation cool wow okay, sorry I got us like wildly off track, but that was really interesting about the bill. Okay, maxwell, yeah, okay, back to the trauma and drama of Maxwell. So it sees, the development plan at this point has this you know the facades are going to be looking very with the neighborhood it has to take up the issue to the circuit court ruling.
Zak Leonard:Okay, so now we kind of jump forward a year to last december, slash january of this year, and what the developers, right they now have to kind of provide their final development yeah, so they've had a year away.
Zak Leonard:And that has to agree with the preliminary one that they submitted. That largely justified the zone change. Uh-huh, and in the fall of 24, they come back with something that really looks nothing like what they had submitted. All the architectural detailing at least the substantial parts of it have been reduced or omitted. The massing has changed. The townhouses where there are separate entries, were largely obliterated on Stone Ave, so it's really just a cheapening of the whole affair.
Erica Friis:There's really no other way to describe it Like a bait and switch. Can we say that?
Zak Leonard:It has been said yes, yes, yeah.
Erica Friis:It has been said. It has been said, yes, yes, yeah, it has been said, and it's just you know.
Zak Leonard:So people on the technical review committee and the subdivision committee, you know they express concerns, they say this is not what we were sold on.
Erica Friis:Yeah.
Zak Leonard:It's by, you know, a different architect. It turns out that the preliminary design was not actually linked to any floor plans, so it was kind of just an artistic representation.
Erica Friis:But there was no sense of whether this could be built If it was feasible or not, for that spot yeah.
Zak Leonard:And okay, well, now I'll just keep going, just go Great. And listeners out there. This is also in my op-eds, which are available in the blog section of the Bluegrass Trust website. So all the windows have just been replications of the same type when they were supposed to face stone ave. Well, apparently we can't build them anymore because we have to put a utility easement along stone ave because, remember, I had said before that the developer would be blowing up part of hagerman court well that part of hagerman court is lined with utility pools.
Zak Leonard:No one had considered what would happen to those utility pools yeah, but you're you're developing like shouldn't this?
Erica Friis:why wouldn't this be a part of the preliminary like?
Zak Leonard:it is for the zoning ordinance it is and planning staff. It should have figured that out. It specifically says for preliminary development plans you have to show where existing or new proposed easements will lie on the plan.
Erica Friis:Yeah.
Zak Leonard:And they just didn't do that, and then come back and say well, we can't build this complex.
Erica Friis:We can't build what we promised you we could build because of an oversight that we should have looked at to begin with. Yeah, okay.
Zak Leonard:So, yeah, I think we then go through four new plans just to get back to something that approximates the renderings that we were shown in 2023. And we eventually get there. I mean, there are still things like the townhouses and the step backs that are not going to be built, but that's enough to satisfy the planning commission that the final plans are in substantial conformity with the preliminary ones.
Erica Friis:What is exactly?
Zak Leonard:Just the massing the building the cladding things of that sort.
Erica Friis:But not with the cool windows, the variation of windows or anything like that.
Zak Leonard:So some got put back in. Okay, Again, back in October 2023, and anyone can go back to the hearings and see this themselves the builder's representative from Gilbane, who was a firm that really creates these student housing complexes all over the country, these big box kind of cheaply looking class things.
Erica Friis:No character yeah.
Zak Leonard:They said oh well, we had to change all the windows because in the initial drawings they didn't reflect to floor plans. We had to figure out where the bedrooms and the bathrooms were. Well, apparently that's not an issue anymore because they, after substantial pushback from the planning commission, were able to vary the window size and shape. So it just seems that I don't know the builders. The developers are just trying to cut corners where they can and hope that nobody notices.
Zak Leonard:Thankfully we had, you know, an architect in the planning commission that really took issue with this and they responded to his complaints. But if he hadn't been there, you know.
Erica Friis:Right, it could have just like passed and no one would have. I mean so there's only one architect on this planning commission.
Zak Leonard:Not anymore. He resigned from that commission.
Erica Friis:Oh no, Because of this project, you think.
Zak Leonard:I don't know. I don't think it's because of this project. You think I?
Erica Friis:don't know. I don't think it's because of this project. Okay, gotcha, it's probably. I hear the planning commission it's like it's a tough gig is what I hear. I mean, there's a lot of contentious, you know stuff on both sides. You have a lot of people who you know, but there has to be a certain profession or a certain like member from different fields on the commission, right? So you have to have there should be, but there often isn't.
Zak Leonard:Certainly on the Historic Preservation Commission, seats are not filled with specific people with particular expertise in the way that they should be.
