While the Chevy Chase and downtown areas increasingly attract young professionals with their century-old homes etched in character to the excitement of city life, in the last 20 years, the south side has increasingly been able to draw families who are looking for a bit of a retreat.
Through all its changes, growth and developments over the past two decades, one thing about the south side has remained the same: its ability to blend aesthetic beauty with family-friendly suburbs.
It may be surprising to newcomers of the area that in the late 1980s, Man o' War Boulevard was not yet extended to Blue Grass Airport, the now bustling Beaumont Center consisted of undeveloped farmland, and Firebrook, one of the south side's largest subdivisions, was still an active Thoroughbred operation.
What was not so long ago an area of largely undeveloped Bluegrass fields has been transformed into thriving businesses and freshly developed neighborhoods for those who chose a life in the south side suburbs.
Developer Tim Haymaker of Haymaker/Bean Commercial Real Estate said the small acreage of land that's left to develop on the south side is located in Beaumont Centre off Harrodsburg Road, which is where his company is headquartered.
Haymaker made headlines when he first invested in the Beaumont Centre in 1994 after his former partner, C.M. "Bill" Gatton, an Owensboro native living in Tennessee, bought the property from Bank One for more than $16 million.
Bank One was the trustee for the property, which was owned by the estate of Hal Price Headley Sr., one of the founders of Keeneland Race Course who had also run a successful Thoroughbred operation on the property.
Already developed in the 670-acre residential, office and retail complex over the last 14 years are multiple shopping centers, office buildings, town houses and apartments, restaurants, Rosa Parks Elementary School, two hotels, a bank, a gas station, and the YMCA fitness center.
Over the years, Beaumont has essentially evolved into its own mini-city, and has become a one-stop location for many to fulfill all their daily errands and activities. Haymaker's largest vision for the property, a 1,000-seat movie amphitheatre, is still in the works.
Other developments still to come in Beaumont include an insurance company, some professional offices, a Marriot Courtyard and Resident Inn and an expanded 120,000 sq. ft. Kroger.
When Haymaker bought Beaumont, Man o' War had just been completed to Parker's Mill Road, with no access to Versailles Road.
Haymaker said the main reason for the population growth spurt on the south side had been the building of Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School near the airport off Man o' War 20 years ago, which was at the time a math and science magnet institute, and the first of its kind in that area.
"All of a sudden, you had an elementary school and a high school and an emerging marketplace, and times were good," said Haymaker, who explained how the 1-million sq. ft. of professional office space he built in Beaumont needed restaurants and other services to support them.
"The people within Beaumont would tell you that they are their own greatest advocates, and they love it here," Haymaker said. "We have 2 miles of paved asphalt walking trails. These people just flood to this - it's a great place. We used to advertise it as a place to live, work and play, and that's what it is. It's convenient, safe; it's a nice place."
"Someone used to call this the Chevy Chase of the suburbs, because the people who moved down here were the people who used to live in the Chevy Chase area, but they wanted big bathrooms with Jacuzzis, and big walk in closets," Haymaker said. "You can't get that down there in those older houses."
Haymaker said when Beaumont Centre was being built, Lexington's population was about 175,000 people, and it has since risen to more than 275,000.
"I would say of that 100,000-person population growth, probably 75 percent of it was on the south side," he said. "That's a big number."
Another prominent fixture on the south side of Lexington is the upscale Firebrook subdivision, which is prominently situated on a hill overlooking Elkhorn creek and is visible from Harrodsburg Road near the Jessamine County line.
Once a plantation during the Civil War era, the land was passed down to various owners and was eventually purchased by Russell and Jane Firestone in 1975, who converted the land into a Thoroughbred horse farm. The Firestones built Firebrook's original pool house and a small swimming pool for entertaining the prominent persons that visited the estate.
In 1982, Lynn Lee, Inc. purchased the horse farm from the Firestones and renamed it Coal Ridge. New construction included doubling the size of the pool house, adding a horse training track near Keene Road, and an exercise pool for horses. The property became Firebrook Estates in 1986.
One of the most prominent nostalgic memories of Fred Wohlstein, the owner of Azur Restaurant in Beaumont Centre, was how New Circle Road was flanked by farmland and the only developments on Harrodsburg Road were Palomar Center and Southland Christian Church when he moved to Lexington in 1983.
