Questionable decisions doomed architectural gem near Maxwell St development
By now, passersby on E. Maxwell and Stone Avenue will have noticed the gaping hole in the neighborhood where 13 National Register-listed buildings once stood. As this type of mega-development accelerates in Lexington, the public’s ability to monitor such projects is increasingly being curtailed. Recently, the House Bill 443 ZOTA removed public comment from the approval process for some development plans. But the city’s planning staff’s aversion to community input runs deeper than this. In attempting to stave off the wrongful demolition of the 1920s John F. Nunan House at 245 Stone Ave., the Blue Grass Trust has found itself challenging a bureaucracy that appears to bristle at any oversight and circumvents administrative review procedures.
When the Planning Commission approved the final development plan for The Maxwell, a 7-story, privatized dormitory, the Blue Grass Trust took some solace in the fact that it depicted the intact Nunan House within the project site. Originally, the Stavroff developers had wanted to tear down this architecturally significant, Tudor Revival-Craftsman bungalow and put an outdoor trash compactor in its place, but the Commission vocally objected to this idea. We therefore had every confidence that the developers were responding to such feedback — and perhaps the historic preservation goals of our city’s comprehensive plans — by incorporating the Nunan House into the revised plan.
Trust officials were quite surprised, then, when Stavroff filed for a permit to raze the Nunan House shortly after the final plan was certified. We leapt into action and managed to get this application withdrawn. However, planning staff then contended that 245 Stone Avenue was not, in fact, included in the site plan and claimed that all the information on that document indicating otherwise was simply the result of “clerical errors.” We took issue with this interpretation and requested an administrative review by the Board of Adjustment, which the city’s zoning ordinance permits. Planning staff refused to accept that application. We then sought an appeal of their rejection, but that overture was blocked as well without any compelling legal justification.
Planning staff apparently recognized that their “clerical error” argument was specious, for The Maxwell’s builder on July 3 submitted a minor amended development plan that removed the Nunan House entirely. The distinction between minor and major amendments here is of paramount importance: major amendments require the sanction of the Planning Commission, whereas Planning staff independently approve minor changes.
Classifying the removal of a National Register-listed building from a site plan as “minor” is especially troubling. In theory, developers could promise to preserve historic resources to win support for their plans, only to propose a minor amendment and tear them down after the fact without commissioners being any the wiser. In this instance, Stavroff sold 245 Stone Avenue to the Theta Chapter of Kappa Alpha Order for $1 long after the plan’s certification, and the fraternity only last week demolished it.
We are concerned about planning staff’s enhanced ability to work unilaterally without oversight by the Commission, the Board of Adjustment, or community members. This case seems to make a farce of administrative review as codified in the zoning ordinance. Despite the adversity we encountered, the Blue Grass Trust will continue to challenge questionable deviations from final development plans that ultimately sap the public’s faith in the integrity of the planning process.
