Lexington private club, neighborhood spar over on-street parking
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- Lexington council approved permit restricting 10 Forest Avenue spots to residents.
- Bell Court residents accused Camel Club of increasing street congestion since 2023.
- Camel Club alleged neighbors manipulated parking study to sway permit approval.
The Lexington council approved a residential parking permit Thursday for a street next to a private club, whose members are allegedly gobbling up on-street parking, neighbors have claimed.
But owners of the Camel Club, located at 509 E. Main St., alleged some residents of the Bell Court neighborhood rigged a required parking study to get the residential parking permit program approved.
The fight over the residential parking permits, which would prohibit anyone but residents to park on the street, has been raging for weeks, with both neighbors and owners of the Camel Club inundating Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council members with emails about the dust up. Both sides have spoken multiple times at council meetings over the past 30 days.
The bad blood between some in Bell Court and the Camel Club started in 2023 when many in the neighborhood fought a change in zoning restrictions to allow the private club at the former Cross Gate Gallery.
The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council ultimately removed conditional zoning restrictions for the property in November 2023, allowing the private club to open this spring.
Lack of parking, access to driveways blocked
Neighbors told the council during an Aug. 19 council work session that private club members are parking along Forest Avenue, a main entrance into Bell Court from Main Street, causing headaches for residents.
Frank Butler, who lives on Forest Avenue, said the Camel Club assured the neighborhood during the contentious fight over the zoning restrictions it had contracts with two off-site parking lots and has a parking lot behind the club.
On-street parking would not be affected, Camel Club officials said in 2023. That’s just not true, Butler said.
“They have been there since day one,” Butler said.
A rigged parking study?
Meanwhile, owners of the club allege Bell Court tried to rig the parking study to get the residential parking permits program.
“The application for this parking permit has been pretty severely manipulated,” said Brian Babbage, one of the owners of the Camel Club.
Babbage said there was a neighborhood Facebook group that asked other people in the neighborhood to park along Forest Avenue “to make it look like my business, which is the Camel Club, was using neighborhood parking.”
The group asked people who live on Sayre, a neighboring street, to park on Forest, he said.
If Camel Club’s members were causing street parking problems, “you wouldn’t have to go ask your neighbors to go park in front of my business,” Babbage said.
Field Ladd, another Camel Club owner, told the council the entire process “was crooked from the get-go.”
Marcy Deaton, who lives on Forest Avenue, said there have been two parking studies by LexPark, the city’s parking authority. The first study determined there was not a need for a parking permit program, she said during the Aug. 19 meeting.
To get a permit program, 65% of a neighborhood has to sign a petition agreeing to the permit program. If that threshold is met, then there is a two-week study. That study has to show roughly 75% of the parking spaces are occupied and 25% of those parking on the street don’t live there to get a residential permit program.
“We did the study later with no influence, no Facebook, and they recommended that we get the residential parking,” Deaton said.
According to LexPark, there are 10 parking spaces on Forest Avenue.
“There are many nights and weekends that I can count 14 cars, all Camel Club members and employees,” Deaton said. “They block our driveways or are right next to our driveways where you can’t even pull out.”
Deaton and other neighbors on Forest Avenue said one woman had to take an Uber to the airport because she could not get out of her driveway.
LexPark weighs in
The debate over the 10 parking spots on Forest Avenue continued during Tuesday’s council work session.
LexPark Executive Director Laura Boison told the council a first parking study on Forest Avenue did not meet the requirements for a parking permit. In April, a second study was paused after they heard concerns the neighborhood may be trying to rig or manipulate the data.
LexPark officials then returned to the area unannounced. That study determined Forest Avenue met all the requirements for the permit program, she said.
The council ultimately voted to approve the residential permit program at Thursday’s meeting. The new parking permit program is for 10 spaces on the first block of Forest Avenue.
There are 51 residential permit programs in Lexington. Residents who do not have a permit can not park on those streets. Those that park in a permitted zone can be ticketed.