Erica Friis:Yeah, so that stinks. I mean, what do you think is the? Because if you go to the website because I have before I've gone and I'm like, oh, let me look at the historic preservation oh, there should be somebody who has a law background, that makes total sense. There should be somebody with an architecture background, you know somebody like. So I guess there's just it's it's not a paid position and therefore I mean it's like almost volunteer based or what is the reasoning behind that? You think?
Zak Leonard:All I know is that when I have gone before the historic preservation commission for things like National Register nomination approvals, They've maybe had seven members out of 15 turn up. And why that is is beyond my powers Of knowing. Yeah, sure.
Erica Friis:Yeah, interesting. Okay, so is that where we're at right now? With Maxwell? There's been a back and forth, but there's slowly been an architect that was on the planning commission. Ensure that there's some character that's being inserted back into this project, and so is it still in limbo, or where are we at?
Zak Leonard:As of a few weeks ago, it has been fully approved.
Erica Friis:Okay, yeah, so the renderings are out there as to what the final like, what it for sure, will look like. Yes, okay, and so when do they break ground?
Zak Leonard:That's a question. I mean, a lot of those buildings are still inhabited by students, so I imagine not before the end of the academic year.
Erica Friis:Sure Leases run out. Sure Leases run out, yeah.
Zak Leonard:But there's a lot of work just involving the parcel itself in terms of grading, reorienting the roads. It's going to be a very disruptive affair.
Zak Leonard:To Maxwell, which is a major artery for did the traffic studies. But there will be a single. Hagerman will still be. It'll be. It's one way coming down to the new building and then two ways between Stone Ave and the parking garage. But you have 165 spots and a good number of them are going to be turning right to go onto Maxwell. That stretch between where Hagerman will hit Stone Ave and Maxwell is probably all of five cars long. There is no traffic light there. I can only imagine what the backups there will be.
Erica Friis:Well, it makes you wonder how yeah, I mean like how in-depth was this traffic study? Like there's just one person out there with like a clipboard, like it looks fine, no problem.
Zak Leonard:That's the impression I got. I mean, maybe the study itself exists somewhere out there in the ether, but I just can't. I mean, Stone Ab itself is already such a. It's a very skinny road with parking allowed on it, and I think it's just going to be a nightmare for anybody living there.
Erica Friis:It sounds like this project is one of many, that this is sort of a broader trend in Lexington. How and in what ways can we as the public get more involved with helping the trust or other entities that are out there on the ground, trying to make voices more heard in the name of historic preservation?
Zak Leonard:Well, I would say you know we put out as much information as we can and at least in issues in Lexington dealing with substantial projects and rezonings. You know we participate in public comment. We go before the Planet Commission for the hearings, so you know. Sign up for our emails. Follow us on social media.
Erica Friis:Or become a trust member Become a trust member. Yes, for sure, I think that's the greatest way to to stay very informed with I mean, you guys have a great newsletter, really great events and ways to enjoy historic preservation, with detours once a month, the first on wednesday of every month, but yeah, and staying in tune to your fabulous social media, which you are the one writing.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, indeed yeah and you. Every so often we do put op-eds in the Herald-Leader, but they only really let you put an op-ed once every three months. So there are other ways to stay informed about these projects. I mean, it is very difficult as just someone in the community to know what's going on, because you basically need to go on the Acela platform and then you have to find the project and you have to click through the tabs to see if they have uploaded documents and whatnot. And the planning department has had a tendency of late to you know they can approve, they can disapprove or they can state that they want to postpone Table it, table it In things like the Max Bowl. They've kind of been switching their opinions at the 11th hour. And again, this is only public information so far as you can access the documents on the Acela platform.
Erica Friis:Yeah.
Zak Leonard:So just keeping track of everything that's going on can be rather arduous.
Erica Friis:I'm sure you get lost in the weeds because unless you really already know what you're doing and what you're looking for, it's not front page news essentially. Well that's why it's important to definitely stay in tune to organizations like the Bluegrass Trust and make sure that you're following their social media.
Zak Leonard:And we are trying to kind of develop a new and more, I would say, assertive approach to advocacy too. I've just been able to form a new policy and research committee within the trust that has. You know, academics, lawyers, policy people to you know, talk about things like expanding our demolition delays, how, you know, we can kind of optimize the functions of the historic preservation commission. How do we, you know, introduce zoning amendments if that's the thing we want to do? So you know we are trying to be trying to get ahead of these projects.
Erica Friis:Proactive is the word for it, definitely. I love that you want to hear. Something really dumb of me is that we should have talked about you at the beginning of this episode. Me yes, little old me. So forgive me that we're going to introduce you. This is very avant-garde. I guess you could say Not the typical, but tell us about your background in historic preservation and how you came to even be at the Bluegrass Trust.
