Two years after the city of Lexington bought it, Lexington Home Brands' Plant 1 still sits empty. And the area around it is decaying.
City officials want to bring the area, which they call the Depot District, back to life. One of the first steps is developing a
master plan for the 24-square-block area, which is bounded by East Center Street, East Eighth Street, Main Street and the railroad tracks.
"The hope for this is to give us a starting point to move forward with the redevelopment," said Tammy Kepley, the city's director of community development.
Ten students from N.C. A&T State University are preparing a draft plan, which should be finished by early next month. The students are in a senior landscape-architecture design course taught by Paul Kron, the planning director for the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments. The master plan is the students' senior project.
A master plan would be a sort of site plan for the area, and it could lay out what things need to be demolished and what things need to be preserved, said Jeanne Johnston, a community-development coordinator for the city of Lexington. The plan would talk about how some buildings might be reused, she said.
Some efforts to redevelop the area have already begun. City officials are working to renovate an old freight depot, which was built in the 1900s and was a place where people picked up and dropped off items that were to be transported by train. The Lexington Farmers Market has been held outside the freight depot. City officials are also trying to re-establish passenger-rail service, and the depot is a key part of that effort.
In the same area, the Landmark Group, a Winston-Salem company, wants to transform the former United Furniture Plant into a 94-unit, mixed-use development.
Some community leaders want to build an amphitheater in the area, said Burr Sullivan, the president of the Development Co. of Lexington, a nonprofit group that works on economic-development issues.
"We're very excited about the plan, and it's going to have a lot to offer," he said.
The Lexington City Council closed the deal last year to buy Lexington Home Brands' Plant 1 for $1.05 million. Since then, city officials have completed the first phase of an environmental assessment of the plant, Kepley said. They are about to start the second phase, which will be more detailed.
Last month, the students met with community leaders, including bankers, real-estate developers and local government officials to get input on the master plan.
"The idea is we're getting a lot of input from different folks so that people get ownership," Kron said. "We're really going to the community and asking what the community wants."
A master plan for the Depot District would have an impact beyond just the 47 acres, Kepley said. The area is right next to Uptown Lexington, she pointed out.
If the Depot District is successfully redeveloped, that would help Uptown Lexington as well, she said.
"If nothing were done to that area, the decay that would happen there would have a negative effect on Uptown Lexington," Kepley said. "With the redevelopment of this area, there's a potential for the Uptown atmosphere and activity to grow."
■ Michael Hewlett can be reached at 727-7326 or at mhewlett@wsjournal.com.
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