Brownfields Grant Will Help With Future Development

Blighted Property

The Fayette Alliance supports LFUCG’s grant application for federal funding to perform a countywide assessment of brownfields affected by non-petroleum hazardous substances. This $200,000 will help LFUCG develop an inventory and examine contaminated properties in the Northwest area of the city, including those along the Manchester Street corridor, the Newtown Pike corridor, and the Versailles Road corridor. Some of these properties are former distilleries, tobacco factories, stockyards, and manufacturing plants.

The benefits of this grant and the resulting information from the brownfields assessment are numerous:

• The resulting collection of economic and environmental data will provide necessary information for any next step towards redeveloping of these contaminated properties.
• This information could lead to the transformation of several tired and economically depressed areas in downtown Lexington—a timely opportunity, considering it’s estimated there are over 12,000 acres of blighted,  underutilized, and vacant land inside Lexington’s Urban Services Area.
• The potential redevelopment of these properties could provide a solution for Lexington’s affordable housing issues and help combat the continuing spread of urban sprawl.