Historic vote expands Lexington service boundary. The question now: where will it grow?

For the first time in 27 years, the Lexington council voted Thursday to expand Fayette County’s growth boundary.

The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted 13-2 at its Thursday night meeting to open up to 5,000 acres of rural land for development.

Under the proposal, the Urban County Planning Commission has until Dec. 1, 2024, to identify between 2,700 and 5,000 acres along the city’s major road systems for expansion. The commission must also develop an expansion area master plan, which will determine what types of development can go where. The commission must also determine how and who will pay for development in any new expansion area.

Thursday’s vote came after weeks of intense debate. The decision on whether to expand the boundary is part of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, a five-year planning document that determines what development can go where in the city.

The Urban County Planning Commission had recommended keeping the city’s current growth boundary and building on several long-term studies to determine when and how the city should expand. The city last opened its growth boundary in 1996, when more than 5,300 acres was added.

The council opted to change the commission’s recommendations and voted to expand the growth boundary.

Those in the business and building community had pressed the council to open up the city’s boundary, saying the cost of housing was pricing too many people out of Fayette County. Too many jobs were going to other communities because there isn’t enough land for current businesses to expand or new businesses to come to Lexington. Others pressed city leaders to continue to work on previous studies that would help the city determine when and how to expand.

After the council’s initial June 1 vote to expand the boundary, Mayor Linda Gorton asked the council to add language that would make it possible for the city to have more affordable housing in the expansion area. There are only two affordable housing developments in the 5,300 acres in the expansion area, which are apartments. To date, only market-rate single-family homes were built in the 1996 expansion area. A little less than half of those 5,300 acres has not been developed.

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The council amended its previous draft of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan to include language that emphasizes and directs the planning commission to develop policies that would make development of affordable housing in the expansion area easier. However, there is no guarantee affordable housing will be developed in the new land added to the growth boundary.

Under the guidelines, if the planning commission does not identify acres and have a master plan completed by Dec. 1, 2024, the expansion can still continue.

It’s not clear how that will happen.

The Urban County Planning Commission, which is made up of 11 volunteers, will be busy in coming months.

The 2045 Comprehensive Plan will return to the commission for it to develop some of the policies and procedures set out in the first part of the plan. The city is also waiting for a sewer capability study to be completed this summer. That sewer study will help the planning commission determine what acres could be suitable for future development. City planners have said discussions about the new expansion area will likely begin in earnest in the fall.

Even after a plan is developed in late 2024, it will take several years for new land to be developed. Acres identified in the expansion area for development will have to go through permitting and a zone change, which would take land currently zoned agricultural and change it to a housing or business zone, depending on the use.

The council members who voted against the 2045 Comprehensive Plan: Kathy Plomin, Hannah LeGris.

Those that voted in favor: James Brown, Tanya Fogle, Shayla Lynch, Liz Sheehan, Brenda Monarrez, Preston Worley, Fred Brown, Chuck Ellinger, Denise Gray, Jennifer Reynolds, Dan Wu, Whitney Elliott Baxter, David Sevigny.