As Lexington prepares next urban boundary changes, let’s learn from 1996 expansion

The Macarena was the No. 1 song.

Only 20 million Americans had access to the Internet, which they logged on through dial-up service, and they spent less than 30 minutes a MONTH surfing the web.

The year was 1996, and it was the last time the Urban Service Boundary was expanded – with 5,330 acres being brought in for potential development. With the exception of one piece of property that remains an active horse farm, the vast majority of the land has either been developed or has plans to be developed. One of the first projects approved was the Gleneagles Apartments, which is a 184-unit affordable housing development.

Once again, our community is looking at the question of expansion. The city has formed a committee to identify land outside the Urban Service Boundary to preserve as well as land useful for development and conditions for changing designations of that land. This is one of the first steps in building the community’s next Comprehensive Plan. Since it never is too late to learn from our past, let’s reflect on some lessons from our last expansion 26 years ago.

1. The map was expanded arbitrarily without thought to property lines and topography: There was no detailed, physical study to determine where the boundary line should be drawn to allow required infrastructure to work efficiently with the area’s topography. LFUCG requires all infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines, to be built within the boundary rather than following topography and gravity. As a result, LFUCG spend millions of additional dollars to locate a pump station inside the Urban Service Boundary instead of building it in a location to take advantage of the land’s natural topography and use gravity to move the water and sewage. This same issue led to some of the delays in locating the sewer for Expansion Area 1. The boundary line also didn’t consider existing property lines. Individual properties were often split – with some of an owner’s land inside the boundary and some outside.

2. Bureaucracy added millions to potential development costs, created barriers and inflexibility: Another bureaucratic barrier is exaction fees, which were created to address concerns that taxpayers would be funding development in the expansion area. Developers would front the cost of all required infrastructure in the expansion areas, such as roads, sewers and stormwater management facilities. As more development occurred on adjacent land, the subsequent developers pay exaction fees to split the cost of the infrastructure with the original developers. A tracking program was supposed to be updated every three months. Instead, it was dormant for more than a decade while Lexington experienced the most growth in the expansion area. That led to inequitable and exorbitant charges. For example, just one parcel of Economic Development land, which is Lexington’s most important jobs land, owes fees of $11 million before anyone could even start to develop it. The city has acknowledged that the program was mismanaged and that it led to the inability to develop some parcels.

The city also highly discourages zone changes in the expansion area – instead remaining loyal to a future zoning map created in 1996. Think about how differently families and workers like to live, work and play than they did when the map was created more than a generation ago.

3. Unwilling sellers: No thought was given to whether the land brought into the Urban Service Boundary had owners who were willing to sell. For example, more than 1,000 acres of the 2,300 acres of land identified as available for homes is owned by one entity that has demonstrated no willingness to sell to this date.

As we move forward as a community, Lexington for Everyone urges policy-makers to keep in mind that future expansion should be targeted in areas that are along major corridors, able to be sewered efficiently based on the lay of the land, have property owners willing to sell and include regulations that encourage development rather than hinder it.

Blanton is a member of Lexington for Everyone and a former member of the Lexington Planning Commission.

This story was originally published August 23, 2022 at 10:48 AM.