The latest proposed student apartment complex in Lexington saw significant pushback from neighbors at a Wednesday night meeting hosted by its developers.
Chicago-based developer Up Campus is proposing a nine-story, 220-unit complex along High Street, Stone Avenue and Hagerman Court, across the High Street YMCA and blocks from the University of Kentucky. It would include around 750 beds, a basement parking garage and a rooftop deck.
Developers say they’re meeting a demand for student housing in the neighborhoods near UK, and that the project would free up units elsewhere.
“We believe this is a well-positioned development where it's in kind of a transitional zone where you're two blocks from campus, but you're also adjacent to downtown,” Up Campus developer Tyler Ammerman said.
But neighbors at the meeting worried the apartments are too expensive for the students developers want to court and would negatively affect the neighborhood. Construction would require the demolition of historic homes, some of which are 200 years old.
“Why are we allowing, sorry, these outside entities to come in, destroy the fabric of downtown?” resident Cindy Trapp asked. “We need affordable housing. I mean, it just seems like there's a lot of money out there. It's a lot of greed. Why not build these buildings so that people can live in them and afford them?”
The rental price on the proposed units is around $800 per bed.
Others are concerned increased traffic would strain the neighborhood’s roads.
“How are we going to get these kids, mostly who want to drive, to get to UK? What are they going to do when they get there?” asked Jon Larson, former Fayette County judge-executive and current candidate for Lexington’s urban county council.
The pushback comes as the area around Maxwell Street is targeted by several developers, with as many as 5,000 beds targeted at students up for consideration.
Those include a 650-bedroom apartment complex developed along Maxwell by Ohio-based developer Stavroff, an 800-bedroom project also on Maxwell developed by Subtext and a four-story complex being developed by Core Spaces. The last project was originally rejected by city planners.
Lexington’s planning commission will hear public input on the Up Campus proposal at its Oct. 22 meeting, where the commission could send the project to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council for approval. Council members have final say on whether the development is approved.
