Dudley Webb (left) and Woodford Webb in the Webb Companies downtown Lexington offices.
The Webb Companies have shaped the look of Lexington, both downtown and in the suburbs.
Now, as the company responsible for the Lexington Financial Center, Victorian Square, Festival Market, Lexington Green, Regency Center, Tates Creek Shopping Center, Palomar Center and more celebrates its 50th anniversary, the next generation of Webbs is putting its mark of influence on central Kentucky and beyond.
Dudley Webb, one of the co-founders, and Woodford Webb, the son of the late Donald Webb and the company’s current president and CEO, said the future of the Webb Companies is evolving. But the company’s past achievements, from developing hotel space that would cement Lexington’s spot as a key sports venue to building a 31-story office building, gave Lexington its big-town feel while maintaining its Southern charm.
Brothers Donald and Dudley Webb started the company in 1972. Originally from the coal mining camp Hot Spot, Kentucky, near Whitesburg in Letcher County, the Webb brothers grew up in a house owned by the Premium Coal Company, where their father worked as an accountant.
After high school, the brothers left eastern Kentucky and attended college at Georgetown University and the University of Kentucky School of Law. Both brothers started legal careers in Lexington after graduation and eventually opened their own firm, Webb and Webb. That company would evolve into the Webb Companies in 1972 focusing on real estate development, design, finance, legal, construction, marketing, leasing and property management.
At first, the company built industrial properties and duplexes. In 1975, however, the brothers started their first major project, First Federal Plaza on West Vine Street. It would be the beginning of a boom in development that changed the face of downtown Lexington.
From left: Director, CEO and Senior Legal Counsel Ron Tritschler; Will Webb, son of Dudley Webb and an in-house attorney; Chairman and co-founder Dudley Webb; and President Woodford Webb.
In 1980, when Lexington lost its bid to host an NCAA men’s college basketball tournament game, the lifelong UK basketball fans decided to act so the city wouldn’t get overlooked again. The Webb Companies set its sights on developing a hotel in downtown Lexington large enough to handle tournament crowds. In 1982, the company celebrated the opening of the 368-room Radisson Plaza Hotel, a parking garage and a 17-story office tower, Vine Center, on the corner of Broadway and Vine. Just three years later, Lexington hosted the NCAA Final Four.
Throughout the ’80s, developments from the Webb Company brought new business into downtown Lexington. Properties like Victorian Square and Festival Market brought in new retail venues, while the 31-story Lexington Financial Center provided office space in the heart of the business district, becoming a landmark for the city. The company built more than 5 million square feet of commercial real estate throughout the decade.
While Donald Webb managed the day-to-day business of the Webb Companies, Dudley Webb traveled extensively overseeing the companies’ projects across the country in Austin, Texas; Arlington, Virginia; New York City; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and other states. The company grew to more than 200 employees with projects valued at almost $1 billion — making it the country’s third-largest diversified real estate company.
Those travels, for both Donald and Dudley, helped shape Lexington as well.
“My dad always liked to travel, especially being from eastern Kentucky, because by traveling you really appreciate coming home,” Woodford Webb said. “You appreciate that flight into Bluegrass Field and seeing the farms and the green space. But while it’s good to be home, travel also allows you to experience things in other cities — like Festival Market. That idea came from Baltimore. The Rouse companies in Baltimore had done a Festival Market up there, and the one here was copied after that one.”
Many of the Webb Companies’ development projects have helped define Lexington’s downtown including, left to right, the Powell Walton Milward Building, Vine Center and the Downtown Hilton Hotel, Lexington Financial Center and City Center.
In the 1990s, the company switched from building new properties to managing its existing ones. Woodford Webb started working at the company at an early age.
“I started out as a kid watering the plants in the industrial properties,” Woodford said. “I started in the maintenance department, worked in different departments of leasing and then I really got my toes wet in law in different areas.”
By 1999, Woodford Webb was named president of the Webb Companies. Don Webb semi-retired, but Dudley Webb entered real estate development again, focusing on a mixed-use development in the center of Lexington. That project would eventually become City Center, a $200 million development encompassing a 700-space parking garage, a 214-room Marriott Hotel, a 120 all-suite Residence Inn, an office tower, a sky bar, luxury condominiums and ground-level retail outlets. Don Webb passed away in 2013, before construction on the City Center began.
Not all of the company’s projects have succeeded, though. Woodford Webb said his father’s vision for Lake Lexington has never been realized.
“Lexington is the largest city not built on a navigable body of water,” he said. “One thing that we’re lacking is a water feature. My father came up with the idea of Lake Lexington. It would be a lake with a walking path around it and retail shops.”
Located behind Rupp Arena, the lake would have been built in an area that was being used as a parking area. City officials never warmed to the idea.
While the company is currently taking opportunities as they come, the goal, Dudley Webb said, is for the company to continue in the hands of a third generation.
Currently, the company is working on a $350 million project with Lincoln Property Company to replace the 16-acre parking lot across the street from Rupp Arena and the Central Bank Center with a complex containing an entertainment venue, retail shopping, luxury townhomes and a parking facility. While some have expressed concerns about developing a facility where prime downtown parking is, Dudley Webb said the concerns are unjustified.
“We’ve always proposed that we take the parking lot and turn it into a mixed-use development with a parking garage,” he said. “We’ll be replacing 2,000 spaces with 3,600 spaces.”
Other recent projects include the Fountains at Palomar, at the intersection of Man o’ War Boulevard and Harrodsburg Road. In August, the company announced it would be collaborating with its longtime partners at the Greer Companies to develop a new retail shopping at the corner of Citation Boulevard and Georgetown Road on the city’s north side.
Throughout it all, the men said, the staff at the Webb Companies has helped them succeed. Dudley Webb said that almost half of the companies’ employees have been with them since the beginning.
“We wouldn’t be where we are without them,” he said.