Downtown Lexington church gets OK to demolish Limestone buildings for greenspace
Calvary Baptist Church is now tearing down two prominent buildings in downtown Lexington.
The church requested demolition permits in June for 212 and 216 South Limestone between downtown Lexington and the University of Kentucky campus, as well as 240 Rodes Avenue. The city issued the permits on July 8 and 9.
The Rodes Avenue building was fully demolished as of Friday afternoon. The buildings on Limestone were being actively torn down.
Pastor Monty Stallins told the Herald-Leader the church was not able to maintain the buildings on Limestone and no developers have approached them about building anything new, so the church will convert the land to greenspace that will be accessible to the public.
“We’ll be putting in grass and probably a tree or two ... We didn’t need or want to add more parking or do anything like that, so we thought greenspace would be a nice thing for the community,” he said.
That particular block of Limestone has been relatively inactive for much of the decade. The two Limestone buildings taken down by Calvary Baptist Church have been vacant all of the 2020s. One was home to Hanna’s on Lime, a downtown dining staple, before its closure in 2019.
Right next door on the corner of Limestone and High Street is the former Soundbar building. Soundbar, once one of Lexington’s gay bars, closed in late 2022. It was replaced by a vape shop that closed earlier this year. The building is currently boarded up.
Just across the street at 208 S. Limestone was the Southern Deli and Tavern, a restaurant that served sandwiches and burgers from 2019 until it shut its doors in 2023. No business took over the building.
Other businesses have seen longevity on the block, though, including Ole Hookers Bait and Tackle bar, Bleed Blue Ink tattoo shop, and Buddy’s Bud Co. THC and CBD shop.
Stallins said the church does not have plans for the Rodes Avenue site just yet.
“It was a matter of not being able to maintain that building,” he said, “and so we’re we’re basically going to hold on that property where it is. We don’t know. In the future it may be something we use for the church, but we don’t have any other developmental plans for it at all.”
The Bluegrass Trust for Historic Preservation posted on Facebook last month that the building at 240 Rodes Avenue in particular is historic, writing it is “a stellar example of Queen Anne architecture and the last surviving house in the once-desirable Rodes Subdivision.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 3:23 PM.
