The Bluegrass and Beyond

It was a puzzle with no easy answer.

Two buildings from the mid-1800s — former servants’ quarters and Lexington’s oldest apartment house — were in such bad shape they had been condemned.

Their demolition would have left another sad gap in the historic neighborhood between downtown and Gratz Park.

Meanwhile, there is a need for affordable housing downtown for low-income people and retirees. Officials estimate that more than 8,700 households in Fayette County spend more than half of their income on rent.

With a lot of work and creative financing — such as tax credits and grants — the puzzle was solved Thursday with the dedication of First Presbyterian Church Apartments on Market Street.

The two buildings were carefully restored into a studio apartment, two one-bedroom units and seven two-bedroom apartments that will rent for between $330 and $550 a month. Tenants must have incomes below $22,700 for singles and $26,000 for families. Even before the first residents have moved in, there’s a waiting list.

Not only are the apartments affordable, they’re beautiful. While adding modern closets, fixtures and appliances, the developers preserved the buildings’ exterior, as well as inside touches such as windows, woodwork, wooden floors and fireplace mantels.

The large project team celebrated the apartments’ completion Thursday with a ceremony next door in First Presbyterian’s chapel.

“This project has been both a joy and an honor,” said Holly Wiedemann, a church member and president of AU Associates, which specializes in converting old buildings into affordable housing.

“It can be done,” Wiedemann said. “Historic buildings can be saved. Affordable housing can be produced, and it is desperately needed.”

Clyde Carpenter, a University of Kentucky architecture professor and member of the church, spoke passionately about both Christian outreach and historic preservation.

“Preservation is as much about the future as the past … it is about environmental sustainability, not wasting, not consuming,” he said.

In addition to giving historic buildings new life, Carpenter said, the apartments will add vitality to the neighborhood.

First Presbyterian, which recently restored its circa 1872 sanctuary, has played an important role in keeping the neighborhood vital. Among other things, the church restored Henry Clay’s law office next door and built a magnificent contemporary chapel in the 1990s that Carpenter helped design.

First Presbyterian Apartments, Carpenter said, represents a new ministry for the church.

AU Associates led the project on the church’s behalf with a big cast of characters. Financing came from Central Bank, the city, the Kentucky Heritage Council and the Kentucky Housing Corp. Design was done by S+A Architecture, with construction by Churchill McGee LLC.

Behind the scenes were many more partners, from lawyers Robert Vice and Mac Deegan to Kentucky American Water Co., which replaced water lines so old that some of them were made of wood.

“This is a model we need to replicate for other projects,” Urban County Council member Diane Lawless said of the public-private partnership. “Not only is it affordable housing, it is quality affordable housing. That makes all the difference.”

Click on each photo to enlarge.

I never paid much attention to Lexington’s First Baptist Church, the Gothic limestone temple that overlooks West Main Street across from Rupp Arena.

Unil recently, I had never been inside. It has been a long time since many other people have, either.

When Pastor John C’deBaca gave me a tour, I was amazed. The 1,500-seat sanctuary has arched oak pews beneath a stunning vaulted ceiling of massive chestnut beams. There are four balconies, beautiful stained glass windows and a huge pipe organ.

There also are water-damaged walls and a stone front entrance that is closed and braced with wooden beams because city code enforcement officers fear it could collapse.

Rebuilding the entrance would cost about $75,000. Add another $24,500 for electrical work. And $14,000 for a new roof. Then there are the crumbling stairwells to the front balcony, water problems in the basement and worn masonry and exterior windows. The list seems endless.

What was once one of the South’s largest Baptist congregations has dwindled to about 50 people, many of whom are native Spanish-speakers. The congregation’s financial resources are no match for the urgent repairs their once-grand building needs.

“We’ve been working on it piecemeal as we can, but it’s a huge challenge,” said C’deBaca, who once taught building trades in Texas and now spends as much time ministering to his building as to his flock. “There’s a lot of potential in this building … if the community knew what was here.”

C’deBaca has been working with Tom Blues, the Urban County Council member, Bill Johnson of the Old Western Suburb neighborhood and others to come up with ideas to restore and perhaps find other uses for this 35,000-square-foot architectural gem.

So far, solutions have been elusive.

First Baptist Church’s history is as illustrious as its building. Founded as Town Branch Church in 1786, it was one of the first Baptist congregations west of the Allegheny Mountains. Its first pastor, John Gano, baptized George Washington.

The congregation met in a log cabin on the site, which also was Lexington’s pioneer cemetery. The church moved to Mill Street in 1819 but returned in 1859 and inhabited a succession of three buildings, two of which burned.

Most graves were moved to Lexington Cemetery in the mid-1800s. But when the last church building was demolished in 1913 to build the present one, the grave of John Bradford, publisher of Kentucky’s first newspaper, was found under the west wall. It was left there, according to state historical records.

First Baptist Church has suffered declining membership for decades. There were schisms and disputes, but location seems to have been the big factor.