Zak Leonard:I came to be at the Bluegrass Trust because I was hired.
Erica Friis:You're not originally from Lexington, right.
Zak Leonard:No, you said North, I'm from Boston.
Erica Friis:Originally I didn't know that. Yeah, oh, very cool.
Zak Leonard:Then I was.
Erica Friis:Can you turn a Boston accent off and on when you need?
Zak Leonard:to. I'm dying out, and I'm from the suburbs Gotcha. My father has a lingering Cambridge accent, but even that is rare these days, oh nice. I did my PhD at the University of Chicago and then I taught there for a few years as a teaching fellow.
Erica Friis:Where was your bachelor's and master's at?
Zak Leonard:I did my bachelor's at Brown and then I did my first master's at the University of Edinburgh.
Erica Friis:Oh my God, Hell yeah.
Zak Leonard:But then after my teaching fellowship for various job market related reasons, I said, well, let's pivot to preservation, because I'd always been interested in preservation and had done some kind of coursework in my undergrad years and an internship. So then I went back to school at Cornell and I got my master's in preservation planning.
Erica Friis:Very cool. Yeah, cornell has a great preservation program right, one of the maybe only ones that actually offers a PhD in preservation.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, and I mean, I think it's different at UK. Our preservation program at Cornell lives in the city and regional planning department. Very cool, we have a number of Cornell alums working at UK whom you may already know?
Erica Friis:Yeah, definitely, yes, I do. Yeah, one is on my master's committee, actually, two, two One is my master's chair. That's great, good people, those Cornell folk, yeah, so I mean my job trajectory doesn't really.
Zak Leonard:It doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense coming from. I was doing. British imperial history and South Asian history. That's what my first book is on.
Erica Friis:Amazing.
Zak Leonard:But in one of the chapters in that book is deals with infrastructure in South Asia, which really kind of got me more focused on the built environments. So there are corollaries.
Erica Friis:Yeah, of course, I love a non-traditional background too. I think that it often lends itself very nicely to like. It means, wherever you end up, you're looking at things from different angles that are, I think, really important. I've always been. I've been a fan of yours for a while in terms of I think you handle a National Register Committee very well whenever you, like you know, go up and like nominate properties here in Lexington. I think you do a really nice job with that.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, we just got the Louis Gart Malt.
Erica Friis:House. Yeah, tell us a little bit about that.
Zak Leonard:Oh, love that Malt, house.
Erica Friis:What is a Malt House?
Zak Leonard:We have to start with that Malt House is essentially where you process the malt that is used in brewing.
Zak Leonard:And this building is located on North Limestone, kind of at the intersection of North Limestone and York. The original portion dates to around the 1850s and then there is an 1880s addition and then the part facing North Limestone which has a very fanciful kind of poured concrete design facade is a 1920s extension. Kind of poured concrete design facade is 1920s extension. But the original 1850s portion was functioned as a hemp house, was adaptively reused in the late 1860s to become a malt house and was the core of the Louis Gart family's business empire. And they were extremely prominent Germans in Lexington. Joseph Louis Gart, like many immigrants in the brewery industry, had trained in Cincinnati before roaming the Midwest and coming to Lexington and he had the foresight to really make use of the Beltline Railway which still parts of it still run through that section of town and so he would ship his processed malt out all over really southern region of America. So that's yeah, that was quite an intriguing project to work on.
Erica Friis:I'm sure.
Zak Leonard:And I am now in the final stages of completing my nomination for the Mantell House.
Erica Friis:Oh, fantastic, good for you, you know about that guy. A little bit. Yeah, I love Mantell in generalel in general.
Zak Leonard:yeah, yeah, that whole area the mentel house dates to 1840s, parts of it at least. Uh, one of kind of three or four houses in the entire northern section of richmond road. Um, you probably don't want to get me too wound up about the mentel house, but it was also the site of the ashland park stud farm. This was bj tracy's operation, which was the one of the most famous trotting horse breeding enterprises in the world. He shipped his horses out hawaii, australia. Um so yeah, learning a lot trotting horses has been something.
Erica Friis:Sure, yeah, I'm, I bet, yeah it's. And there I mean that's when I hear all the different types, because you just, we just think thoroughbreds generally, and then it's like, oh my gosh, there's saddlebreds right and trotting, and like the amounts of different horses that do different things is pretty astounding don't ask me about anything aside from trotting horses, you're just the expert on trotting. Uh yeah, I'll tell you about Woodlake Farm near Frankfort.
Zak Leonard:I'll tell you about.
