A Lexington mobile home park was given preliminary approval Thursday to expand on 16 acres on Price Road despite opposition from neighboring St. Martin’s Village.
The Urban County Planning Commission voted 7 to 1 after a more than three-hour hearing in a packed council chamber to approve the zone change at 421 Price Road from a single-family home zone to a mobile home zone for a little more than 16 acres.
The commission also voted to not allow Suburban Pointe Mobile Home Park to connect its streets to nearby St. Martin’s Village, one of Lexington’s first Black suburbs. Many St. Martin’s Village neighbors asked the planning commission Thursday to nix any street connections between the mobile home park and their neighborhood.
The zone change will now go to the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council for final approval. A date for that vote has not been set.
The proposed expansion will allow Suburban Pointe to add 52 new lots. Some of those lots can have mobile homes with up to four bedrooms. If the zone change gets final approval, Suburban Pointe will have more than 600 lots.
The plans also show athletic courts and a community center.
Nick Nicholson, a lawyer for Suburban Pointe, said the city’s comprehensive plan, which guides development and determines what types of development can go where, stresses the importance of different housing types and more affordable housing.
“This will immediately bring affordable housing online,” said Nicholson. Other affordable housing projects can take much longer to build because they are dependent on federal, state and local funding, he said.
The plan also stresses activating underutilized plots of land inside the city’s urban service area. The property at 421 Price Road is underused former agricultural land, Nicholson argued.
City planners recommended approval of the zone change.
Suburban Pointe was purchased by Flagship, of Erlanger, in 2021. Flagship has made multiple improvements to the property, including repaving the road and installing a community center, Nicholson said. Flagship also has held health fairs, Christmas parties and back-to-school rallies since it took over ownership.
Concern over street connections
Neighbors in St. Martin’s Village raised concerns during Thursday’s hearing about connecting the expanded mobile home park to streets in their neighborhood —Tibbs Lane, Dominican Drive and St. Martin’s Avenue. All three currently dead-end into the property at 421 Price Road.
The plans show a primary entrance on Price Road for the new section of the mobile home park.
“That could be more than 5,000 trips a day through St. Martin’s Village,” said Bruce Simpson, a lawyer for St. Martin’s Village. “Even if it’s 1,000 or 2,000, trips into this neighborhood have a radical impact.”
City subdivision regulations require connectivity between neighborhoods. Increased connectivity helps cut traffic on collector streets. It’s also a public safety issue, city officials have long said. Police and fire vehicles need multiple ways in and out of an area.
Ed Holmes, a planner with EHI Consultants, said the most difficult part of planning is social justice and equity.
“Connecting streets through this historic neighborhood would create more problems than it would stop,” Holmes said. “The lack of connectivity may help maintain social cohesiveness.”
Daniel Crum, a senior planner, said Tibbs, Dominican and St. Martin’s were always meant to be extended. St. Martin’s was first built in 1955. A second section was built in the 1960s. The mobile home park was built around the same time.
Crum said the connections would allow many St. Martin’s Village residents to get to Price Road much more quickly than they can now.
The comprehensive plan also stresses connectivity, Nicholson said. Nicholson said the developer is okay if the commission chooses not to allow streets in Suburban Pointe to connect to St. Martin’s. But the developer has to follow city rules and regulations, he said.
“We don’t have the choice but to show those connections,” Nicholson said.
The commission ultimately decided to heed the recommendations of St. Martin’s Village and not allow Tibbs, St. Martin and Dominican to be connected to the mobile home park.
‘Not just survived, but thrived’
More than 20 people spoke against the zone change during Thursday’s meeting.
When St. Martin’s Village was created in the mid-1950s, it was one of the few places Black people could live and get bank loans to buy homes in Fayette County.
“St. Martin’s Village suffered through Jim Crow,” said Simpson. “This neighborhood has not just survived but has thrived.”
Simpson said the comprehensive plan mentions equity and righting prior racist practices including deed restrictions that kept Black people from owning land in much of Lexington.
Yet, there is no policy to do just that, and residents worry the mobile home expansion would destroy the neighborhood that their families struggled to build and keep intact.
“What about policies that protect African-American history?” Simpson said. “This neighborhood needs to be protected and preserved,” Simpson said.
Valerie Logan said her family was one of the first to buy a home in St. Martin’s Village. The homeowners worked hard to make St. Martin’s Village a great place to live. Her father and others built patios, porches and made other improvements to the homes there.
“They figured out ways to improve their neighborhood,” Logan said.
Logan said 80 to 90% of the homes are owned by the same families who purchased the homes in 1950s and 1960s.
“The city has done absolutely nothing to include us,” Logan said.
Ann Greene has lived in St. Martin’s for more than 60 years.
“We could not buy a home in any other part of the city,” Greene said. “We are a close-knit community.”
Greene said she worries that Black neighborhoods throughout Lexington have no protections.
“They have boxed us in or bought us out,” Greene said. “Leave us alone.”
Michelle Davis, the president of the St. Martin’s Village neighborhood association, said she lives in the home her parents purchased. She’s lived there for 66 years.
“St. Martin’s Village, known as the Village, has been a safe place to raise my family,” Davis said. Her neighbors helped her mother when she got sick and looked after Davis after her mother died. “My neighbors are my second family.”
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