Lexington, KY - Citing the dangers of the Old Frankfort Pike and Alexandria Road intersection, the state Transportation Cabinet informed residents of Old Frankfort Pike - largely prestigious horse farm owners - that the intersection was going to undergo major changes.
"It was going to be a typical highway engineer's thing; they were going to flatten it and it was going to be stoplights and yellow lines," said Henry Alexander of the Lexington/Frankfort Scenic Corridors Committee. "So that's when we called a special meeting." The result: a traffic circle, or roundabout, that will include more than $300,000 in landscaping and a horse sculpture in the middle to act as a gateway to the scenic roadway, home to champion horses and historic farms.
"We've been thinking for years that we wanted to do something there that looked like a gateway, (so drivers would know) that you are now entering a historic area," Alexander said. "Old Frankfort is really the last straw as far as development beyond New Circle Road, and I personally wanted to keep Old Frankfort so that we could take grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and say, 'This is the way it used to be years ago.'"
While the state's District 7 Transportation Office is springing for an estimated $2,049,000 to slightly relocate and level the intersection as well as create the roundabout, members of the Corridors Committee will pay for all of the aesthetic additions, according to transportation spokeswoman Natasha Lacy.
Alexander estimates a cost of around $300,000 for the planting of trees approaching the roundabout and landscaping leading up to it, as well as landscaping and hardscaping in the circle and for a statue of the horse Lexington. Lexington was sired along Old Frankfort Pike and served as one of the most famous living things of the middle 1800s. Upon Lexington's death at the age of 25 in July 1875, the horse, which is now the inspiration for Lexington's "Big Blue Horse" campaign, was called the "king of sires," and his death would "cause great sorrow to every turfman in the country," according to a New York Times report at that time.
At a time when horse racing was the largest sport in a country, where Harvard and Yale hadn't even played their first football game yet - that happened in the fall of 1875 - and Major League Baseball was a year from forming, Lexington the horse was as big as Tiger Woods and Lebron James are today, if not bigger. That's why, according to Alexander, a statue of Lexington will be commissioned for the podium of the roundabout rather than the generic statue of a rearing horse, as depicted in the rendering.
Beyond being a grand entrance to a stonewall- and tree-lined route to Frankfort packed with historic horse farms, the change is being made to reduce the number of accidents at the intersection. While there isn't a study based on traffic circles in Kentucky, the Transportation Cabinet sites a New York State study showing a "decrease by 47 percent (in the number of accidents) and the severe injury accidents to decrease by 68 percent," Lacy said.
"It's been a very unsafe intersection and has ... the most problems of any place in Lexington; there's been an unbelievable number of wrecks on it and we've lived out here for 30-something years and seen what has happened," said Don Ball, a member of the Scenic Corridor Committee and owner of Donamire Farm. "We were interested in it from a safety standpoint and then (the Scenic Corridor Committee was) interested in it ... from the improvement that it would bring to the area - the fact that it would act as an entry into this horse farm area."
All of the plans for the area must be approved by the highway department, Alexander said, including the sculpture, which he said concerns engineers due to visibility. "Hopefully we can do a stone wall Ö so it gives you all the elements of Kentucky: stone wall, green grass, the horse and the whole bit."
But Alexander isn't fretting the permit process too much as the corridors committee has some powerful people behind it, including Ball, Tracy Farmer, Toss Chandler and former first ladies Libby Jones and Lucy Breathitt, as well as outside help and funding for the project from Jess Jackson. "It's a pretty healthy group of people, and we've been very successful at getting things done," Alexander said.
Landscape Architect D. Lyle Aten was approached by Ball to design the traffic circle, which will be raised 11 feet from its current elevation and brought toward the east to prevent the intersection from completely shutting down during construction.
Lacy said the project, which is going out for bid this month and should be completed by year's end, will close Old Frankfort Pike for 45 days to through traffic while Alexandria will be left open during construction.
When the state balked at the price of adding the aesthetic accoutrements Aten designed, he said he was buoyed by the assurance that the horse farm owners would see the project through. "That is an entry to Lexington; it is on the Urban Service Boundary. You go from farming area to urban area right at that point, so there should be something significant and symbolic at that point," Aten said. "One of the great things is the horse farm owners have said, 'Don't worry about it, we're going to pick up the difference,' and that bowls me over."
Ball said the decision of his fellow Old Frankfort Pike residents to financially get behind the project wasn't actually much of a decision. "I don't think it was real tough," he said. "We just feel like it would be good for the community and good for the city, and it'll be a tourist attraction with the statue in the middle of it of Lexington."
When asked how much they were willing to put in, he said, "We're going to try to do it right, and (we'll do) whatever it takes to do it right."