President of Lexington Pro Soccer answers questions about proposed stadium near Rupp Arena
Professional soccer is coming back to Lexington, but plenty of details still need to be sorted out.
Chief among them is where Lexington Pro Soccer — the USL League One expansion franchise awarded to the city last October — will have its permanent home.
The USL League One team is expected to start playing in spring 2023. It will initially play at a local college facility, likely the Wendell and Vickie Bell Soccer Complex on the UK campus.
But last week, Lexington Pro Soccer released renderings of a proposed 6,000-seat soccer stadium, 160-room hotel and 250-unit apartment complex to be located on the High Street parking lot of Central Bank Center, across from Rupp Arena.
Lexington Pro Soccer was one of four developers to submit proposals for the High Street parking lot to the Lexington Center Corporation, which oversees Central Bank Center.
A board committee reviewing the proposals will meet Feb. 18, but it’s not clear if the committee will make a recommendation at that meeting.
Plenty of questions remain about the proposed stadium complex, so the Herald-Leader spoke with Vince Gabbert, the president of Lexington Pro Soccer, to get some answers.
The below conversation between Herald-Leader reporter Cameron Drummond and Gabbert has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Can you kind of take me through the process that you guys had linking up with Gensler and why they ended up being the (architecture and design) firm you went with and what you guys are most excited about once you saw the stadium designs and the renderings?
“Gensler, actually I’ve had the opportunity to work with them in the past on some projects in my work at Keeneland. Just from a personality and a depth of experience that we’ve seen with them in other markets, they were kind of a natural fit for us. . . . They’ve done some other developments in markets for our size that we felt like were, not necessarily a template, but at least a good marker and provided some good overview of some of the things that we were trying to do.
“They are very committed as well from a location standpoint. Gensler as an entity understands the importance of the location and making sure that it fits in with the landscape, that it fits in with the overall context of the area. We felt like the opportunity to submit the proposal for downtown allowed them to be a really good partner for us in that environment.”
Q. Can you provide any more details about the proposal, such as the cost of the complex or something like how many stories the hotel will be?
“We’re still working through a lot of the details. We’re not ready to talk about overall cost because we’re hopeful that we’re able to be a finalist to negotiate with the convention center board. I don’t want to mention any specific numbers in case there’s some things to this negotiation that they have as a requirement or change on it. So we’re not ready to talk about that yet.
“But we do feel like the proposal that we submitted with the elements that we have on there and utilizing that space that’s currently underutilized, other than just for parking, we feel like that we’ve submitted something that’s very progressive and that accomplishes what we think the LCC board is hoping to do to try to continue to drive momentum.
“They’ve done a fabulous job on the convention center as a whole and we feel like the rest of our development not only provides the parking that’s necessary, and actually provides a few more parking spaces than what’s there currently through our garages, but we feel like we’re really just (a) compliment (to) that next step of the convention center, of Rupp Arena, just the connection to the university into downtown.”
Q. What specifics can you provide about the parking increase in the area that you just mentioned?
“The LCC board set out some specific parameters that they wanted to provide in the (request for proposal). We’ve actually exceeded those requirements. We also know that parking and transportation is going to change in the next 10 to 20 years, the use of electric vehicles and ride sharing. I mean, there’s a lot of things that didn’t exist even 10 years ago (for how) most of us move around. So we tried to design the parking and the site to not only exceed the requirements that the LCC board had asked for but also we tried to create some flexibility and efficiency to be able to adapt to those different parking and transportation needs that we know that are coming down the line.”
“We’ve got a dedicated garage space within the hotel and within the multifamily apartment section, and then we’re above 2,000 spaces on the parking deck itself. We’ve actually been working with some engineers and vendors on making sure that . . . we want to create a footprint for design to be able to again get some of that flexibility, but also for efficient loading and unloading of the garage on event days.
“The last thing we want is a bad experience. So we’ve tried to construct the space and at least provide for the space for construction as we start to think through design and those sorts of things for a very pleasant and efficient experience for people that are coming to and from games and concerts and events, other things that we have downtown.”
Q. How have you planned for potential downtown congestion between events happening at this proposed stadium, Rupp Arena and the convention center with everything being in such a close space?
“It will require something that’s a commitment on our part, that we made clear with the convention center board in our proposal. We are very committed to making sure that we don’t overlap on events and that we’re being complementary to each other. The great thing is that the busy part of the season for Rupp Arena with ball games and stuff is the wintertime, and we’re not playing soccer in the winter. The events tend to be less hectic at Rupp during the summertime except for concerts and a few other events.
“It’s just a matter of scheduling and coordination and we feel like that with the amount of expertise that the convention center board and Oak View Group and the staff that they have at Rupp and doing those sorts of things, and the resources that we have from the league level on our side of scheduling and working through that, we’re confident that we can accomplish all of that without . . . adding more to the traffic or anything else that we would do.”
“We want to provide a great atmosphere and be a very pleasant experience and opportunity for people to walk back and forth to Town Branch Park and to enjoy all the stuff that’s going on downtown, especially with the new walkway between the Hyatt and Rupp. We just feel like this is a natural fit within that corridor.”
