Lexington, KY - A renaissance trend in neighborhoods on the edges of downtown Lexington continues with a spurt of new business growth materializing along Walton and National Avenues, east of downtown.
Dapple Bloodstock and Dapple Advertising will relocate from their offices on East Main Street to 250 Walton Avenue. A horse trading and breeding company as well as an advertising and branding firm, Dapple will begin the move Friday. It’s not exactly Toyota picking up and leaving Georgetown, though it is further evidence of local businesses finding homes in what had previously been unused or underused portions of town.
Dapple joins a growing list of businesses securing space off the sector of Walton Avenue that meets with National Avenue. The area, which is labeled as a wholesale and warehouse zone, has been redeveloped as part of a project by Walker Properties, which owns 12 acres in the neighborhood and has been handling the general construction. Altering the area had been a problem in the past due to zoning limitations, though that was lifted in 2010 with adaptive reuse provisions in Lexington’s zoning ordinances that allow the space to be used for creative businesses.
Phase one of the project encompasses roughly 34,000 square feet on Walton Avenue and at this point, only one 1,600-square-foot vacancy in that phase remains, said Greg Walker, owner of Walker Properties.
One attractive element of the location is its nearness to a main thruway (Winchester Road) as well as its proximity to Main Street / Richmond Road via Walton Avenue.
“It’s the first time the Dapple Company has had a street front location,” said Dapple’s Lora Brown. “Our sign is important. People will drive by and go, ‘Hmm, I wonder what that is?’ It’s the first time we’ve had something so visible from a main cut-through road like Walton Avenue – that’s big for us.”
The project is the product of a development plan approved by the city’s planning commission in 2010 that designates the area as an adaptive reuse project. Each unit is unique, created on a design-build contract with the tenants working with Walker to outline customized plans. Completion of the 250 Walton Avenue unit will signal the end of the project’s beginning phase.
Phase two will focus on refurbishing more of the National Avenue corridor as well as a portion of North Ashland Avenue. The project’s final phase will be something of a polishing effort, with the emphasis being on completing the North Ashland Avenue sector as well as integrating pedestrians-type components such as lighting, landscaping, benches and bicycle stands. Walker said the initial development plan called for five years of work, but he said his firm hopes to be completed well within that window.
Though different in scope, Walker’s Walton Avenue project is similar to the resurgence that has occurred on the other side of town off Jefferson Street. That area has been revitalized in recent years thanks to an influx of locally-based businesses that have opted to set up shop in a previously underused portion of downtown rather than hang their hats outside of New Circle Road.
“Often when we talk about downtown Lexington we’re thinking about the central business district,” said Jeff Fugate, executive director and president of the Downtown Development Authority. “But at the edges of the central business district are all these exciting neighborhoods. One of the things I haven’t seen in a lot of other places, is in Lexington our downtown and our neighborhoods are right up against each other. The spaces where they meet can be really neat places. Something like what they’re doing at Walton Avenue is both an asset to the neighborhood it’s near and an asset to the city at large.”