There is little nearby parking, except for a small lot whose rental now provides income for the church. Some of the church’s 67 rooms are rented to Inner City Breakthrough Ministries.

What does the future hold?

“Ideally, I would like to see the congregation grow and prosper,” C’deBaca said. “But that hasn’t happened in the 11 years I’ve been here. We’re open to possibilities, and we need help.”

Perhaps the church could partner with other ministries, or turn the building into a religious conference center, Johnston suggested.

Or the church could sell the building, which would raise money to restart its ministry elsewhere. A developer could then turn the building into a concert hall, museum or exhibition space, a community center or even apartments, offices or restaurants.

One catch is that the building couldn’t be dramatically altered and still be eligible for historic tax credits that could help pay for its renovation.

Julie Good, executive director of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation, did her master’s thesis on old churches that have been renovated for other uses. “There are so many examples of adaptive reuse of buildings like this,” she said.

“You have a great building that should be preserved at an important downtown location,” said Blues, the councilman, as we gazed up at the chestnut-beam ceiling.

“If this could be seen by people with good business sense and imagination, I’m sure we could figure out something.”

Will this be another downtown survey that is filed away and forgotten?

Or will Lexington follow through and take steps to leverage what’s left of its rich architectural past for a more prosperous future?

The city historic preservation division last week unveiled a survey of every building on 34 downtown blocks. It graded each pre-1965 structure’s historic and architectural merit as “outstanding,” “significant,” “contributing” or “non-contributing.”

Mayor Jim Newberry ordered the survey after controversy erupted last summer over developer Dudley Webb’s demolition of a block of buildings dating to 1826 to make way for the CentrePointe tower he has yet to begin building.

Preservationists were outraged, but Webb claimed the old buildings were insignificant and too dilapidated to reuse.

Newberry said a comprehensive survey was needed as “a reference point from which our conversation can begin” about which downtown buildings are worth renovating and reusing.

“That will be a substantial step in the right direction so our discussions can be more productive than they have been in the past,” Newberry said last week. “I think it’s healthy for us to have a community discussion of those values now rather than in the heat of the battle.”

Newberry also ordered code enforcement officers to sweep downtown to make sure old buildings aren’t suffering “demolition by neglect” as many of those on the CentrePointe block had.

The mayor’s strategy makes sense. The survey, which will be posted for public comment on www.lexingtonky.gov beginning Monday, is a useful first step.

But it is at least the third first step Lexington has taken in the past three decades.

After an earlier downtown demolition controversy, then-Mayor Pam Miller commissioned a similar survey in 1993. Several of that survey’s “significant” buildings have since been demolished.

Most of the buildings on the CentrePointe block, which is now an empty mud hole, were rated “significant,” except for the 1826 building that housed Joe Rosenberg’s jewelry store, which was rated “outstanding.”

The 1994 survey recommended that the city prevent demolition of those buildings. It also recommended that the city “encourage property owners, through code enforcement, to provide continued maintenance for buildings in the area.”

The Kentucky Heritage Council has other downtown surveys, most done in 1979 and 1980 by architectural historian Walter Langsam. They describe in detail the architectural and historic merit of many of the now-demolished buildings on the CentrePointe block.

Do you see a pattern here? Many of the more than 50 people who came to a meeting last week to see the latest downtown survey did, too. They asked about next steps. Where do we go from here?

Lexington has done and continues to do a lot of good historic preservation, thanks to the Blue Grass Trust, other organizations and many dedicated individuals and businesses. Among them: Bank of the Bluegrass, Ben Kaufmann, Gray Construction, Thomas & King, Peter Armato, Holly Wiedemann.

And just west of downtown, visionary developers Barry McNees and Rob McGoodwin are working separately to redevelop industrial complexes built for two of Lexington’s former signature industries, bourbon and tobacco, into assets for the new economy.

But historic preservation has always been a struggle in Lexington, because too many people have the wrong idea about it. They see preservation as an economic drag instead of an economic engine.

Preservation is rarely about recreating the past to make a museum piece. Instead, it’s about mixing the best of the past and present to create interesting, useful buildings for the future that speak to Lexington’s unique heritage and culture.

It’s really not so much preservation as recycling.

Look carefully around Lexington and in other cities around the country and world and you will see fine old commercial buildings being given new life. And they’re usually a lot more special than the new, generic towers built by cost-conscious developers.

Downtown revitalization isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an ongoing process that requires vision, leadership and citizen engagement.

It’s not about creating laws for everything, because laws and process can do as much to prevent great development as bad development. The key is creating sensible, flexible laws that allow leaders, under the watchful eyes of citizens, to help a city achieve its potential.

During the next few weeks, as citizens comment on the latest downtown building survey, Urban County Council members should adopt the Downtown Master Plan and proposed new zoning laws. They, business leaders and interested citizens also should look at strategies other cities are using to protect their historic assets and recycle them for the future.

