Lexington, KY – Updated plans for CentrePointe call for a 286 room hotel with around a dozen condos on Vine Street in addition to nearly 100 apartments to be built along Main Street with more than 10,000 square feet of retail space below them at street level, more than 150,000 square feet of Class A office space and a two story retail building with a rooftop café, according to documents released by Mayor Jim Gray’s Office Tuesday. The block-sized project would all be built atop an underground, three story, 700-space parking garage.
The details of a revamped design for the long-awaited development of the central block in downtown Lexington were released to Lexington’s Urban County Council Tuesday as the group approved changes in CentrePointe’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) request.
Originally announced in March of 2008, CentrePointe has gone through many incarnations, all based around a large hotel and residential presence with some commercial and retail space to be included around the street level. Demolition of the block meant to house the project commenced in the summer of 2008, but no further construction occurred as the nation’s economic crisis took hold.
The most recent set of plans for the block show separate buildings spaced around the block rather than one large building with a center tower, as was the original plan. In May, Cincinnati restaurateur Jeff Ruby said he would open a steakhouse on the now empty block in Lexington’s downtown in May of 2015.
A site development plan for CentrePointe shows a building for Jeff Ruby’s at the corner of Vine Street and Limestone, office space along Limestone wrapping around to Main Street with the hotel and garage entrance on Vine, near the Upper Street side of the block.
A TIF district allows developers to capture local and state tax revenues above what is currently being generated within the district’s boundaries. While those newly generated tax dollars — from greater property values, increases in the amount of sales, corporate income and personal income taxes — in the district would normally head to state and local coffers for general distribution, all of the newly generated money would be returned for specified improvements in the outlined district.
The TIF calls for a reimbursement to the developer, the Webb Companies, for costs associated with the underground garage, up to $32 million for capital costs and another $19 million for financing costs.
If the garage is reimbursed in full during the duration of the TIF, 30 years, the City of Lexington would be eligible recoup to expenses on other aspects of infrastructure improvements made in the specified TIF district that remains unchanged from the one approved in late 2008 which includes the CentrePointe block, Phoenix Park, the Old Courthouse and both current courthouses.
The TIF would become active on Jan.1, 2014 and the developers would be able to receive their reimbursements starting in 2015.
All of the designs for the project are subject to the approval of the Courthouse Area Design Review Board and is slated to be on that group’s August agenda.
Developer Dudley Webb said new renderings would be available closer to the date of the meeting with the review board, but in an phone interview late Tuesday night said he expected construction to begin soon after approval is given.
“Realistically we need to start this fall to accommodate this tenant,” he said about an undisclosed office tenant that could bring many “high paying jobs” to downtown.