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A detailed site survey and

Planning staff recommend postponing every rezoning on Thursday’s docket, 2,721 homes among them; a smoke shop wants half of the old Arby’s on South Limestone that the council refused to rezone

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Source: The Lexington Times
🌎 Resumen en español · traducción automática

El personal de planificación de Lexington recomienda posponer los ocho casos de rezonificación en la agenda del jueves, incluyendo tres grandes proyectos de vivienda con 2,721 unidades totales en las áreas de expansión del condado, argumentando que los solicitantes no han demostrado cómo sus planes cumplen con el Plan Maestro de Crecimiento Urbano y el Plan Integral 2045. Una tienda de humo y mercado de 24 horas solicita un uso condicional para la mitad del antiguo Arby's en South Limestone, edificio cuya rezonificación el consejo urbano rechazó en 2023 cuando Dutch Bros lo quería para un café.

Traducción y resumen generados por IA a partir del artículo en inglés. Puede contener errores; consulte el texto original.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Every one of the eight rezoning requests on the Planning Commission’s Thursday docket arrives with the same recommendation from the city’s planning staff: postpone. The list includes the three largest housing proposals in the county’s 2023 expansion areas, Anderson Communities’ 1,240-unit Andover Commons on Todds Road, Ball Homes’ 560 units and OK Gentry’s 434 apartments on Athens Boonesboro Road, along with The Dean’s 262 units on South Broadway and a 225-unit student building on East High Street. The five petitions that state a unit count add up to 2,721 homes.

The staff reports, published in a 27-page agenda late last week, say the applicants have not yet shown how their plans meet the Urban Growth Master Plan’s regulating plans and the 2045 Comprehensive Plan. For the expansion-area cases, staff list missing service roads, avenues in the wrong places, cul-de-sacs that are too long, blocks that are too big, no stub streets to neighbors and traffic studies that are incomplete or absent. The commission’s own Zoning Committee reached the same conclusion on Sept. 3.

A postponement recommendation is advice, not a ruling. The commission can still vote Thursday, and applicants often ask to postpone themselves. But the calendar matters: the agenda prints beside each case the date by which the commission must approve or disapprove it unless the applicant agrees to more time. For five of the eight, that date is Oct. 4. The Dean’s printed date, Aug. 27, has already passed.

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The docket was the week’s news because the city’s Accela Citizen Access portal was quiet. The Lexington Times pulled every Planning Division record updated between Sept. 12 and Sunday. Six records moved. Four were zoning-compliance permits. The other two were Board of Adjustment applications: a 24-hour “campus market and smoke shop” that wants a conditional use for half of the former Arby’s at 507 S. Limestone, the building whose rezoning the Urban County Council refused in 2023 when Dutch Bros wanted it for a coffee drive-through, and a two-story house on a 25-foot-wide vacant lot at 420 Hawkins Ave. near East Fourth Street.

2022 ALTA land title survey of 507 South Limestone at Colfax Street showing the former Arby's building, parking, Tract 1 and Tract 2, Fire Station No. 6 and a dashed zoning line labeled Zone R-3 and Zone B-1
The half-acre corner of South Limestone and Colfax Street as surveyed in 2022 for Dutch Bros: the former Arby’s (shaded), its drive-through lane, Fire Station No. 6 to the north and the magenta zoning line between B-1 and R-3 cutting across the building. (Endris Engineering, Kevin M. Phillips PLS, PLN-BOA-26-00086, via Accela)

Thursday’s docket: eight rezonings, eight postponement recommendations

The Planning Commission meets at 1:30 p.m. Thursday in the council chamber at 200 E. Main St. The legal advertisement and the agenda were posted after our Sept. 14 roundup. What is on it, in agenda order, with the staff position on each:

