When word started spreading earlier in the year that developers had set their eyes on transforming the industrial carbuncle on Manchester Street into an authentic, livable arts and entertainment district, imaginations and questions soared - Who is going to live there? Where is Manchester Street? Isn't that where they tow your car?
Anchored between two historic properties - the Old Tarr Distillery to the east, the James E. Pepper Distillery to the west - and sharing a creek bed with the Town Branch of Elkhorn Creek to the south, The Distillery District, as it is being called in reference to Lexington's spirited heritage, upon completion, could be a veritable bohemia where artists, and anybody else, live and work among galleries, cafes, lounges, music venues and other commercial possibilities.
With a long string of coincidences as colossal as full planetary alignment, the planning and timing of The Distillery District might appear as if it was written in the stars. Its location is adjacent to the planned Newtown Pike extension, which will make for an impressive vista to the west; the Town Branch Trail, a planned and lauded shared-use greenway trail, will wind through the corridor; the city applied for new tax increment financing (TIF) when weighing its options for replacing Rupp Arena, a structure perched at the head of Manchester Street, which would loosen the financial burden of developers in the district if accepted.
The Distillery District would also link downtown Lexington to one of the most scenic drives in Kentucky, if not the country - Old Frankfort Pike - without a ramshackled intermission.
So back in February when the idea was announced, there were broad expectations and aspirations - to put it lightly. In the area of land development and speculation, there's a lot of talk, but a trip to Manchester Street already reveals that the bona fide beginnings of a vibrant arts and entertainment district are starting to reverberate even louder than the trucks that cruise the strip.
"We have a lot of folks asking when things are going to be done, and that's an open-ended question," said Barry McNees, the managing partner of Manchester Development, LLC. "There are plenty of folks who aren't aware that we're trying to seek them out, and we're sounding the bullhorn saying, 'If you've got a creative concept, if you're an artist who's looking for an interesting space, we want to talk to you.' Because we want to be creative, and we want to find folks who want to be part of something that's beginning to blossom."
Already, the biggest physical change to occur has been the creation of over 7,000 sq. ft. of curbside retail space at the Old Tarr Distillery. Local photographer Mary Rezny moved her studio and business from 3rd Street into one of the spaces, and painter Theo Edmond's Hillbilly Chic Studio occupies another.
Another change has been the metamorphosis of the banquet hall in Old Tarr. Since becoming available to entertain guests, the space has been host to the annual Beaux Arts Ball, the LexArts Masquerade Ball, a Halloween party last month that saw over 1,500 revelers, and myriad other public and private functions. Currently the space serves as a calling card to artists and promoters to clue them into the discussion about the new face of Manchester Street.
In the end, the project will encompass over 20 acres of redeveloped space in the two distilleries and their accompanying warehouses. It's a massive undertaking that will take as much time as it will effort and materials, but McNees says that the district must be revealed in phases.
"I think my original thinking was that it would be possible to just build it and let everybody know about an authentic idea that's tied to the Town Branch Trail, to the historic bourbon distilling history of Lexington, and that would be enough to make it possible to kind of make it all happen at once," he said. "You always want things to be realized in pace with your passion, which would like to see it happen really quick, but I think from an organic point of view, the way that it's happening is the way it should happen."
A gradual change, according to McNees, will ensure that The Distillery District isn't some kind of prefab, sterile entity devoid of artistic or communal integrity that developers would push on the public. That would go against the basic tenets of what the envisioned goal is for Manchester Street, which aside from being a burgeoning area for the arts, is also a habitable option for the many professionals who might not be able to afford the influx of luxury lofts and condos currently being built in downtown Lexington.
While many apartment and condo complexes come with pre-constructed designs, which up the price, McNees said the spaces they plan on making available will more like a blank canvas.
"For a lot of folks who want to live downtown, the things that are being built are cost prohibitive," he said. "They are fantastic, but what's even better for our community is to provide something that is affordable to the police officer, to the artist, to the teacher, because I think without those things, you have a very narrow vision of the possibility of downtown."
Ideas for living and studio spaces run from the practical, which currently includes converting an industrial cooler (think insulation) with nearly 30 ft. high ceilings into a LEED-certified structure, to the surreal, which involves the possibility of turning old steel shipping containers into stackable quarters. It might sound far-fetched, but that sort of project is thriving in other places in the world like London, England (check out www.containercity.com).
Until spaces become available, McNees says that the programming for the district are essential to its public outreach. Under the guidance of Edmonds, with the Hillbilly Chic Studio in the Old Tarr Distillery, who serves as a type of artist recruitment for the site, there are already a number of regularly scheduled events beginning to manifest themselves as iconic happenings on Manchester Street.
Edmond's Cool Rooster First Friday, now being held monthly in the banquet room at Old Tarr, is a humus of visual, audio, performance and interactive art. At the last function, Edmonds wildly splattered paint on a canvas while over a dozen dancers from the Diana Evans School of Dance Performance gave an interpretive dance on the Cubism movement. Dubbed Women in the Roost, 11 women from central Kentucky had over 100 pieces of art available to the public for viewing.
Beginning this weekend, LexJam, a community jam session with all the equipment already provided to musicians, will be held at Old Tarr, as will the first Artist Market, where artists can rent spaces for their wares over the weekend.
For McNees, along with the meticulous details needed for such a project to be realized, he's discovering more and more about the people in Lexington who're coming out of the woodwork to be a part his vision on Manchester Street.
"I'm finding that there are more interesting people out there doing really cool things," he said. "We have these intriguing, powerful, local minds that right now are not being harnessed and celebrated in the right way. So I think the more that we can create a destination where we're tying all these people together, not only are they going to learn from each other, but I think that the people who live in Lexington are going to become more aware of what tremendous assets we have right here."