‘A front page moment.’ FCPS opens new tech center in former HL building | Opinion
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- Fayette County opens $65M career-tech center in former Herald-Leader building.
- More than 1,000 students will access 19 workforce training programs this fall.
- State funding and adaptive design aim to meet evolving skilled labor demands.
People gasped over the multi-level glass spaces, were wowed by the airplane simulators in the aviation classroom, enjoyed elegantly carved fruit sticks from the culinary students and marveled over the replica of an ambulance in the medical classroom.
I actually can’t remember a public event in Lexington so full of ebullience, joy and nostalgia as Thursday’s opening of the $65 million Hub for Innovative Learning and Leadership, aka, The Hill. Fayette County’s two schools for career and technical education are now combined at the former Lexington Herald-Leader building at 100 Midland Ave.
“Today isn’t just a ribbon-cutting ceremony,” Principal Michelle Wilson said to the several hundred people who attended.
“It’s a headline, a front-page moment for public education and for building the future workforce of Kentucky.”
Wilson said very few people knew that one of her first job interviews after college was at the Herald-Leader.
“I didn’t get the job, and it’s OK. But for the students who are in the room — when one door closes another one opens, perhaps 23 years later, and in ways I could never have imagined.”
Wilson thanked EOP Architects, who took on the arduous job of turning a newspaper office complete with its own printing press into a technical school, and the students who contributed many ideas about the best ways to educate in a world that technology is changing so rapidly.
She noted the stunning glass vistas in numerous open spaces and classrooms throughout the building.
“The newspaper embraced transparency in its mission, and here at the Hill, we embody transparency in a very literal and a very meaningful way,” Wilson said. “We’re putting the power of skilled trades on full display, making the value and respect these professions deserve impossible to overlook.”
Other speakers noted the importance of a building that could adapt to trades that may not even exist today. It’s a bittersweet reminder of the rapid changes in technology that made the Herald-Leader’s printing press — which passersby on Midland Avenue could watch running every night — obsolete.
More than 1,000 high schools students will enter the downtown location this fall from across the county, choosing from 19 pathways that include law and public safety, fire science/fire fighting, transportation technology, media arts and technology, construction, electrical (high voltage), culinary arts, health sciences, aviation and more.
“This is absolutely tremendous,” said Bob Quick, executive director of Commerce Lex, who pointed out that for every five retirees in the trades, there’s only two replacements.
A school like the Hill will help Commerce Lex attract new companies who need an educated workforce. “This is huge for us because it shows our vision for educating young people now and in the future.”
The state kicked in $10 million for the project’s renovation.
“Gov. Beshear has made recommendations every year to invest in career and technical education, and this is an example of what’s happening with that money,” said Beshear senior advisor Rocky Adkins, who attended the ceremony.
“This will be the pipeline to the workforce for the future.”
A building’s long history
The Herald-Leader building was constructed in 1980 to house the combined Lexington Herald and Lexington Leader newspapers, which had been bought by the former Knight Ridder newspaper chain, when the bottom line in nearly every American newspaper was hugely profitable.
It was a state-of-the-art office and printing press; former reporter Beverly Fortune said it was so beloved by publisher Creed Black that when they first moved in, he forbade reporters from eating at their desks.
“You could smoke at your desk, though,” Fortune said.
The contraction of the entire industry is too long a story to tell here. Suffice it to say the shrinking profitability of newspapers meant we no longer needed such a large and expensive building. Around 2017, it was put up for sale.
City leaders saw the building and its prime downtown location as a good place to relocate City Hall, but that idea was scotched over a lack of support and subsequent FBI investigation.
In 2020, Fayette County Public Schools bought the building for $7.5 million, and the extensive renovation began.
The architects used small thoughtful details to reference the building’s history, from the tracks still embedded in the floor where they used to bring in the giant rolls of newsprint to the presence of Scoop, the 2000 Horsemania horse covered in newspapers who sat in the Herald-Leader lobby.
Many of my former colleagues showed up for the dedication to see how much the building had transformed. As retired photographer Charles Bertram said, the Herald-Leader building was the most advanced newspaper office in America when it opened and it’s happened again.
“There’s probably not a better technical school in the country than right here today,” he said.
Change is hard, and it was bittersweet to see the complete transformation of a place where so many of us spent so much of our lives, probably because it’s another sign of how completely our industry has been upended. But it’s also wonderful to see the building used for a higher purpose, one that the Herald-Leader had advocated for so passionately over the years.
“It’s great they have found a wonderful new use for a landmark Lexington building,” said former managing editor and columnist Tom Eblen. “The Herald Leader always stood for education and progress, and the Hill should be a great successor to that.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 1:30 PM.