  • The Dean Lexington, 1021-1069 S. Broadway (District 11). South Broadway Project Owner LLC asks to rezone 5.089 net acres from B-4 wholesale-warehouse to B-1 neighborhood business for a six-story, 75-foot mixed-use building with 262 apartments wrapped around an internal parking garage. Staff: postponement, citing street-network and streetscape criteria for the corridor place type. The commission’s Subdivision Committee did recommend approving the companion development plan, on condition the council later approves the zone change.
  • Tom Collins Farm, 4865 Tates Creek Road and 4720 Saron Drive (District 12). Edward McGhee asks to rezone 9.417 net acres from single-family R-1C and R-1D to R-4 for five apartment buildings and six townhouses; the agenda does not state a unit count. The Zoning Committee recommended postponement at the applicant’s request. The Subdivision Committee flagged the loss of significant trees and a street that dead-ends.
  • OK Gentry, 5530-5660 Athens Boonesboro Road (District 12). A 44.8-net-acre rezoning from agricultural and interchange-business zones to B-3 corridor business for a “regional center” of 17 commercial spaces for retail, hotel and office use plus eight apartment buildings with 434 units. Staff: postponement. The report says the plan is “not in agreement with multiple standards” of the master plan’s regulating plan for Area 5, including a service road along Interstate 75, a 100-foot buffer to farmland, shared driveways and street trees, and that the traffic study is incomplete. Part of 5660 Athens Boonesboro lies outside the expansion area and would stay agricultural.
  • Ball Homes, 5085 Athens Boonesboro Road (District 3). A 37.15-net-acre rezoning from agricultural to R-4 for a 560-unit development on the Encore Partners property. Staff: postponement. The justification letter, staff wrote, “does not include any substantive discussion of the Urban Growth Master Plan (UGMP) other than the land use element.” Staff want the minimum-density requirement addressed, a cul-de-sac shortened to 250 feet and a traffic study filed. The fire division wants a second access.
  • Andover Commons, 4200 Todds Road (District 12). Anderson Communities’ request to rezone 123.13 net acres of the Germond farm from agricultural to B-1 and R-4 for a 1,240-unit “new complete neighborhood,” postponed once already on Aug. 27. Staff: postponement again, listing village-center placement, avenue locations, block sizes, alley access and bicycle parking among the unresolved items, and citing the comprehensive plan goal to “uphold the Urban Services Area concept.” The five subdivision waivers filed Aug. 28 are advertised alongside it.
  • Up Campus, 224-230 E. High St., 209-219 Stone Ave. and 102 Hagerman Court (District 3). New to this series. Up Campus Student Living LLC asks to rezone 1.134 net acres from R-4 residential and P-1 office to B-2A downtown frame business for a 225-unit apartment building, a density of 200 units per net acre. Staff: postponement, asking how the project squares with the 2026 Downtown Master Plan, how the building steps down to the one- and two-story buildings beside it, and what public outreach has been done. The Subdivision Committee postponed the plan at the applicant’s request. The block has been here before: the council voted down a student-housing rezoning of the same subdivision’s Maxwell Street and Kalmia Avenue frontage, from R-4 to the same B-2A zone, on Nov. 19, 2025, after the Planning Commission had recommended it.
  • Turner Commons expansion, 1305-1309 W. Main St. (District 11). Turner Property 4 LLC asks to fold 2.394 net acres into the Industrial Redevelopment PUD-3 zone. Staff: postponement on the zone change and disapproval of two variances that would cut the 20-foot yard and the vehicle-area buffer along West Main Street to zero for a new drive. Staff wrote the drive would sit “directly adjacent to an existing sidewalk network along a major arterial roadway” and that “the required PUD-3 buffer provision was established by the applicant during the creation of the PUD-3 zone.”
  • Regency Holdings Three, 131 and 147 Pasadena Drive (District 10). The R-1C-to-B-1 rezoning for a two-story office and retail building with a drive-through coffee shop at 2395 Nicholasville Road, which the Zoning Committee postponed Sept. 3. Staff: postponement on the zone change, the conditional use, the waiver and three variances, which would push the maximum front yard from 20 feet to 80 feet on Pasadena and to 45 feet on Nicholasville Road and trim the buffer from 8 feet to 4.9 feet.
Excerpt of the Sept. 24 Planning Commission agenda showing the Anderson Communities zone change with the Zoning Committee and staff both recommending postponement
The Andover Commons entry in the Sept. 24 agenda: the Zoning Committee and the planning staff both recommend postponement of the 1,240-unit request. (LFUCG Division of Planning agenda, via lexingtonky.gov)

Three text amendments round out the docket, all with staff support: Goodwill’s attended-donation-center amendment, where staff back their own alternative text that keeps the use conditional in B-1; the staff rewrite of the industrial zones that carries out the Blue Sky small area plan; and the downtown zoning rewrite, which sets minimum building heights, requires active ground floors and limits new stand-alone surface parking in the B-2, B-2A and B-2B zones. The agenda says the Zoning Committee recommended approval of the downtown text. The committee’s Sept. 3 meeting video shows it voted to postpone that item, and no later committee meeting appears on the city’s calendar.

