Lexington to spend $300,000 to repair the city’s first Black-owned pharmacy building
The Lexington council agreed Wednesday to spend $300,000 to fix the roof and foundation plus remove environmental hazards from the former Palmer building, the first Black-owned pharmacy franchise in the country.
The fate of the former Palmer pharmacy at the corner of East Fifth and Chestnut streets has been up in the air since the city took possession of it in 2015. It was transferred to the city as part of a settlement with the Catholic Action Center, which operated a day shelter at that location for years. The building has been vacant since the Catholic Action Center combined its night and day shelter operations at its current Industry Road location in 2017.
In October, the city issued a request for proposals in the hopes of attracting a possible tenant or buyer of the two-story building constructed in 1961. Unfortunately, the city received no proposals, said Chief Administrative Officer Sally Hamilton at a Tuesday council Budget, Finance and Economic Development committee meeting.
Many nonprofits had expressed interest in the building prior to the city issuing proposals. But the condition of the historic building and the cost to make the building habitable scared many potential tenants away, Hamilton said.
Hamilton recommended the city use $300,000 it had set aside in September to do necessary repairs to the building.
Those repairs will include fixing the roof, removing lead, asbestos and other hazards and repairing the foundation.
“We are leaving this building in deplorable shape,” Hamilton said. “We feel that we should start to correct this situation.”
Those fixes may attract potential tenants or buyers, Hamilton said. The council voted unanimously to move forward with fixes to the building. A final vote will occur in the coming weeks.
After those repairs are completed, the city can reissue the request for proposals, Hamilton said.
One estimate showed the building needed $850,000 in repairs and other work. That figure does not include architectural fees and other non-construction-related costs.
The city had once considered razing the former Palmer pharmacy, but historic preservationists and many neighborhood activists pushed back because of the building’s historical significance. There is an ongoing effort to put the pharmacy on the National Register of Historic Places.
It was owned by Zirl A. Palmer, a pioneering Black pharmacist and Lexington businessman who survived a Ku Klux Klan bombing.
Palmer also went on to play a crucial role in Lexington’s desegregation. He was the first black board member of many groups, including the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees.
Palmer was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1920, and studied pharmacy in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. He came to Lexington in 1951 to open a drugstore. The first Palmer’s Pharmacy was in an old building at Fifth and Race streets.
Drugstore soda fountains were popular then, but most were not open to Black people. So he created one once he found a local ice cream company willing to sell to him. When he started setting ice cream sales records, all of the companies wanted his business, Palmer recalled in a 1978 oral history interview archived by UK online.
Palmer’s success led him to move down Fifth Street to the corner of Chestnut and build a clinic to house his drugstore and the offices of two black doctors and a black lawyer.
In 1966, Palmer moved his operation to Georgetown Street and shut down his two East Side locations. The Ku Klux Klan bombed the Georgetown Street location, which sent Palmer, his wife and young daughter to the hospital.
Klansman Phillip J. Campbell of New Albany, Ind., was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to 21 years in prison.
