"In Austin, Texas, students hang out on Sixth Street. In Madison, Wis., they go to State Street. Ohio University students can all stumble home from uptown Athens' Court Street, but unlike in most "college towns," UK students don't have a central area near campus where they can all go to partake in the late-night revelry of the weekend. That could be changing, however, if vision becomes reality for the owners of three bars on Limestone.
Less than seven years after converting his shoe store into Pazzo's, a pizza parlor and pub, Tom Behr is ready to change the landscape on Limestone again by purchasing and razing the building that housed Kitty O'Shea's. Behr hopes October will bring the opening of his new establishment, aimed at Lexington's younger adult crowd. That includes not only those attending UK, but also those who will be living around it, as vacant buildings make way for condos and retail.
"The area has demanded this kind of attention as far as having more of a bar selection," said Behr, who hasn't quite finalized plans for his new establishment. Others have seen the same need that Behr has as the last few months have brought the opening of half-restaurant, half-night-club Salottos on the corner of Limestone and Avenue of Champions and the remodeling of the Lexington staple Two Keys Tavern.
"There's a lot of colleges that have that strip, so to speak, real close to campus, where people can enjoy themselves and it's not just for college students - anyone in town can enjoy themselves," said Chris Benezet, who along with his business partner Adam Keys opened Salottos earlier this year.
But for whatever reason, the Limestone corridor right across from campus has remained relatively void of nightlife activities for students and other Lexingtonians looking to enjoy a night out on the town.
Behr said when he decided competition from national chains was too tough to keep the shoe business running, he options on Limestone between the Avenue of Champions and Maxwell were limited. The strip only had the University Club, in the building that housed Kitty O'Shea's and Two Keys. A new establishment that catered to all in the UK and Lexington community would be a good business for him to get into, he decided.
Not only were there few choices of where to go for a drink on any given night, but John Franklin, the new owner and operator of Two Keys, said the lack of competition led to complacency in the upkeep of Two Keys. The result of that had come to bear in recent years, as Lexington's oldest bar had seen a drastic drop off in customers.
"The crowd was gone," Franklin said. "They had two nights where they'd have a few hundred people come in, but when you can't serve food because people aren't comfortable eating in a place that is that run down and has stench to it, (the business is suffering)."
Franklin recently started a massive renovation project that includes tearing out existing bars, restoring floors, redoing the bathrooms and adding more than a dozen HDTVs.
"These are renovations that just had to be done; they were overdue for 20 or 30 years. We put the money and time and effort into it, and we know this place is going to take a beating with a thousand college kids running around, being crazy. And in 10 years, they can fix it up and do it again," He said.
And that's just the start, according to Franklin, who plans by spring to make Two Keys' outdoor portion much more inviting by adding an elevated deck and awnings to the back patio. He also intends to create a front patio along the Limestone sidewalk and make the Limestone door the bar's main entrance.
The additions at Two Keys and the opening of Salottos, which recently opened its night club in the back, have brought the bars along the stretch to the level of Behr's, something he had hoped would happen when he started talking about purchasing Kitty O'Shea's two years ago.
"I just wanted to get it so I could start to clean the street up a little bit," he said. "That place, it served its purpose."
The upscale appearance of Pazzo's has not been a drain on college-aged business, especially on Wednesday nights, when Behr hosts Pint Night to introduce customers, mainly students, to a beer they wouldn't normally try. With a pitcher of the beer, customers get two free pint glasses bearing the beer's name to take home. In addition, they get educated on the taste of a beer that is not one of the usual college domestic drinks of choice.
And now Two Keys and Salottos hope they too can achieve success in drawing students into an upscale bar.
"My contention's always been that the students don't mind something nice; they just don't want to spend a lot of money," Behr said. "You can make it nice, and if you keep your prices reasonable, they're going to come in. People, I think, in the past just thought college kids go to dumps - that's what they like, dives. They go to those because that's usually what's available to them, because it is usually cheaper."
Benezet and his co-owner Keys said they've run into some trouble with the perception that, by the looks of the restaurant in the front of their club, students cannot afford to come in and drink, However, they say their beer prices are as inexpensive as anyone's. To help get that point across, Salottos has recently launched an express lunch menu featuring meals for $4 and $6.
"You can eat at McDonald's for the same price," Keys said.
With that affordability and quality of food prepared by the former executive chef at Malone's Hamburg location, Keys and Benezet want to attract a diverse crowd into their restaurant during the day in hopes of attracting them back again for drinks at night.
"We want the 40, 50-year-old business person to be able to come in here at lunch, sit down and eat next to the 20-year-old students that are sitting in here with their hats on backwards. We want that at lunch time, and we're starting to get that," Benezet said.
The upcoming completion of CenterCourt and other revitalization projects around the campus area where tobacco warehouses once stood have made the area a better place to put money into.
"Some of the development behind here's helped, the loft apartments and those kind of condos going up," Behr said. "Other people have jumped in and done some things. With that happening, the area's gotten a little safer. There's more people living down here; there are not any vacant buildings."
For the owners, they hope all of this is just the beginning of what's to come as Franklin and Benezet and Keys hope to give the stretch a name and a special designation to become the students' first destination.
"I don't think anyone had a master plan; it just turned into one with Salottos going up, putting their patio out front there," Franklin said. "There's a vibe really going right now that this is going to be UK's main drag of bars down through here."
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