Excerpt of the Sept. 24 Planning Commission agenda listing five reasons staff recommend disapproval of the Turner Property 4 variances along West Main Street
The one outright “disapproval” on Thursday’s agenda: staff reasons for rejecting Turner Property 4’s request to cut the West Main Street yard and buffer to zero. (LFUCG Division of Planning agenda, via lexingtonky.gov)

The old Arby’s on South Limestone, and a line through the middle of it

The Board of Adjustment application filed under the name “24/7 Campus Market & Smoke Shop” is short on paper. The record, PLN-BOA-26-00086, carries a one-sentence description from the applicant, in capital letters: the “zone changes in middle of the building,” and “we are looking for a conditional usage for half the building for a business.” The applicant is not named. The only attachment, uploaded Friday as the site plan, is a land title survey from October 2022.

That survey is a document from the property’s last fight. It was prepared by Endris Engineering for Dutch Bros, the Oregon coffee chain, and Christy Pad Partners LP, the owner of record, when Dutch Bros wanted to put a drive-through in the vacant Arby’s at the corner of South Limestone and Colfax Street, next to University of Kentucky land and Fire Station No. 6. It labels the half-acre lot “Zone: B-1 & R-3” and draws the zoning line straight across the one-story brick-and-stucco building, which the survey measures at 3,002 square feet. It counts 26 parking spaces.

Dutch Bros asked the city in 2022 to rezone the R-3 portion, 0.2916 net acres, to B-1. The Planning Commission recommended disapproval on Feb. 23, 2023. At the council’s zone-change hearing on May 18, 2023, with 11 of 15 members present, a motion by council members Hannah LeGris and Liz Sheehan to adopt findings against the rezoning failed, five votes to six. A motion by Dave Sevigny and Chuck Ellinger II to approve it drew six yes votes and five no, short of the eight the council needs to change a zone. “Absent of eight yes votes, that motion fails,” Vice Mayor Dan Wu said from the chair. The land stayed split. Dutch Bros came back in 2024 with a site on Harrodsburg Road instead.

The city’s online zoning map now shows the whole parcel as B-1. The 2022 survey labels it both zones, the property valuation administrator’s roll lists it as R-3, and the new applicant’s own description says the line runs through the building. The Lexington Times found no rezoning of the property in the meeting archive since 2023. Which record is right is a question for the Division of Planning, and for the Board of Adjustment when the case is heard.

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What the application does not say is what use the board would be asked to allow, or under which provision of the zoning ordinance. The Board of Adjustment’s October docket has not been advertised; the next hearings are Oct. 12 and Nov. 9.

Zoning requirements block from the 2022 survey listing the B-1 and R-3 minimums for lot size, frontage, yards, coverage and height
The survey’s own zoning table lists the R-3 minimums: a 6,000-square-foot lot and 50 feet of frontage. (Endris Engineering, PLN-BOA-26-00086, via Accela)

A two-story house on a 25-foot lot

The second application, PLN-BOA-26-00085, has no project name and no description. Its one attachment is a site plan by Gary Roland of CAM Surveying, signed Sept. 8, for Augustin Escobar at 420 Hawkins Ave., a vacant corner lot at Conley Street off Race Street near East Fifth Street, in Council District 1.

The lot is 25 feet wide and 85 feet deep, 2,125 square feet. The plan draws a two-story house 19 feet wide and, at its longest, 43 feet deep, 1,451 square feet of building area by the plan’s site statistics, set 8 feet from Hawkins Avenue, about 3 feet from each side line and 12.5 feet from the rear. It shows no driveway; the parking line reads “off street.” A construction entrance from Conley Street, the plan notes, “is not a future parking” and “will be remove and landscaped” before a certificate of occupancy.

