Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008

IF YOU GO

Public can visit farms, Fayette infill projects

By Beverly Fortune

BFORTUNE@HERALD-LEADER.COM

CHARLES BERTRAM/LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER

Horses grazed in the morning fog at Dell Ridge Farm on Winchester Road. Dell Ridge is one of the farms on the Buildings & Bluegrass Tour Saturday. 2007 file photo by Charles Bertram | Staff

Lexingtonians drive by Central Kentucky's famous horse farms, but how often do they have a chance to go through the gates and drive up to the barns, talk to employees and see the horses up close? Like most people, very seldom.

On Saturday's Buildings & Bluegrass Tour, organized by Fayette Alliance, six horse farms and three general agricultural farms will be open to visitors. So will a downtown condominium project on Old Georgetown Street.

This is the second year for the tour. It offers a chance to see "some of the world-renowned Bluegrass landscape that we all treasure ... and discover some of the really innovative ways developers are renovating our downtown," said Knox van Nagell, executive director of the Alliance.

The Alliance favors a Lexington growth strategy of development on 5,000 acres of vacant and underutilized land inside the Urban Service Area boundary, and repairing outdated sanitary sewer and storm-water systems, while preserving the Thoroughbred and general agricultural industries.

The Fayette Alliance is a coalition of infill developers, neighborhood associations and farmers.

Des Ryan, general manager of Dell Ridge Farm on Winchester Road, said opening equine farms to visitors "is a vital way of educating people of Central Kentucky that don't get to spend every day around horses, let them see how important horses are to Central Kentucky."

Dell Ridge, an 800-acre farm on Winchester Road, boards, trains, breeds, races and sells Thoroughbreds. The farm was part of last year's tour and Ryan said feedback afterward was "tremendous."

"People go to Keeneland to watch the horses run, but never get to come to farms and see how much work goes into getting these horses ready for the racetrack," he said.

There is a choice of three tours -- one each in the western, northern or eastern quadrant of Fayette County. In each quadrant, participants will visit two horse farms and a general agricultural farm. The tour of one farm in each quadrant will be by bus, the other by walking.

All tours will first visit Artek, a contemporary infill project in a historic section of Old Georgetown Street with 38 one- and two-bedroom loft condominiums.