Erica Friis:Fairlawn Farm, but that's where the buck stops, so how long have you been in Lexington then?
Zak Leonard:Oh man, I got here July of 23.
Erica Friis:23. Okay, and so I mean, you've obviously lived all over. You've been in Scotland, you've been in Boston, You've been in Chicago. How does Lexington fare? Do you enjoy living in Lexington?
Zak Leonard:I do. It's a very diverting place with a very special and unique history, and I had never been to Kentucky before I had really packed up my car and drove.
Erica Friis:To drive to Lexington, wow, okay.
Zak Leonard:Sight unseen, had really packed up my car and drove to drive to lexington, wow, okay, um, sight unseen. But I've been, you know, importing some of my friends from the east coast and chicago and everyone is, you know, they just don't really have a an impression of kentucky yeah but they're always very delighted and surprised by what they find here so you're bringing people in to move here, not to move just to visit. Just to visit okay, to boost our tourism and economy, as you should, very good um, but there I mean for someone doing historic preservation.
Zak Leonard:There's just so much ground for me to cover, because again, we don't just work in lexington and we, you know, deal with the surrounding counties too yeah I was just in winchester on monday night before the administrative board to advocate for the survival of Allen Chapel there, which was a colored Methodist Episcopal church from 1898. So yeah, we make the rounds.
Erica Friis:Yeah, we often forget how much the trust's reach is. Yeah, it's definitely a central Kentucky thing A whole bluegrass, that's very cool. So I want to to ask you this, which I like asking guests at the very end too, on your typical night out in lexington where are you going, what are you doing, what are you eating? Oh man um like what's your favorite restaurant, maybe favorite drink or, if you're not a drinker, coffee so I am delighted that lexington has a robust nightlife.
Zak Leonard:Uh, I will say, I'll just give you a list of some of my listen favorite places. Of course, ona, you can't. Of course you know. Yes, how can? What is better than a six, seven dollar negroni?
Erica Friis:on thursday night, or a boat drink with my favorite hipsters my favorite have you been to trifecta? I have, I like trifecta. Yes, I like it a lot too and the speakeasy right the glass blowing yes yes, very good. Yep, there's just where do I begin?
Zak Leonard:mere twin and mere twin.
Erica Friis:Very good now you're talking my language. I love uh.
Zak Leonard:Warehouse block and we have you know a bunch of stuff down around. You know where limestone meets loudon too for sure that's really my neighborhood, that's where I live on brand, so I love check us out.
Erica Friis:I love Loudon house and such a beautiful, beautiful situation there. Cool, all right. Well, thanks for so much for being a part of this episode. I think I learned a lot.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, I hope I didn't overload.
Erica Friis:No, not at all.
Zak Leonard:The listeners on arcane zoning regulations? No, not at all.
Erica Friis:No no, I think it's good for us to know, it's good for the public, myself included, to be more in tune to what's happening in Lexington. I just wish it wasn't so. I don't know, it just needs to be demystified more.
Zak Leonard:Yeah, it's tough, that's the perfect way to put it. Yeah, all right, cool.
Erica Friis:Well, thanks again, dr Leonard. Thank you Big thanks again to our special guest, dr Zach Leonard of the Bluegrass Trust, for joining us on this very special episode. If you're just as concerned about how development is affecting historic properties in Lexington, then the best way to stay informed and get involved is to pay attention to and support the work of the Bluegrass Trust. And if you didn't know much about it, the Bluegrass Trust is a nonprofit organization that has worked tirelessly since 1955, beginning when they saved Hopemont from demolition and helped establish Lexington's first historic district. For over seven decades, they have preserved iconic sites and structures like the Mary Todd Lincoln House, shaker Town, dudley House, pope Villa and, most recently, the Dr Thomas Hunt Morgan House, among many, many others, all while serving as Central Kentucky's premier resource for protecting our architectural heritage.
Erica Friis:So here's how you can get involved. You could visit their website at bluegrasstrustorg to become a member, a volunteer, or donate, or just follow them on social media for regular updates on historic preservation issues, events, tours and, of course, opportunities for advocacy. They are Bluegrass Trust on all socials. The more voices we have advocating for thoughtful development that still respects our architectural heritage, the stronger our community becomes. Remember our history matters, our neighborhoods matter, and your voice matters in shaping Lexington's future while still honoring its past. The Lexington Podcast is produced by Erica Freese and Jonathan O'Hare in association with Freese Media. If you wanted to get a hold of us, feel free to email us at lexingtonpodcast at gmailcom or follow us on Instagram. We are Lexington Podcast on Instagram as well, and we will see you next week.