The lot is zoned R-3. The zoning table printed on the 2022 South Limestone survey lists that zone’s minimums as a 6,000-square-foot lot, 50 feet of frontage, a 20-foot front yard and 5-foot side yards; the ordinance has been amended since, and the application does not list the variances it seeks. Escobar Properties Investments LLC bought the lot April 14 for $15,000, according to the county property roll as of June; the house next door at 418 Hawkins, built in 1910, sold in May 2025 for $125,000.

Site plan for 420 Hawkins Avenue showing a 25-by-85-foot lot at Conley Street with a proposed two-story structure, front porch, rear patio and a construction entrance
The site plan for 420 Hawkins Ave.: a 19-by-43-foot, two-story house on a 25-foot-wide lot at Conley Street, with a temporary construction entrance at the rear. (CAM Surveying, Gary Roland PLS, PLN-BOA-26-00085, via Accela)

Also last week

The Board of Adjustment worked through its September docket on Sept. 14. It approved Southern Cookhouse & Bar’s request for live entertainment at 844 Hays Blvd., with the variance that lets the stage sit 24 feet from a residential zone instead of 100, on staff’s conditions, including that “no external amplification of the outdoor live entertainment shall be permitted.” It approved Shiloh Baptist Church’s childcare center on East Fifth Street and Engman Avenue. It postponed Berea Christian Church’s sanctuary and parking lot on Iron Works Pike, the 232 Warnock St. front-yard variance and the 112 Garrett Ave. accessory-building variances, and approved two unhosted short-term rentals on Lakefront Drive and Albany Road on split votes.

The Planning Commission’s Sept. 17 work session was scheduled to take staff briefings on the downtown text amendment and on the Urban Growth Master Plan amendment, the ordinance that will set standards for the 2,800 acres added to the urban service area in 2023. That amendment now has a schedule: a second work session Oct. 15 and a public hearing Oct. 22, according to the city’s Imagine Lexington project page, which posts the draft text. Our Sept. 7 roundup noted the amendment had been filed Aug. 31 without a hearing date. The Sept. 17 session is not yet in the meeting video archive.

On Wednesday the Technical Review Committee takes up Sayre Christian Village’s Phase 7 nursing-home rebuild, the plan our Sept. 7 roundup flagged for a lighting plan with pole fixtures on a site whose 2010 rezoning barred pole lighting, along with the GDK Farm final plat on Tates Creek Road.

Coming up

  • Wednesday, Sept. 23, 8:30 a.m. — Technical Review Committee, Phoenix Building. Sayre Christian Village Phase 7; GDK Farm and Navarro-Ramirez final plats. Next TRC is Oct. 28.
  • Thursday, Sept. 24, 1:30 p.m. — Planning Commission zoning hearing, council chamber: the eight rezonings and three text amendments above.
  • Thursday, Oct. 1 — Subdivision Committee, 8:30 a.m., and Zoning Committee, 1:30 p.m., Phoenix Building.
  • Thursday, Oct. 8, 1:30 p.m. — Planning Commission subdivision hearing; White Farm and Griffin Gate return.
  • Monday, Oct. 12, 1:30 p.m. — Board of Adjustment. The docket was not advertised as of Monday morning.
  • Thursday, Oct. 15, 1:30 p.m. — Planning Commission work session, second session on the Urban Growth Master Plan amendment.
  • Thursday, Oct. 22, 1:30 p.m. — Planning Commission public hearing on the Urban Growth Master Plan amendment.
  • Monday, Nov. 9, 1:30 p.m. — Board of Adjustment.

How we did this: The Lexington Times scanned the LFUCG Accela portal for every Planning record updated Sept. 12 through Sept. 20, 2026, downloaded the two new attachments and read the plan sheets from the drawings rather than machine-extracted text. The Sept. 24 Planning Commission agenda, the legal advertisements and the Sept. 17 and Sept. 23 agendas are from lexingtonky.gov. Prior actions were checked against the Granicus meeting archive at meetings.lexingtonky.news; the 2023 council vote counts and quotation are taken from the meeting video and its caption track. Owners of record, sale dates and prices are from the Fayette Property Valuation Administrator’s roll as captured in June 2026 and were not re-checked against the live roll; zoning and parcel boundaries are from LFUCG’s GIS layers, and council districts from the city’s district boundaries. Accela status labels (“New Document Uploaded From ACA”) describe where a file sits in the city’s workflow, not a decision. Staff recommendations are the Division of Planning’s; the Planning Commission and the Board of Adjustment decide. Record links are in the sources list below.

