Lexington chicken restaurant, once an international sales leader, is being demolished
Yet another once-key Lexington restaurant apparently is coming down.
A demolition permit has been requested for 1487 Boardwalk, which was the first Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken location in Lexington. The request was filed Oct. 31, 2024, and is awaiting review by the city.
Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken franchisee Chuck Newnham, whose company K2 Property LLC owns the parcel, told the Herald-Leader in September that the location was listed for a potential sale or ground lease that would result in the property not reopening as a Lee’s.
Newnham did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the post-demolition future of the spot, which is next door to the Taco Tico that shut down in August.
History of Boardwalk Famous Recipe Chicken
The restaurant, which has been closed since 2019, opened near the North Park shopping center just off New Circle Road in 1977 and was hugely successful, according to chain co-founder Lee Cummings, a nephew of Col. Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.
In April 1984, Cummings visited the restaurant, then one of five locations in Lexington, when he came to speak to University of Kentucky students about the restaurant business.
At the time, Famous Recipe was the fifth-largest chicken restaurant chain in the nation and the local franchises ranked near top in sales internationally.
The Boardwalk store in particular was one of the higher-volume stores, he told Herald-Leader writer Merlene Davis at the time.
Cummings had learned the fried chicken business working for Sanders for years selling pressure cookers and bags of spices. Then in 1966 he and his brother-in-law, Harold Omer, created Harold’s Take Home restaurant in the back of a gas station in Lima, Ohio, with Famous Recipe chicken as the specialty of the house. The chicken took off and more locations soon followed in Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky.
In 1981, the chain was sold to Shoney’s Restaurants of Nashville. It has since changed hands several times.
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Second Lexington Lee’s demolished this year
Another of the Lexington stores — on Red Mile Road and Versailles — was one of the first in the chain to have the distinctive farmhouse look.
That location was demolished earlier this year along other other nearby buildings, apparently to make way for a gas station and convenience store.
The Boardwalk restaurant closed abruptly on Nov. 7, 2019; employees showed up for work that day and found the doors locked. Two other Lexington locations also shut down at the same time. Only one, the Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken on Richmond Road, ever reopened.
Newnham said earlier this year that the Richmond Road restaurant, which is now the only place in Lexington to get Lee’s chicken tenders and more, is doing well.
This story was originally published November 11, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
