From Lexington Clinic to Amazon, what’s new and what’s coming in 2021
After construction and coronavirus-related delays, the Lexington Clinic is expected to open its new $30 million building in the first quarter of 2021.
The clinic has been at its current location on South Broadway since 1957.
Over the past 60 years, Kentucky’s oldest and largest medical practice has grown and outgrown its main campus building on South Broadway. The practice serves 600,000 patients annually at that building and 24 other locations.
In February 2019, it broke ground on a new 116,000-square-foot building adjacent to its current building.
“It has served us well for over 60 years,” said Andrew Henderson, the chief executive officer of Lexington Clinic, at the February groundbreaking. “It is time for a new building. We have worked on this project for decades.”
The new site is one of several ongoing big projects in Lexington in varying stages of progress as 2020 closes.
Originally the multistory new building was scheduled to be completed in late 2020, the 100th anniversary of the practice, which began downtown before moving to South Broadway.
Clinic staff will begin moving in the early part of 2021. The building will be officially open in the spring of 2021, said Hurriyat Ghayyur, the director of marketing for the clinic. Employees from other Lexington Clinic locations will also move into the new building.
In addition to more space, the new building will be in line with 21st century medicine.
“This is a state-of-the-art, modern facility,” Ghayyur said.
The old building will remain open until all staff and departments are moved into the new building this spring. Then the 1957 building will be razed to make room for more parking and better access to 1221 South Broadway, she said.
Amazon
Amazon received initial approval in November from a Fayette County planning body for a delivery station on Newtown Pike near the New Circle Road interchange.
The plans call for a 143,000-square-foot facility that would include 323 parking spaces for employees and more than 700 spaces for trucks and delivery vans. The site would be the online retail giant’s second facility in Fayette County. The first is located on Mercer Road.
A delivery station helps deliver last-mile packages to recipients. A fulfillment center, like the one on Mercer Road, fills customer orders.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council must sign off on the zone change needed for the new delivery center. That vote could come in the first few months of 2021. Amazon officials said they could not comment on a timeline for construction until the lease for the property is signed, which typically happens after the zone change gets final approval.
No one spoke against the zone change from agricultural urban to light industrial at the November Urban County planning commission meeting.
When work is completed, Amazon expects to hire as many as 500 part-time, seasonal, and full-time employees, Amazon officials have previously said. The minimum starting salary will be $15 an hour.
LexLive
Residents in the rapidly-growing Newtown Pike and Citation Avenue area must drive downtown or to the city’s south side to see a movie.
For decades, Lexington’s west side has been a movie theater desert.
So when the Krikorian Premiere Theatres, a California-based movie theater chain, announced way back in 2014 plans to build a multitheater complex at the corner of High Street and South Broadway, many west side and downtown residents rejoiced.
Various delays pushed back the groundbreaking for the 10-theater complex until 2018. Now branded LexLive, the complex will include a sports bar and restaurant, an arcade, a bowling alley and a separate bar. It will also boast an 80-foot wide screen, believed to be one of the largest if not the largest movie screen in Kentucky.
The complex is substantially finished, but an opening date has not been announced largely due to COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic shuttered many movie theaters — some permanently and some temporarily — this year as attendance numbers plummeted due to few studio releases. Coronavirus-related caps on the number of restaurant and bar patrons and intermittent closures of in-person dining has resulted in uncertainties and closures in the restaurant and bar businesses.
Bruce Wren, operations manager for LexLive, said the company could not comment on the complex’s opening date.
Town Branch Commons
Work will continue in earnest in 2021 on the Town Branch Commons, a more than two-mile stretch of the Town Branch Trail that starts near Central Bank Center. The trail goes up Vine Street to the intersection of Vine and Midland Avenue and down Midland Avenue to Third Street, where it will connect to the recently completed Legacy Trail.
Construction includes widening the sidewalk along Vine Street to include a pedestrian and bike path as well as greenery in between the two paths to help mitigate stormwater runoff.
In November, work on the portion of the trail through Triangle Park across from Central Bank Center was paused after construction crews found several significant archaeological finds. Some of those early discoveries include foundations and cisterns dating back to the mid-1800s and stone tools that likely predate Lexington’s earliest white settlers in 1775.
A section of the $39.5 million Town Branch is largely completed, city officials said.
“Trees, landscaping, signature walls, lighting, and signage are still to be installed,” said Brandi Peacher, a project manager for the city overseeing the downtown trail construction. “
Trees and all the landscaping will be planted at the same time over the two-mile downtown trail, likely sometime in the fall of 2021, Peacher said.
Work began recently on the section in front of Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Phoenix Building at the corner of South Limestone and Vine.
In the next 12 months, work will continue along Vine Street, from South Limestone to Main Street. Lanes of traffic on Vine Street have been narrowed and sidewalks in the corridor will either be closed or will have minimal access during construction. Work will continue along Midland Avenue to Third Street sometime in late 2021. The trail will be complete in late 2022, city officials said.