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Sources

  1. PLN-BOA-26-00086 — 24/7 Campus Market & Smoke Shop conditional use, 507 S. Limestone (uploaded Sept. 18)
  2. PLN-BOA-26-00085 — 420 Hawkins Ave. site plan for a two-story house (uploaded Sept. 17)
  3. LFUCG Planning Commission — Sept. 24, 2026 zoning hearing agenda (27 pages, staff recommendations)
  4. LFUCG Planning Commission — legal advertisement for the Sept. 24, 2026 public hearing
  5. LFUCG Planning Commission — Sept. 17, 2026 work session agenda
  6. LFUCG Technical Review Committee — Sept. 23, 2026 agenda
  7. LFUCG Board of Adjustment — legal advertisement for the Sept. 14, 2026 hearing
  8. LFUCG Board of Adjustment — Sept. 14, 2026 agenda
  9. Urban County Council zone-change hearing, May 18, 2023 — Dutch Bros LLC, 507 S. Limestone (PLN-MAR-22-00015): disapproval findings failed 5-6; approval failed 6-5
  10. LFUCG current zoning ordinance text amendment applications (UGMP amendment PLN-ZOTA-26-00011 now listed)
  11. Imagine Lexington — UGMP zoning code update (draft text; work sessions Sept. 17 and Oct. 15; hearing Oct. 22)
  12. LFUCG Planning Commission — meeting schedule and agendas
  13. LFUCG Board of Adjustment — meeting schedule
  14. LFUCG Urban County Council — members and districts
  15. The Lexington Times, Sept. 14, 2026 — previous planning-filings roundup
  16. The Lexington Times, Sept. 7, 2026 — planning-filings roundup (UGMP amendment filed; Sayre Christian Village lighting; Regency/Pasadena)
  17. The Lexington Times, Aug. 31, 2026 — planning-filings roundup (Andover Commons)
  18. LFUCG meeting archive
  19. Planning Commission, Feb. 23, 2023 — Dutch Bros LLC zone map amendment (PLN-MAR-22-00015) recommended for disapproval
  20. Board of Adjustment, Sept. 14, 2026 — Southern Cookhouse & Bar live entertainment approved with no-external-amplification condition; Shiloh Baptist childcare approved; Berea Christian, Warnock St. and Garrett Ave. cases postponed
  21. Planning Commission Zoning Committee, Sept. 3, 2026 — Regency Holdings Three postponed; downtown text amendment postponed
  22. Planning Commission, Aug. 27, 2026 — Andover Commons, Ball Homes and OK Gentry postponed to Sept. 24
  23. Planning Commission, Sept. 25, 2025 — CS Acquisition Vehicle LLC zone change (Maxwell Street / Kalmia Avenue, R-4 to B-2A) recommended for approval
  24. Urban County Council zone-change hearing, Nov. 19, 2025 — CS Acquisition Vehicle LLC ordinance failed
  25. Planning Commission, Aug. 22, 2024 — Chewning zone map amendment, 2090 Harrodsburg Road (Dutch Bros Coffee)
  26. LFUCG GIS — Zoning layer (parcel 13284890 shown as B-1)

This report was researched and written by AI (Claude Fable 5.1) for The Lexington Times from primary documents: the survey and site plan attached to LFUCG Accela Planning records updated Sept. 12 through Sept. 20, 2026; the Sept. 24 Planning Commission agenda and legal advertisement, the Sept. 17 work session and Sept. 23 Technical Review Committee agendas and the Board of Adjustment advertisement from lexingtonky.gov; the Granicus meeting-video archive at meetings.lexingtonky.news; the Fayette PVA roll as captured in June 2026; and LFUCG GIS layers. Plan figures were read from the drawings, not from machine-extracted text. The draft was checked in adversarial verification rounds before publication.

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