"I have always liked Lexington," he said. "It still has a very small-town feel to it, and it doesn't suffer from some of the problems that larger, metro cities do. But since I've been here, I've seen an increase of about 100,000 people."
When Palomar Center was being developed, Wohlstein thought putting a strip mall at the corner of Man o' War and Harrodsburg Road seemed ludicrous. "How wrong could I be?" he said with a laugh, noting Palomar's success, especially with the recent revitalization of some storefronts and the addition of the new Malone's restaurant.
Wohlstein chose to locate his upscale, contemporary-style Azur restaurant in Beaumont Centre in 2005 because of the lack of fine cuisine options off Harrodsburg Road. "Demographically, the (south side) residents can support that kind of dining," he said.
Wohstein, who is aware of the ever-increasing number of people moving to the south side, had some interesting observations as to why it was happening.
"I think (people moved to the south side) because they wanted their own little piece of ground," he said. "People have moved away from being socially interactive to being reactive. Homes on the south side have become people's own little havens-a retreat from the stress of working too much. While we used to be able to control our time, now it's controlling us, and technological advances are also pushing people to work faster and harder."
Though Wohlstein said he's not opposed to Lexington continuing to grow, he is concerned about discombobulated, one-street housing developments springing up, leaving less and less green space and diminishing the beauty of the south side and the visibility of the horse farms, many of which have relocated to the north side or outside city limits.
While the land alongside Harrodsburg Road was virtually untouched 20 years ago, it seems that every sliver of available space is now being converted into another strip mall, Wohlstein added, referring to the recent developments that have taken place next to the restaurants Ramsey's and Murrays'.
Doug Hardy first lived in the Chevy Chase area when he first moved to Lexington with his wife, and relocated to a home on Sallie Drive behind Palomar Center as his family continued to grow.
"We decided that Richmond Road was too busy for our family - we wanted a place that was less busy and safer for kids," he explained.
After five of his six children moved out a year and a half ago, however, Hardy and his wife decided to move just over the Fayette County line in the Crosswoods subdivision off Harrdosburg Road to take advantage of a Jessamine County-based handicapped program for their youngest child, Jonathan.
Hardy noted how zoning could be used as a powerful tool to impede and encourage growth on Lexington's south side.
"I think some builders always have the impetus to make money. If they give that up and make something beautiful, they gain so much," he said, referring to how things like uniformity in landscaping can make all the difference in an office complex or neighborhood.
Hardy said while he believes some of the housing developments on the south side have been built too close together, he commends neighborhoods in Beaumont and around Palomar that have included walking paths for their residents. He suggested other ways, such as building a quarter mile of stone fencing each year, that could recreate some of the aesthetic qualities of the old south side.
Gary and Lyle Zunker remember when Man o' War was not yet extended to the airport when they first moved to the Lexington area in 1989.
The couple, who moved from their native Wisconsin to the Bluegrass primarily because of the horse farm ambiance, built a four-bedroom home just over the Fayette County line in the bedroom community of Equestrian Woods off Harrodsburg Road in Nicholasville.
Living in a neighborhood that had one-acre lots and horseback riding trails, but still maintained all the amenities of other upscale suburbs seemed ideal to the Zunkers, who raised their three children there.
"I think they've done a good job of putting developments in and still keeping the farms," Gary said. "The only thing I'm concerned about is that they keep going with the developments and then the farms all disappear."
As Lexington's south side and surrounding counties became more of a metropolitan area, many other people who got jobs in Fayette County followed suit by living in subdivisions outside the city limits.
When the Zunkers first moved to Kentucky, one of their most frequented shopping centers, Palomar, was not yet built, and Ramsey's Diner on Harrodsburg Road was a little gas station, grocery store and sandwich shop called The Village Green.
Though the south side has seen a considerable amount of development since they first settled into their neighborhood, the Zunkers aren't surprised-they knew the area was slated for change. In spite of the boom of new businesses and housing developments in recent years, the Zunkers still believe the south side has managed to blend the rustic feel of being in horse country with an easy access to city life.
"We think it's still rural - we love the area," Lyle said. "It's convenient, yet you still feel like you're out in the country. I like it that we can go five minutes in one direction and do all the things in town, and five minutes the other direction and it's just beautiful."