The Bluegrass and Beyond

Neema Dominic puts in volunteer hours painting a foreclosed home on Savoy Road that is being renovated by Habitat for Humanity.  Habitat has renovated four foreclosed homes in Lexington this year and will do a fifth next year as part of a city program to keep foreclosed homes from becoming vacant liabilities in their neighborhoods. Photos by Tom Eblen

Lexington has a couple of big housing problems: there is too little affordable housing, and there are too many vacant houses in neighborhoods all over the city, especially since the wave of foreclosures that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

A partnership between city government and Habitat for Humanity has offered small help for both problems, but it has left officials optimistic that it could lead to bigger solutions.

On Wednesday, Mayor Jim Gray will help dedicate a renovated house at 224 Savoy Road in a well-kept, middle-class subdivision off Versailles Road. After a foreclosure in 2010, that house and another down the street sat empty for more than two years. That worried neighbors, including Urban County Council member Peggy Henson, who lives around the corner.

“These were sturdy, good, well-built homes,” Henson said. “But they weren’t going to stay that way the longer they sat empty.”

Those two houses were among 10 foreclosed, vacant properties the city was able to acquire with federal stimulus money through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

The city turned the 10 properties over to Habitat for Humanity for $1 each. Five had homes that could be renovated; the others will become building sites for new Habitat homes. Four of the renovations have been completed; the fifth will be done next year, as will the new construction.

Habitat for Humanity, the Georgia-based non-profit organization made famous by former President Jimmy Carter’s volunteer efforts on its behalf, builds affordable homes for low-income people willing to put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity” to become homeowners.

In Lexington, Habitat has typically built new homes, usually in neighborhoods north of Main Street in the East End, West End and Winburn, where inexpensive lots were available. This venture was Habitat’s first at renovating existing homes in other neighborhoods, and Rachel Smith Childress, the organization’s Lexington executive director, said it turned out to be a winner for everyone.

“Our families like them because they’re in other nice neighborhoods and have amenities that aren’t typically part of our homes,” she said. “Plus, it removes vacant houses from neighborhoods, increases property values for everyone and increases property tax revenues for the city.”

For example, the house at 224 Savoy Road, which was built about 1960, is brick with hardwood floors and vintage knotty pine paneling. The kitchen includes a dishwasher. None of that is in a new Habitat house.

But the house needed work, including bathroom and kitchen remodeling, which was done by Habitat staff, volunteers and future Habitat homeowners. Whirlpool donated other needed kitchen appliances.

Money for the renovation was donated by business sponsors Paul Miller Ford, Ford Motor Co., PNC Bank and the PNC Foundation. Support for the other renovations has come from Ashland Inc., Calvary Baptist Church and Back Construction.

More than 500 hours of work was performed by the new owners of 224 Savoy Road, Emmanuel Katchofa, and his wife, Marceline Ilunga. He was a physician in the Congo before they and their five children fled the war-torn country and were resettled in Lexington by the U.S. State Department and Kentucky Refugee Ministries. Katchofa and Ilunga both now have jobs, although he is unable to practice medicine because his license is not valid in this country.

Legal refugees from the Congo and other troubled African nations now make up about half of the 15 or 20 Lexington families Habitat is able to help become home owners each year. That is because refugees come here without bad credit histories and with strong motivation to succeed, Childress said.

Henson said she and her neighbors are happy to have the vacant house on Savoy Road restored and occupied.

“It was a real blessing to the neighborhood,” she said. “Those properties are looking great now, and it will be really good to have folks living there.”

Although federal stimulus money is no longer available, Henson and Childress hope Habitat’s partnership with the city on rehabilitating vacant houses or building on abandoned lots can find new ways to continue.

“We’re talking with the city about property and buildings and partnerships,” Childress said. “But the need for affordable housing goes beyond home ownership.

“Everyone is not going to be a homeowner. We really have a huge gap in decent rental housing that is affordable in Lexington. It’s a huge need.”

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In the early 1960s, this place was the Cabana Club, and 5-year-old Holly Wiedemann came here to learn how to skate on Lexington’s only ice rink.

In the early 1970s, it was The Aquatic Club, and Wiedemann came here to swim with the Greater Lexington Swim Association and play on the adjacent putt-putt miniature golf course.

Now, this 6.2-acre site in southwest Lexington’s Gardenside neighborhood is called Parkside, a stylish new development whose first phase opened last week with 36 beautiful apartments for low-income people and offices for two social service agencies.

Parkside required creating a complicated network of public-private partnerships and financing, and it was organized and built by Holly Wiedemann.

Wiedemann, 56, is president of AU Associates, a Lexington development company that specializes in restoring old buildings and converting distressed properties into affordable housing. Over the past 21 years, the company has done $63 million worth of projects throughout Kentucky and in West Virginia with 350 housing units and more than 100,000 square feet of commercial space.

Many previous AU Associates projects have involved creating affordable housing by restoring old school buildings in small towns. She also developed the upscale Artek Lofts on Old Georgetown Street and is now working on The Bread Box, which involves converting an old Rainbo Bread bakery on Jefferson Street into a craft brewery, artist studios and the Broke Spoke Community Bicycle Shop.

Parkside was different than most AU Associates projects. Rather than “adaptive use” — that’s what AU stands for — of an existing building, the old swim and skating facility had to be demolished. Parkside’s three new, connected structures were built on the former putt-putt course.

Gardenside has changed a lot in the decades since it was a new, upscale development, then on the edge of Lexington. Back then, Wiedemann could ride her pony to the club from her family’s farm at the end of Beacon Hill Road.

The YWCA acquired the private swim club in 1977 and operated the pool and a fitness center until early 2006, when it abruptly closed because of the organization’s financial problems. After dropping affiliation with the national organization, the YWCA became the Brenda D. Cowan Coalition for Kentucky, named for a firefighter killed while responding to a domestic-violence situation.

The coalition’s plans to turn the center into affordable housing stalled, and vandalism and neglect made the facility irreparable and a threat to neighbors in the 1960s-era apartment buildings around it. AU Associates acquired the property and put together the deal to build Parkside.

Parkside’s one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments will rent from $500 to $700 per month to individuals and families earning 60 percent or less of the area median income. The apartments feature energy-saving construction and appliances, plus fancy design touches rarely seen in low-income housing.

Wiedemann said the project created 108 direct jobs, and she tried to use local suppliers when possible. For example, all of the kitchen cabinets were made by a small company near Hodgenville.

The buildings’ first floors will house rent-free offices for two non-profit organizations: Bluegrass Domestic Violence and Sunflower Kids, which works to help children maintain safe relationships with non-custodial parents.

Parkside was financed by Citizens Union Bank of Shelbyville, affordable housing tax credits and trust funds from the Kentucky Housing Corp., the Community Affordable Housing Equity Corp. and the city’s Division of Community Development. City Studios Architecture of Cincinnati designed the contemporary-style project. If Parkside is successful, an additional phase is planned on the adjacent swim-club site.

“What I think you have here is market-rate housing at an affordable price,” said Mark Offerman of the Kentucky Housing Corp. “It’s some of the nicest in the neighborhood.”

At Parkside’s dedication last Wednesday, Mayor Jim Gray also hailed it as a great example of urban infill redevelopment that revitalizes neighborhoods and preserves Lexington’s unique farmland by avoiding suburban sprawl.

“Whatever Holly Wiedemann touches is going to have a transformative effect on our city,” Gray said. “Holly has this extraordinary sense of great design. When we build a city around great design, it lasts a long time.”

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