Creating a successful downtown Lexington isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. But we’ll never get very far if all we ever take are first steps.

This 1826 building, one of the first Greek Revival structures built in Lexington during the mid-1800s, was demolished for CentrePointe. Photo by Tom Eblen

The “AU” in AU Associates stands for “Adaptive Use.”

But if you remember the periodic table of elements from science class, Au also is the symbol for gold.

Holly Wiedemann has created gold for her Lexington development company — and golden opportunities for several Kentucky communities — through a complex alchemy of historic preservation, architectural innovation and creative finance.

AU Associates specializes in restoring once-beautiful old buildings by adapting them for new, economically sustainable uses. Most were once schools, rich in architecture and memories, and are now affordable apartments that put abandoned buildings to good use — and onto the tax rolls.

Wiedemann is working with First Presbyterian Church and Central Bank in downtown Lexington to restore a run-down Market Street apartment building from the 1800s into 10 attractive apartments that will rent for $300 to $600 a month. Old woodwork and fireplaces are being reused, architectural details restored.

“The proportions are comfortable to be in, and out each window you can see church steeples and gardens” of neighboring historic homes, she said.

That project is one of several now under way, Wiedemann said, representing $8.6 million in investment and providing 150 jobs.

“They have the right angle on the historic-preservation argument: It is first and foremost an urban-redevelopment argument,” Michael Speaks, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Design, which includes the architecture school, said of Wiedemann’s company.

“Her firm is one of the few that is taking historic properties and using creative financing to give them new life and make communities better,” Speaks said.

Wiedemann, 53, comes naturally to her love of history and old buildings.

A great-great grandfather, George Wiedemann, started Wiedemann brewery in Newport. A great-grandfather, J.D. Purcell, started Purcell Department Store, which was in a grand old building on Lexington’s Main Street that was demolished in 1978 to make way for the Radisson hotel. “Boy, that would be a great building to have now,” she said.

Wiedemann grew up on the family farm in Scott County called The Hollys, for which she was named. The farmhouse, built in 1789, gave her an appreciation for the beauty and durability of old buildings.

After earning a degree in landscape architecture and urban planning at the University of Georgia, she worked for a major developer in Tulsa, Okla. She realized she would need to learn more about real estate finance to do the kinds of projects she wanted to do.

That led her to Duke University in North Carolina, where she earned a master’s in business administration and met her husband, Bart van Dissel, then a doctoral student. They moved to Boston, where he taught at Harvard Business School and she worked for Winn Development, a pioneer in adaptive reuse of historic buildings.

“That, for me, was the Ph.D. level education” in historic tax credits and unconventional finance, she said. It also sparked her interest in building affordable housing.

Through consulting work, Wiedemann raised the money to start AU Associates after she and her husband moved to Lexington in 1992. The firm’s first major project was remodeling the old Midway School into 24 apartments for seniors.

The Irvine mayor’s wife saw the project and got Wiedemann to do a similar one in the Estill County town. Since then, AU Associates has done other school-to-apartment renovations, with more planned in Glasgow, Winchester, Beattyville and Buffalo in LaRue County.

“These old schools are often beautiful buildings that were built to last and are located in lovely residential areas,” Wiedemann said. “Many of the people who live there now taught or went to school there and have wonderful memories.”

The firm converted an ornate former YMCA built in 1913 in downtown Louisville into 58 market-priced apartments and St. Francis High School. And it is turning a former tuberculosis hospital in Ashland into 34 apartments for domestic abuse victims.

AU Associates’ projects often are complex because they use historic tax credits, partnerships and creative financial arrangements. “We cobble together multiple funding sources to make these projects work,” Wiedemann said. “That’s why a lot of people don’t do this work.”

But the projects work, and there’s a lot of demand for them.

“The growth potential is amazing,” said Johan Graham, who along with Martha Dryden makes up Wiedemann’s core staff. “We really have as much work as we can handle just from the business coming through the door.”

The firm’s offices are on Georgetown Street in a formerly derelict pre-1800 house that AU Associates restored with a contemporary addition. Behind it is the firm’s first start-from-scratch project — ARTEK lofts, which was developed in partnership with neighbors in the Western Suburb Historic District on a formerly blighted lot.

Wiedemann and her husband live at ARTEK, which has impressive views of the downtown skyline and the Henry Clay monument in Lexington Cemetery. Unfortunately, ARTEK came on the market during the recent downtown condo boom and right before the current economic bust. Wiedemann said about half of the 38 units, priced from the low $170,000s to the low $280,000s, remain unsold.

The project’s unique contemporary architecture by Christopher Fuller of K. Norman Berry & Associates in Louisville uses a lot of concrete, steel and brick. Like the historic structures Wiedemann’s firm usually works with, it is built to last.

“In 50 years, it will be qualifying for historic-preservation restoration grants,” Wiedemann said with a smile. “It’s not going anywhere.”

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