‘Fill the hole’ rally protests lack of progress at CentrePointe

About 50 people attended a “fill the hole” rally at Phoenix Park in downtown Lexington on Saturday to protest the stalled CentrePointe development.

CentrePointe, proposed in 2008 as an office tower/hotel/apartment/retail/restaurant complex, has been nothing but a 40-feet-deep hole in the middle of downtown for years since construction of an underground parking garage stalled.

Rick Fromm said he created the event through a Facebook page as a tongue-in-cheek way to put pressure on the city to rectify “the most confusing business transaction and development that’s ever been down the pike.”

On Saturday, Fromm had attendees sign a petition urging the city to launch an official investigation of how CentrePointe has gotten into its current state. He said he was “absolutely” happy with the turnout.

But among the crowd, Josh Filipowski and Anna Steyn said they were disappointed in the showing. The couple moved from Los Angeles when Filipowski got a job teaching at Eastern Kentucky University.

“We’ve only been here a year and a half and we were flabbergasted that this has been here for, what, eight years,” Steyn said. “We were like, ‘What is going on?’”

Filipowski, wearing a hard hat for irony, said a field would make downtown barhopping much easier. (After the buildings on the block were razed, grass was planted there, and it was a field for a time.)

“I feel very badly for that Irish pub there that’s just been sitting there in the middle of nowhere … I wonder how much money they’ve lost over the last eight years,” Filipowski said of nearby McCarthy’s Irish Bar on South Upper Street.

A Lexington attorney told the Herald-Leader earlier in the month that the city could fill in the hole or even foreclose on the property if developers fail to fill the site or start construction of a garage.

Cavan Allen, of Lexington, said he came because he missed seeing people throw a ball around in the grass where CentrePointe now languishes.

“We had our own mini Central Park,” Allen said. “And what that brought out was the community that I want to live in.”

When he saw the event on Facebook, Allen said he knew people weren’t actually going to fill the development. He brought a bucket anyway.

“It’s the first opportunity to show community support for a project we feel really needs to move along at this point,” he said.

Fromm said he’s planning to organize future events and petition signings at businesses around CentrePointe.

“We’re encouraging people to come down and go to some places they haven’t before, support the businesses, support those merchants and say thanks for hanging in there during these eight years,” Fromm said.

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 5:46 PM with the headline "‘Fill the hole’ rally protests lack of progress at CentrePointe."