New plan: Goodbye to 1,000-acre Castleton Lyons horse farm & hello new housing?
A historic Fayette County horse farm started in 1793 by a future U.S. attorney general could soon be divided up and likely sold for housing, according to documents filed with Lexington officials.
Castleton Lyons, which is owned by the family of Dr. Tony Ryan, an Irish millionaire who made his fortune by co-founding Ryanair, filed plans May 31 to subdivide more than 1,000 acres of the Iron Works property into 16 different lots.
The lot sizes range from 40 to more than 80 acres and oriented toward Mount Horeb Pike, according to the plans. Castleton Lyons is on Iron Works Pike and fronts portions of Mount Horeb Pike.
The majority of the lots are more than 40 acres.
Because the farm is outside the city’s growth boundary, there are restrictions on what can be built on agricultural property.
Each of the 16 lots can have one home on it and at least one additional home for farm workers, called a farm tenant home. Each home must also have a septic system, which must be approved by the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, according to city officials.
No other type of development is allowed on property zoned agriculture outside of the growth boundary.
Susan Straub, a spokeswoman for the city, said the plan’s first review should be a July 3 Urban County Planning Commission subdivision subcommittee meeting. The full planning commission will review the plans at a July 11 meeting.
Castleton Lyons officials were not available for comment Thursday morning.
Castleton Lyons was purchased by Dr. Tony Ryan in 2001, according to Fayette County Property Value Administration records. He died in 2007.
Shane Ryan, his son who is an Irish citizen, was running the farm in 2017.
A proposal to spend $5 million in local tax money to preserve the farm through the Purchase of Development Rights program was ultimately nixed in 2017. That program uses matching federal dollars to buy development rights, which keeps the land from being developed.
However, the federal program prohibits foreign-born or not U.S. taxpaying citizens from receiving federal money. Shane Ryan and Castleton Lyons did not qualify for matching federal funds.
The Purchase of Development Rights program had proposed using local money to purchase the development rights. The $5 million would be roughly twice what the city allocates to the Purchase of Development rights program each year.
The cost was ultimately too much, city officials decided. The program has protected more than 285 farms and more than 31,00 acres from development since its inception in 2000.
Prior owners include scions of Kentucky political family
The Iron Works Pike farm has a long and storied history in Fayette County.
It was purchased by John Breckinridge, a Virginia native, in 1793. Breckinridge later went on to become a U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general under President Thomas Jefferson.
John C. Breckinridge, a former vice president who also served in the U.S. Confederate government, was Breckinridge’s grandson.
The farm was then passed to a daughter who married David Castleman who renamed the farm Castleton. It is believed Castleman built the Greek revival mansion on the property. Fayette County PVA records show the mansion was built in 1850.
It’s not clear what will happen to the home.
John Keene eventually purchased the property and turned it into a well-known thoroughbred farm. It was sold in the 1920s due to financial constraints, according to a 2009 history of the farm published by the Fayette Alliance, a local land preservation group.
It had a series of owners before Frederick and Frances Van Lennep purchased the property.
The farm later became known for its show horse and standard-bred operations during the Van Lenneps’ ownership, according to the alliance’s website.
Tony Ryan purchased the property from the Van Lenneps’ trust in 2001 for $14 million, according to PVA records. It was renamed Castleton Lyons at the time the Ryan family purchased the property.
